Hacker with iPhone takes over Times Square screens

Clever production, but wildly implausible: video frequency through audio DAC (best video compression in the world is still a postage stamp if you're trying to fit through a dial up modem); device sorts out screen characteristics; device sorts out picture should be split across four monitors; device so "powerful" to take over jumbotron yet so weak it has to be inches from bus stop screen, etc.

You can already easily do this using TubeMote (tubemote.com) without the need for all the hackery.

I wondered this myself. While technically you could on a generic computer (a wire is a wire, digital and/or analog), there certainly don't exist any APIs to do this on the iPhone. It would make far more sense to hook up to the dock (for which I believe there are APIs for).

The second giveaway is that you definitely cannot get enough power out of the headphone jack to run any serious electronics, not to mention a transmitter that can apparently transmite hundreds of feet in a crowded place like Times Square.

So a few things... the video through the audio jack, probably not at the rate that the video is displaying...

Notice also in the begininng demonstrations that he has to get the device super close to the screen in order for it "to work"... and when he moves it less than a foot away, it stops.

Now.. when he ties it to the balloon, it would require that the balloon would happen to fly within less than a foot of the screen. Errr..

So, the next clue is the muxing couldn't be accomplished without having input to how many screens there are. For example, he holds it up to the video screen with 4 screens... How would the device know to map the video across four screens? It would have to be doing 4x the work as well.

Clever video, funny.

Reminds me of this Dutch guy on youtube, who'd pretend to hack all kinds of stuff. Quite funny, but clearly fake. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcmmFQGxMNU (subtitled)