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(Presumably) Apple engineer comment on Lightning AV adapter design

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Re: (Presumably) Apple engineer comment on Lightning AV adapter design

#51

Post by jlgreco »

dmishe wrote: post #39
taligent wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't they use H.264 and their existing hardware ? Do you really think it makes more sense to decode H.264 on the device then re-encode it in another format and then decode that on the adapter ? Sounds slow, illogical and bound to introduce more artifacts.

Nope. This is _the_ question here, what prevented them from pushing framebuffer data to the adapter, which then puts it into HDMI compatible form

Worse case, you have two pins, one on each side like any other, that are both actually the same pin.

Re: (Presumably) Apple engineer comment on Lightning AV adapter design

#53

Post by pavanky »

Cushman wrote: post #31
bitcartel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main takeaway is, why pay for a $50 widget when a $5 cable will do the job? For the consumer who just wants to connect their device to a HDTV, it's crazy they have to pay 10x more just because they're in the Apple ecosystem and not Android. As for being future-proof, by the time some cool new A/V interface hits the market, and we've all updated our TVs, the Lightning devices of today will be in a museum.

Somebody has to pay the piper-- the hardware to transmit HDMI has to exist somewhere. With a smart adapter, only the people who need the feature have to pay for it.

Seriously ? All the arguments about Apple products "just working" and being "premium products", now change to "only people who need the feature have to pay for it" ?

Re: (Presumably) Apple engineer comment on Lightning AV adapter design

#54

Post by jlgreco »

pavanky wrote: post #53
Cushman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody has to pay the piper-- the hardware to transmit HDMI has to exist somewhere. With a smart adapter, only the people who need the feature have to pay for it.

Seriously ? All the arguments about Apple products "just working" and being "premium products", now change to "only people who need the feature have to pay for it" ?

An inverse moving goalpost of sorts.

Re: (Presumably) Apple engineer comment on Lightning AV adapter design

#55

Post by coldtea »

buro9 wrote: post #44

It's a strange day when we move from cables that work perfectly well to cables that need to be software upgradeable to work as well.

>It's a strange day when we move from cables that work perfectly well to cables that need to be software upgradeable to work as well.

Yes, it's a strange day when we move from "cables that work perfectly well BUT the device with the ports they connect to has to be replaced whenever a new technology cames along" to "cables that need to be software upgradable but are far more future proof and capable all the while freeing the device from those concerns".

Re: (Presumably) Apple engineer comment on Lightning AV adapter design

#56

Post by josephlord »

drewcrawford wrote: post #41
dmishe wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and the comment about them using already existent h264 support in hardware I think supports dry-run-fastest-to-deadline solution. Re pins, I'm not EE either, but I don't get why people concern about number of pins so much, as I asked earlier in this thread, is there a relation between number of pins and bandwidth (well with physics involved there is _some_)?

Still not an EE, but as I understand it, if you are creating your own controllers and you also control how the cable is shielded, pin count doesn't matter much except for power. Traditionally it's been easier for most hardware makers to double the pin counts than to build controllers that run at twice the clock rate and also make everybody use fancy cables. But traditionally not everybody has PA Semi across the hall…

Has this been true since the late 80's/ early 90's when serial ports left parallel ports behind?

With serial techniques such as differential encoding parallel transmission off circuit board has been obsolete for a long time. The potential skew between the pins is too great and synchronisation too complex.

Re: (Presumably) Apple engineer comment on Lightning AV adapter design

#57

Post by makomk »

gilgoomesh wrote: post #43
FireBeyond wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A mere fifty per cent more than something that Lightning already can't handle...

There's every indication that Lightning can handle much more than this but in order to get the hardware running quickly, they've reused settings that were previous used for WiFi data rates. All we can guess is that Lightning can handle somewhere between 10Mbps (AirPlay over WiFi) and 2Gbps (native HDMI rates). We have absolutely no idea where in that range its actual capabilities lie.

I'm guessing its actual capabilities are basically just USB 2.0. Someone tore apart a Lightning-to-USB sync cable ages ago and the data pins are apparently wired straight through - so we know that Lightning can speak it natively - and given all the focus on simplicity and not doing multiplexing at the expense of more complexity in the adapter I can't see any reason why Apple would develop their own protocol.

Re: (Presumably) Apple engineer comment on Lightning AV adapter design

#58

Post by buro9 »

coldtea wrote: post #55
buro9 wrote: post #44

It's a strange day when we move from cables that work perfectly well to cables that need to be software upgradeable to work as well.

> It's a strange day when we move from cables that work perfectly well to cables that need to be software upgradeable to work as well. Yes, it's a strange day when we move from "cables that work perfectly well BUT the device with the ports they connect to has to be replaced whenever a new technology cames along" to "cables that need to be software upgradable but are far more future proof and capable all the while fre…

That is a problem entirely of our own making.

The stereo beside me has components that span 30 years and uses the same cabling for all components.

I realise someone will come back with "Oh, but DRM, encryption, needing more information about the source and destination"... but I'd counter by pointing out that telecoms cabling works perfectly well for transporting all kinds of things across it. You can put into protocols the things that you need, without having to create hardware problems that require constantly replaced and software upgradeable cabling.

Re: (Presumably) Apple engineer comment on Lightning AV adapter design

#60

Post by HNLogInShit »

cake wrote: post #59

Man, a computer in a cable seems like such a waste and complex design. What's the point of doing so ? I don't get it.

It's more Apple detachment from the real world. There's no excuse for this shit.

The point of updating the dock connector was presumably to MODERNIZE it, with a real DisplayPort or (better) Thunderbolt connector. Come to find out that it's a piece of shit that can't even deliver clean video.

And all of that pales in comparison to the blunder of not having audio line out in the port anymore. Now that every audio manufacturer has RE-added auxiliary inputs to car stereos, clock radios, and boom boxes... Apple REMOVES the output that feeds them. And this is on devices that are media players first, phones second.

PATHETIC.

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