Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

panic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 85 posts

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#31

Post by vvhn »

mbell wrote: post #22
cabel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, AirPlay is our easier-to-understand way of saying "the results you're getting are exactly the same as when you stream iOS video using AirPlay". (Which is really weird for a video-out dongle! Especially since the former, non-Lightning one did proper video out.) I've tweaked the post to make it clearer that AirPlay isn't _necessarily_ the _exact_ mechanism being used! It could just be H.264 or MPEG or wha…

> Mostly I'd love to know exactly what this chip/system does, so if anyone here with far more advanced hardware knowledge than any of us have feels up to hacking around, that'd be amazing! :) Its converting an encoded steam to HDMI output. There aren't enough pins on a lightning connector to directly output HDMI and even if it could, you still need a transceiver somewhere (not particularly trivial in terms of space o…

> There is a non-zero chance your stove and microwave are 'running linux'.

Unless Linux comes with a BSD license, there is, in fact, zero chance. Apple is known to run a NetBSD variant on the airport routers - I'd say that is what is likely or whatever the hell a "stub version of iOS" means.

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#32

Post by rangibaby »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #30

One must wonder why they chose to expend significant R&D to make a complicated, power-sucking adapter for use on a mobile device that provides sub-par output and costs quite a bit more than a "dumb" cable. Maybe I'm missing something, but I feel like Lightning is just the next Firewire without all the usefulness that FW had (low latency, dedicated bus that wasn't USB, lots of pro audio gear that worked with it, abili…

Lightning is a replacement for Apple's old and huge dock connector. You're probably thinking of Thunderbolt.

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#33

Post by czhiddy »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #30

One must wonder why they chose to expend significant R&D to make a complicated, power-sucking adapter for use on a mobile device that provides sub-par output and costs quite a bit more than a "dumb" cable. Maybe I'm missing something, but I feel like Lightning is just the next Firewire without all the usefulness that FW had (low latency, dedicated bus that wasn't USB, lots of pro audio gear that worked with it, abili…

The form factor of Lightning is top notch - all of the USB-variants seem terribly designed after using it. Too bad Lighting isn't free-to-license like Firewire was.

That said, the design for this AV adapter is puzzling. I wonder what the hardware limitation was that prevented straight digital video out. (# of pins?)

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#34

Post by signed0 »

jws wrote: post #28
dangrossman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most non-Apple smartphones have micro-USB ports for charging, and most made in the past few years also support sending an HDMI signal through this port, either via MHL [1] or SlimPort (notably, Nexus 4). All it takes is a $10 adapter cable rather than a $40 SoC transcoding things. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_High-Definition_Link#Mob...

They also have hardware in the phone to generated HDMI (although electrically modified to fit on the USB connector). Given that only a tiny percentage of people will ever plug their phone into HDMI, it makes sense to have that minority pony up $40 instead of making everyone pay an extra dollar for the hardware they will never use.

But if they cared about cutting costs they wouldn't have invented their own cable to begin with. When has Apple ever worried about making people pay for things they don't use?

I'm disappointed because Lightening was billed as the next innovation in design, but if the picture quality is worse then what's the point?

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#35

Post by kalleboo »

mbell wrote: post #22
cabel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, AirPlay is our easier-to-understand way of saying "the results you're getting are exactly the same as when you stream iOS video using AirPlay". (Which is really weird for a video-out dongle! Especially since the former, non-Lightning one did proper video out.) I've tweaked the post to make it clearer that AirPlay isn't _necessarily_ the _exact_ mechanism being used! It could just be H.264 or MPEG or wha…

> Mostly I'd love to know exactly what this chip/system does, so if anyone here with far more advanced hardware knowledge than any of us have feels up to hacking around, that'd be amazing! :) Its converting an encoded steam to HDMI output. There aren't enough pins on a lightning connector to directly output HDMI and even if it could, you still need a transceiver somewhere (not particularly trivial in terms of space o…

> There aren't enough pins on a lightning connector to directly output HDMI and even if it could, you still need a transceiver somewhere (not particularly trivial in terms of space or power to stuff in the phone).

MicroUSB+MHL accomplishes the same thing quite well on the current crop of Android phones. Why Apple chose the method they did is still quite odd.

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#36

Post by DannyBee »

czhiddy wrote: post #33
seanp2k2 wrote: post #30

One must wonder why they chose to expend significant R&D to make a complicated, power-sucking adapter for use on a mobile device that provides sub-par output and costs quite a bit more than a "dumb" cable. Maybe I'm missing something, but I feel like Lightning is just the next Firewire without all the usefulness that FW had (low latency, dedicated bus that wasn't USB, lots of pro audio gear that worked with it, abili…

The form factor of Lightning is top notch - all of the USB-variants seem terribly designed after using it. Too bad Lighting isn't free-to-license like Firewire was. That said, the design for this AV adapter is puzzling. I wonder what the hardware limitation was that prevented straight digital video out. (# of pins?)

There are definitely not enough pins to do straight pin for pin HDMI through lightning. Of course, if you are going to go to the trouble to do what they did, you may as well bitstream it through the adapter, ...

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#37

Post by stephengillie »

rangibaby wrote: post #32
seanp2k2 wrote: post #30

One must wonder why they chose to expend significant R&D to make a complicated, power-sucking adapter for use on a mobile device that provides sub-par output and costs quite a bit more than a "dumb" cable. Maybe I'm missing something, but I feel like Lightning is just the next Firewire without all the usefulness that FW had (low latency, dedicated bus that wasn't USB, lots of pro audio gear that worked with it, abili…

Lightning is a replacement for Apple's old and huge dock connector. You're probably thinking of Thunderbolt.

Thunderbolt definitely is designed as a replacement for Firewire, USB, 10 Gbit Ethernet, HDMI, and all other current wired connections. It's been advertised as such for a while.

I first heard about Lightning just 2 days ago. I'm now confused between Thunderbolt and Lightning, and frustrated that I'll have to go learn about their differences.

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#38

Post by sblom »

vvhn wrote: post #31
mbell wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mostly I'd love to know exactly what this chip/system does, so if anyone here with far more advanced hardware knowledge than any of us have feels up to hacking around, that'd be amazing! :) Its converting an encoded steam to HDMI output. There aren't enough pins on a lightning connector to directly output HDMI and even if it could, you still need a transceiver somewhere (not particularly trivial in terms of space o…

> There is a non-zero chance your stove and microwave are 'running linux'. Unless Linux comes with a BSD license, there is, in fact, zero chance. Apple is known to run a NetBSD variant on the airport routers - I'd say that is what is likely or whatever the hell a "stub version of iOS" means.

What does BSD vs GPL have to do with my stove or microwave?

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#40

Post by beedogs »

DannyBee wrote: post #36
czhiddy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The form factor of Lightning is top notch - all of the USB-variants seem terribly designed after using it. Too bad Lighting isn't free-to-license like Firewire was. That said, the design for this AV adapter is puzzling. I wonder what the hardware limitation was that prevented straight digital video out. (# of pins?)

There are definitely not enough pins to do straight pin for pin HDMI through lightning. Of course, if you are going to go to the trouble to do what they did, you may as well bitstream it through the adapter, ...

The current design prevents users from accessing the actual 1080p video stream from the device, too.

The cynic in me says this is an end-run around any DRM issues giving access to that 1080p bitstream could introduce: instead let's just output a degraded, upscaled stream and call it HD.

Post reply on HN