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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

#41

Post by drewcrawford »

dmishe wrote: post #33
drewcrawford wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they can't even do 1080p lossless right now, they are in much deeper trouble for the future. Let me try and shed some light on this mystery. Consider this rumor. Also, I am not an electrical engineer, so I may be talking out of my ass. As best as I can tell, Lightning is not (yet, anyway) a real protocol like Firewire, USB, etc. What it is so far is USB with a different connector and some negotiating chips. So w…

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 to build chips for you and years of experience selling $50 cables to consumers via direct retail. So I'm betting that the usual economics of the consumer data interface market don't apply to Apple.

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

#42

Post by gilgoomesh »

kalleboo wrote: post #18
gilgoomesh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean the future where we're streaming 4k video? If HEVC (aka H.265) lives up to its promise, 4k video will come in around a mere 50% more than 1080p does now. Meanwhile, lossless 1080p would require 20000% more space (no I didn't add too many zeros, that's 200 times more).

What I don't get is, is MHL can stream 1080p over a regular microUSB port, why can't Apple do the same? Is it that expensive?

Because MHL isn't USB. It uses the same plug but runs its own HDMI hardware connection over the pins -- exactly what the Apple engineer said they were trying to avoid doing for every single hardware setup.

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

#43

Post by gilgoomesh »

FireBeyond wrote: post #13
gilgoomesh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean the future where we're streaming 4k video? If HEVC (aka H.265) lives up to its promise, 4k video will come in around a mere 50% more than 1080p does now. Meanwhile, lossless 1080p would require 20000% more space (no I didn't add too many zeros, that's 200 times more).

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.

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

#45

Post by signed0 »

dmishe wrote: post #29
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.

>the Lightning devices of today will be in a museum. Why? They'll plug another $50 adapter on it and it'll work.

I think they meant that the by the time successor to HDMI is invented today's smartphones will be obsolete.

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

#46

Post by drewcrawford »

glitch wrote: post #38
drewcrawford wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they can't even do 1080p lossless right now, they are in much deeper trouble for the future. Let me try and shed some light on this mystery. Consider this rumor. Also, I am not an electrical engineer, so I may be talking out of my ass. As best as I can tell, Lightning is not (yet, anyway) a real protocol like Firewire, USB, etc. What it is so far is USB with a different connector and some negotiating chips. So w…

> Obviously they wanted an even number so you could plug it in every which way How so? A center pin is still the center pin when you flip it around. Odd pin counts work fine.

Well, there was a big whoop about the thinness of the connector when they announced it being necessary for very thin devices. Can we manufacture non-brittle connectors with center pins that are 1.5mm thick?

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

#47

Post by gilgoomesh »

revelation wrote: post #17
gilgoomesh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean the future where we're streaming 4k video? If HEVC (aka H.265) lives up to its promise, 4k video will come in around a mere 50% more than 1080p does now. Meanwhile, lossless 1080p would require 20000% more space (no I didn't add too many zeros, that's 200 times more).

This isn't streaming, its the last 50cm from your computer to your display. The 200 times more of data are already handled without a sweat by today's interfaces. Dual link DVI, from 1999, can already do more than 1080p.

Apple are trying to handle all technologies without custom hardware in the device. Effectively, they have turned it into a streaming scenario. It's not as weird as you'd think -- there are USB3 video adapters that work the same way.

DVI, HDMI and MHL all require custom hardware in the device. As the Apple engineer said, Apple are trying to avoid this.

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

#48

Post by dmishe »

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.

How is that estimation done, I'm very curious?

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

#49

Post by bitcartel »

signed0 wrote: post #45
dmishe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the Lightning devices of today will be in a museum. Why? They'll plug another $50 adapter on it and it'll work.

I think they meant that the by the time successor to HDMI is invented today's smartphones will be obsolete.

Yes that's what I meant.

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

#50

Post by bluthru »

drewcrawford wrote: post #26
revelation wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't say, but probably because they just don't have the bandwidth. And thats where all this future proof talk goes deaf. New interfaces will only have more bandwidth, thats the whole point. Meanwhile, Lightning still has the same bandwidth and theres still a considerable penalty in serializing any other interface. If they can't even do 1080p lossless right now, they are in much deeper trouble for the future.

> If they can't even do 1080p lossless right now, they are in much deeper trouble for the future. Let me try and shed some light on this mystery. Consider this rumor. Also, I am not an electrical engineer, so I may be talking out of my ass. As best as I can tell, Lightning is not (yet, anyway) a real protocol like Firewire, USB, etc. What it is so far is USB with a different connector and some negotiating chips. So w…

>Now the only thing that puzzles me is why they settled on 8 pins, when USB3 is 9.

Is the metal prong itself the 9th pin?

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