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The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

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Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#71

Post by makomk »

moreati wrote: post #51
DannyBee wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, ...

According to Wikipedia MHL allows proprietary connectors, and MHL-through-microUSB is most often done with 5 pins. Lightning is 8 pins + shield, so it would have been possible for Apple to put HDMI signalling inside the devices, and get native 1080p/60 out. However, MHL-through-Lightning might have prevented the AV adaptor having a daisy chained lightning socket of it's own. Maybe that's why Apple jumped through thes…

Reading the reviews on the Apple site, the passthrough Lightning connector on the adapter is apparently charging-only, which you can do just fine with MHL-through-microUSB IIRC.

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#72

Post by vvhn »

sblom wrote: post #38
vvhn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I'm sorry, that was a brainfart- I thought you meant the connector and the host device and not quite literally a random microwave and oven :)

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#73

Post by bsaul »

nirvana wrote: post #62

The 30 pin dock had 30 pins so it could put video out directly and things like that. Lightening is a SERIAL FORMAT with 9pins. So it streams audio and video out in an encoded form. The AV adapter, need to take that audio and video and turn it into a standardized AV format for the AV plugs. Now, rather than a lot of odd incompatibilities because Apple added new features to new devices that older docks don't support, w…

I really don't get the logic. As if the cable was the thing that you would absolutely want to keep going from one version of the iphone to the other. If a new technology is out, (let's say 4k output), you'd have to upgrade memory and cpu to handle that power anyway, along with a new TV or monitor, and pretty much everything along the chain. Hypothetically beeing able to save the cable seems really not the problem anyway..

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#74

Post by coob »

makomk wrote: post #70
signed0 wrote: post #12

So instead of just going with USB3 like other phone manufacturers and having native HDMI they created their own interface that results in an a picture display with noticeable artifacts.

I'm not sure they even bothered to create their own interface. All the evidence so far is consistent with Lightning being USB 2.0 OTG plus a few extra pins for a lockout chip bundled into a proprietary connector. (More accurately, the usual multiplexed USB 2.0 and TTL serial that smartphones tend to have.)

Lightning is much more than that. It is configured thusly at the moment, it has much more potential.

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#75

Post by wmf »

coob wrote: post #74
makomk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure they even bothered to create their own interface. All the evidence so far is consistent with Lightning being USB 2.0 OTG plus a few extra pins for a lockout chip bundled into a proprietary connector. (More accurately, the usual multiplexed USB 2.0 and TTL serial that smartphones tend to have.)

Lightning is much more than that. It is configured thusly at the moment, it has much more potential.

But apparently it doesn't have the potential to be configured in MHL mode or something similar.

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#76

Post by FireBeyond »

nirvana wrote: post #62

The 30 pin dock had 30 pins so it could put video out directly and things like that. Lightening is a SERIAL FORMAT with 9pins. So it streams audio and video out in an encoded form. The AV adapter, need to take that audio and video and turn it into a standardized AV format for the AV plugs. Now, rather than a lot of odd incompatibilities because Apple added new features to new devices that older docks don't support, w…

Which would go absolutely nowhere to explain why my Pioneer car stereo head unit, which used to allow remote control of my iPhone's music collection, and a Pandora app, no longer works with the iPhone 5 - "iPod Out" would be one of the first protocols you would expect to be supported, even 'out of the box', but, no it's not, rendering an $800 head unit a lot less useful.

Perhaps Apple should think of such things first, before "future proofing" things.

Despite your defense of them, and whether there was any merit.... this change has the benefit of netting Apple a healthy profit, and rendering billions of dollars of accessories obsolete.

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#77

Post by jonknee »

AlexDanger wrote: post #55
raverbashing wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion: bandwidth The lightning connector doesn't have enough bandwidth to drive a HDMI connexion directly Of course, compressing (inside the iPad) for streaming, sending this through a limited bandwidth channel and then decompressing is complicated, but looks like it's the easiest solution (because all components - especially sw ones - are off the shelf) It's like a mini Raspberry-pi in that adaptor, amazing! (i…

It's like a mini Raspberry-pi in that adaptor, amazing! (if not slightly overpriced) What a wonderful age we live in. How long ago was it that people doubted the Rasberry-Pi could be delivered at such a low price? One of those rare moments where movement to the future is evidently palpable.

Apple could be losing a decent amount of money on each adapter sold. They can afford to lose money on an adapter few will by (in comparison to devices sold), especially while they're now making money on all the new 3rd party lightning accesseries.

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#78

Post by lostlogin »

mjs wrote: post #47
stephengillie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All that setup and no "very very frightening" joke?!

Nicely done. The very very frightening for me is the clunky move to wireless. There are about 20 Macs in the office, and when half the keyboard batteries go flat after a long weekend and you need to quickly check something, scrounging the building for a USB keyboard is tiring. This combined with airplays momentary drop outs and refusal to start (infrequent but annoying) make me sad. It's like we're so close to the cableless world, but just far enough away that its awful.

Re: The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise

#79

Post by lostlogin »

revelation wrote: post #69
nirvana wrote: post #62

The 30 pin dock had 30 pins so it could put video out directly and things like that. Lightening is a SERIAL FORMAT with 9pins. So it streams audio and video out in an encoded form. The AV adapter, need to take that audio and video and turn it into a standardized AV format for the AV plugs. Now, rather than a lot of odd incompatibilities because Apple added new features to new devices that older docks don't support, w…

People don't realize that the 30 pin connector didn't do any conversion of formats because they don't care . They want a connector, and what Apple delivered is a power-sipping SOC that actively throws information away, given the artifacts seen, and then upscales to 1080p because they didn't even have enough throughput to get lossy compressed 1080p through the bus. So yes you get your 30$ worth of components but it's…

A rip off in the sense that its a crappy output, not in that they are overcharging. I see mention that its likely making no money or actually losing money selling this cable.
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