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Apple's Lightning Digital AV Adapter is a Full-Fledged Computer
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Yup, profit / "marketable" buzzwords has always been much more important for them than customer satisfaction by, among other things, NOT screwing them up by dumbing down existing hardware (removal of certain features like antialiasing from iPad 1/2 in iOS5 so that users upgrade to the iPad 3), NOT forcing them to upgrade to a newer model (making it impossible for devs to support 1st and 2nd gen non-iPad devices) etc.
I've discussed a lot of these issues at https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=16894761 - feel free to read my posts there if interested. As both an iOS and Android programmer (and programming lecturer), I directly compared the two systems there. Unfortunately, iOS is far-far more restrictive - Apple sometimes makes a model absolutely unable to run any(!!!) new apps two years (!) after finishing selling it. (The case of the 2nd gen iPod touch, which was on sale up until Sep/2010 and, after Sep/2012, it was impossible to target it in any app compiled for iOS 6.)
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Personaly i think its to do with making sure the things genuine. as you know apple will go to far lengths to protect there products so i think this is here to stop others form making there own one. this software could be updated from the IOS device itself so if there is a change of coding the OS can be changed on the thing. this in turn makes fake Digital to audio briked as they do not have the compatibility to actually upgrade there OS. i think we need to strip the code down and see how this thing actually works
Is there actual proof that this adapter is using Airplay (or airplay like method) to push video from the idevice to HDMI?
Who says the iDevice can't push HDMI direct? These days you can run HDMI over a single cat5e or cat6. Those cables have a total of 8 wires (8 pins) on the cable ends. The lightning has 8 pins on either side. In order to push HDMI over a single cat5e or cat6 you need to use what is called a Balun. Good ones include active processing. Also, a newer technology HDBaseT to transmit HDMI over those same cables eliminating problems inherit in a regular HDMI cable and HDMI in general. It could be that this adapter is providing active processing of the HDMI through one of these methods or Apple's own design using a variant of these these technologies.
Also, the chip and memory could be so the adapter, once inserted is doing all of the video processing to HDMI on the adapter and sending it to the HDMI cable. Thus not using any processing power or memory on the iDevice to do this function. i.e.freeing the iDevice from processing this internally. The iDevice recognizes that the adapter has been inserted and dynamically shifts the video out processing to the adapter.
Who says the iDevice can't push HDMI direct? These days you can run HDMI over a single cat5e or cat6. Those cables have a total of 8 wires (8 pins) on the cable ends. The lightning has 8 pins on either side. In order to push HDMI over a single cat5e or cat6 you need to use what is called a Balun. Good ones include active processing. Also, a newer technology HDBaseT to transmit HDMI over those same cables eliminating problems inherit in a regular HDMI cable and HDMI in general. It could be that this adapter is providing active processing of the HDMI through one of these methods or Apple's own design using a variant of these these technologies.
Also, the chip and memory could be so the adapter, once inserted is doing all of the video processing to HDMI on the adapter and sending it to the HDMI cable. Thus not using any processing power or memory on the iDevice to do this function. i.e.freeing the iDevice from processing this internally. The iDevice recognizes that the adapter has been inserted and dynamically shifts the video out processing to the adapter.
An anonymous Apple engineer himself (original post):
"The reason why this adapter exists is because Lightning is simply not capable of streaming a raw HDMI signal across the cable. Lightning is a serial bus. There is no clever wire multiplexing involved. "
care to link to sources of said long history? I can't think of all the new cables they've invented, other than the very useful FireWire.
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when all you've got is spelling crits, you lose at the internet
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what? it plugs in 100% easier. less brittle. reversible. smaller, which allows for smaller devices, more battery space, etc...
as a user I value all of this. the financial burden has not been a hardship.
This one:
https://www.panic.com/blog/2013/03/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surprise/#comment-16841
It´s linked in the article at the very end.
Strange, when I was going straight to the blog it was not showing it. Must of be recently added and not showing for some reason.
Even more telling of how the compression effects image quality is on a link further down the page of some 1280 x 720 screenshots here:
http://www.journaldulapin.com/2013/03/02/adaptateur-lighting-vers-hdmi-un-vrai-probleme-de-qualite/
IMO it's not worth buying new accessories for a port change with no increase in performance (arguably a decrease in performance in this case).
I'd rather have an iPhone 5 with a 30pin.
You're posting a lot and not taking the time to thoroughly read the material you're referring to. The anon who insinuated that he worked for Apple stated that Airplay was not involved in the functioning of the adapter, it merely uses the same encoding block to make the bitrate more manageable.
This implies that H.264 decode is being performed by the adapter, which Anand and Brian over at Anandtech are still highly skeptical of at this point, for what it's worth. Even if we accept that the anon does have legitimate knowledge, there are still several outstanding questions.
The statement you quoted above raises a few. If we take "'raw' HDMI" to mean CEA-861 1080p30 (24-bit RGB or YCbCr 4:4:4) that would be 1.782 Gbit/s, which if we give a little headroom for 8b/10b encoding becomes 2.25 Gbit/s (which just so happens to be the bandwidth provided by MHL 1.0). So this poster claims that, "Lightning is simply not capable of [2.25 Gbit/s]. Lightning is a serial bus. There is no clever wire multiplexing involved." Well, of course there are plenty of point to point serial links capable of 2.25 Gbit/s. A good example of one that would be perfect for this situation is MIPI's M-PHY, especially since PCI-SIG is working with MIPI to allow the use of M-PHY for PCIe in future mobile devices. Hmmm... a low-power physical layer designed specifically for mobile applications that can handle DSI (display) as well as PCIe and even SSIC (SuperSpeed USB)... Suddenly it seems Lightning could have more in common with Thunderbolt than it first appeared.
Clearly we aren't looking at M-PHY, especially since the A5 is too old-school to have implemented it, even if they had snuck it in with the 32 nm revision. In fact, It's highly unlikely they would have had the lead time to incorporate it into the A6/A6X. So what is first gen Lightning using? Well, odds are it's a serial interface that the A5 actually has. Since our anon also referred to it as a "bus" and not a "link", I'm going to wager it is nothing more than good ol' fashioned USB 2.0 at this point. This also would corroborate why we haven't heard of any MFi approved Lightning connectors for video devices—you're supposed to just use the USB version and a cheap ARM SoC to do display output.
This still doesn't answer why we have two differential signaling pairs on current Lightning devices though. Does the serial connection between the SoC in the iOS device and the one in the AV adapter use both and does it support full-duplex communication? This complicates my earlier, just plain USB theory, and raises the question once again of, "What is it then?"
Shutup with your stupid conspiracy theories. Did you ever stop to think maybe Apple is just screwing up alot lately? Of course not Apple is infallable in your eyes.
Thought you all may find this interesting
Apple Engineer gives, in detail, the idea behind the use of the SoC etc in the lightning adapter.
Pretty brilliant.
https://www.panic.com/blog/2013/03/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surprise/#comment-16841
Apple Engineer gives, in detail, the idea behind the use of the SoC etc in the lightning adapter.
Pretty brilliant.
https://www.panic.com/blog/2013/03/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surprise/#comment-16841
Did you even read it? That's not "brilliant", that's asinine that you have to be so convoluted with Lightning and it still produces poorer quality than regular usb to hdmi cables.
Well apparently macaddict06 didn't read the dozen or so prior posts that quoted the same thing. Or read the linked comment well enough to notice that the anonymous poster may have implied that he/she worked for Apple, but never implied that he/she was an engineer of any sort. Teh internet is like the craziest game of Chinese telephone ever.
And @SomeDudeAsking, what exactly is a "regular usb to hdmi cable", and how does it produce better quality than the Apple Lightning Digital AV Adapter? If you're referring to MHL over a USB Micro-AB connector, please explain how that solution could be considered less convoluted.
Sorry, my bad. I should have edited out the first sentence ("Is there actual proof that this adapter is using Airplay (or airplay like method) to push video from the idevice to HDMI?") from the quote and only left out the second one ("Who says the iDevice can't push HDMI direct?"). It;s strictly the latter that I've answered to.
Sorry I didn't slog through 360 posts to confirm. I'll make sure to take lots of time next time I post so as not to offend your sensibilities.
Fact of the internet - reposts happen. You have an excuse to be butthurt if it was malicious (FYI - it wasn't).
IMO it's not worth buying new accessories for a port change with no increase in performance (arguably a decrease in performance in this case).
I'd rather have an iPhone 5 with a 30pin.
And I one with a separate micro-HDMI port - as is done by Nokia. The best of the two worlds (Ligtning with its advantages + direct, cheap, high-quality, true HDMI).
Well, you might at least glance at any one of the 6 posts on the page on which you're replying that refer to the same comment that you're linking to. But I guess when you're busy propagating inaccurate rumors on a rumor site, why be bothered.
Attributing an anonymous comment to an "Apple Engineer" is much more offensive to my sensibilities than simply reposting, and the only reason I brought it up in the first place.
That's pretty cool...
But inefficient. They insist on farting around with this "lightning" thing instead of using Micro USB with MHL like the rest of the world...
But inefficient. They insist on farting around with this "lightning" thing instead of using Micro USB with MHL like the rest of the world...