Ten Myths of Apple’s iPad: 6. It needs HDMI for HD video output
February 8th, 2010
Daniel Eran Dilger
Here’s segment six in my series taking on iPad myths: no the iPad doesn’t need an HDMI 720p HDTV output.
Ten Myth of Apple’s iPad: 1. It’s just a big iPod touch
Ten Myth of Apple’s iPad: 2. iPad needs Adobe Flash
Ten Myths of Apple’s iPad: 3. It’s ad-evil
Ten Myths of Apple’s iPad: 4. It was over-hyped and under-delivered
Ten Myths of Apple’s iPad: 5. It’s just a Tablet PC or Kindle
Ten Myths of Apple’s iPad: 6. It needs HDMI for HD video output
Ten Myths of Apple’s iPad: 7. It needs cameras
Ten Myths of Apple’s iPad: 8. It’s a curse for mobile developers
Ten Myths of Apple’s iPad: 9. It can’t multitask
Ten Myths of Apple’s iPad: 10. It needs Mac OS X
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Dear home theater people: 6. It’s a myth the iPad needs HDMI
Apple debuted new VGA-style video output for the iPad, quite clearly to target it at business people who want to do Keynote presentations using a video projector. Previous iPod and iPhone models only support the lower quality composite or slightly higher quality component video outputs, which both deliver a standard definition TV signal of about 480 lines.
The VGA connector option for the iPad will deliver a 1024×768 (“XGA”) resolution output. That is comparable to High Definition TV video, although as a PC-oriented standard, the VGA output uses a square “4:3” aspect ratio rather than having a widescreen “16:9” display ratio; HDTV standards were geared toward watching widescreen films, while the iPad, more like a desktop computer, is designed to present a workspace closer to the aspect ratio of a piece of paper.
This has left some pundits to suggest that Apple should have given the iPad either “more modern” HDTV output (usually delivered via an HDMI cable with a resolution of at least 1280×720, which also known as “720p”) or one of the high resolution display modes common to today’s computers, which typically require a new digital interface such as DVI (HDMI’s PC cousin) or DisplayPort (what Apple currently uses on its computers).
Apple and the Mini DisplayPort
Why is the iPad using VGA?
So why doesn’t the iPad also support DVI/HDMI and DisplayPort? Well for starters, VGA-style analog video is cheap and easy to do. That’s why netbooks and even most PC laptops still use VGA rather than a digital video output interface.
Adding complexity adds cost, and it would also require adding another port that could pack lots of signal pins into a small space. There’s 30 pins in the standard Dock Connector, which isn’t enough to pack in VGA and DisplayPort and certainly not DVI.
Apple has long used DVI, and now uses DisplayPort, on its Macs because analog VGA-style signaling is limited in the resolutions it can support. The iPad has a 1024×768 native resolution. Unlike MacBooks, it isn’t designed to drive another external display; the VGA output is just there to show presentations on video projectors. Most projectors built over the last decade support XGA but many do not yet support HDTV resolutions.
Why no HD output?
Additionally, the iPad is a mobile device. Sure, it can output VGA to a monitor or projector or composite/component video to a TV, but it’s designed to be viewed directly. It is a screen.
Asking why it doesn’t have a variety of HD video outputs is like asking why a Walkman or iPod or common boom-box doesn’t have fancy 5.1 optical digital outputs for driving a home theater system. And consider: does your TV have a TV output?
Adding DVI/HDMI or DisplayPort circuitry to the iPad would complicate it and make it more expensive, but who would actually drive their HDTV with a tablet sized device? That’s what Apple TV is designed to do (and why it supplies HDMI rather than DVI or DisplayPort or just composite/component video alone). Since both products sync to your desktop iTunes, there’s no need to have an array of cords options to attach to your mobile iPad device to your TV.
Features that make sense, not just bullet points.
A better home theater use for the iPad would be as a sophisticated control surface for watching TV. Imagine watching videos on Apple TV while piloting through iTunes Extras special features from your iPad. Or interactive learning games on the iPad that interact with a system driving a large classroom monitor. That would be far cooler than expecting your tablet to play movies to your HDTV via a cable.
Come on, that’s a Microsoft idea. Look how popular that made the Zune HD, which claims the ability to watch 720p content via a special cable. It’s a fringe feature added by people without much understanding of what people really want to do. All it really does is force users to load up their mobile device with very large HD versions of their video content which the device has to scale down to display on its own low resolution screen.
From OLED to Tegra: Five Myths of the Zune HD
The wrong technology, or exactly the right one?
At least one other critic complained that the iPad uses the “old computer resolution” of 1024×768 rather than the “new HD resolution” he’s been hearing about at 1280×720. Well yes, VGA has been around longer than HDTV, and certainly has been in wider use. That explains why more business projectors can handle VGA than can handle 720p video, which explains why the iPad does what it does.
It’s not a matter of Apple not realizing what new resolutions are available (as Apple TV’s HDTV output indicates), but rather a matter of the company selecting the most appropriate technologies to meet the needs of users while keeping costs in check. Certainly, if Apple were designing the iPad to drive an HDTV, it would have given it an HDMI port and a 720p native resolution, just as it did with Apple TV. But iPad clearly isn’t designed to act as a video source; it’s a display!
So much for that smug attempt at suggesting Apple’s engineers are behind the curve at knowing what technology to use. Clearly, it’s much easier to sound smart than it is to actually make sensible engineering decisions that can’t be assailed by people who don’t really know what they’re talking about. Which is the basis of my entire iPad myth series.
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