iPod on TV

Esquilinho

Esquilinho

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Is it possible to connect the iPod Video to a TV set? If so, does it come with the proper cable or do I have to buy it still?
 
Yes, but you have to buy an iPod AV Cable from Apple (go here), or you can follow this tutorial to use an existing AV cable with 8"-to-RCA you may have lying around (often found bundled with consumer-grade video cameras).

If you don't already have an AV cable you can use, I would recommend going with Apple's. It's made very well and is a decent length (AV cables bundled with video camera tend to be very short).
 
If you're thinking about hooking it up to a big screen TV or video beamer, make sure you convert DVDs not to H.264 but to MPEG-4. This allows you to use a width of up to 640px (as long as the total is not above 480*480, so at 640px width, you can get 360px height). H.264 is only supported at 320*X, which on a big screen certainly lacks detail.
 
fryke said:
If you're thinking about hooking it up to a big screen TV or video beamer, make sure you convert DVDs not to H.264 but to MPEG-4. This allows you to use a width of up to 640px (as long as the total is not above 480*480, so at 640px width, you can get 360px height). H.264 is only supported at 320*X, which on a big screen certainly lacks detail.
Click to expand...

Thanks!
I'm still an oldfashioned girl, with an old, not that big, square TV screen though ;)
 
You could still go with 512px width, for example. Would still get a better picture on TV. It'd mean a bigger file size, though, and you wouldn't see an improvement on the iPod. The question obviously is whether you need better quality than 320*240 or not.
If I had a 5G iPod, I'd probably go with the maximum resolution possible, since I'm mainly watching movies on my video beamer. Plus: If I ever get a newer iPod with video capability and it's able to display a higher resolution, I'd get better resolution for free (without having to re-encode files for that future iPod from the original source).

I'm sure that in 5 years from now, we'll all laugh about the difference between 320px or 640px width (because by then anything below 1024 or 1280px width will be laughable), but for now, I think 640px width is acceptable. Anything below is chunky. (If displayed on anything bigger than the iPod's screen...)
 
I hope that was a joke - considering that regular, broadcast NTSC on a non-HD TV only has a resolution of 640x480, are you saying that regular cable television has unbearably poor quality? ;)
 
If i may continue this topic deviation.

I have a lot of XVID vids that I have to convert in order to use on my iPod. Which is cool, I knew that going in to it. I'm wondering if there is, or will likely be, a software hack like iPod-Linux that will allow you to play XVIDs without conversion? Sort of like Xbox Media Centre for Xbox.

And, if something does come out, will it require a software hack, or firmware hack? I don't mind screwing around with the software, because I can always reset it to factory settings, but I'm not touching my firmware with a 10 foot clown pole.
 
I don't think so. The iPod has _hardware_ which enables MPEG-4 and H.264 decoding. It's not the task of its main processor.
 
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