PDA

View Full Version : IPAD2 HDMI output - how is it meant to work?


IO540
20th Oct 2011, 13:27
A quick google shows it is a widespread problem, but there are few solutions.

Basically, the Ipad2 is supposed to copy its display to its HDMI output. You then need an HDMI adapter to connect this to an HDMI TV, and there are several of those around including one from Apple. The non-Apple ones are more featured e.g. have SD card slots so you can transfer camera photos to the Ipad, for emailing etc.

There seem to be weird gotchas in this.

It looks like different apps can decide whether its screen should be copied to HDMI. For example if I use a browser and play some mpeg4 video, the TV shows the whole Ipad screen (which seems to be the default). If I use the Iplayer app (which is horribly buggy under IOS and keeps crashing) then the TV shows just the movie window.

There are some strange aspects in the order in which devices are connected up. For example the Ipad should be powered up only after the HDMI converter is plugged into it.

And the presence of the HDMI converter seems to drastically slow down WIFI speeds.

But it all seems to be quite random.

Does anybody know anything about this? I am thanking of taking the Ipad back to the Apple shop, but can they actually test the HDMI output?

I am running the latest IOS but it did not help. It just introduced various bugs e.g. some emails with PDFs attached cannot open the attachments (but a different email program can).

Tim_CPL
20th Oct 2011, 20:53
It was the same on the iPad 1 with the VGA adapter. It was up to the application if it was going to output to the external display. Sounds like Apple have extended the same dysfunctional model to the iPad 2. I have the VGA adapter and have never used it as every app that I wanted to use it with didn't support the second display....