Comments on: Can You Hack the Times Square JumboTron via iPhone‎?

By: punkboy318

punkboy318 — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 03:09:33 +0000

Why would someone take the time to reprogram an audio output to transmit video when you can use the 30 pin connector already provided from the device.

By: Guide

Guide — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 21:43:56 +0000

@monotrophic and @ikoikoallday

The issue is not the simple fact that it can output electricity, it’s that the iPhone needs to be able to output video in realtime via that port. This means that hardware necessary to convert the video to an analog signal and output it thru this port needs to be present. It was possible with the iPod Photo Color and the iPod video (5th gen), however no other iPod devices are capable of video out thru the headphone jack as far as I know.

By: binarylogik

binarylogik — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 21:37:38 +0000

First let me state that I do not believe this is real. This is mostly due to the size of the repeater and transmitter combination. The transmitter is fine if all encoding is done at the ‘repeater’, but I don’t really that happening on a board that small and capable of connecting to various different screens. Otherwise the encoding per screen type would have to be done on the phone, but we never see the selection of the various screen types. Perhaps there is a standard. I don’t know. Anyways the dimensions are not an issue I would be greatly surprised if the display much like a computer monitor do not dynamically adjust the resolution based on the input resolution. As far as outputting video through the audio port.. Not a problem. I am certain I could hack out a driver which encodes a video through the audio port. In headphones it would sound like garbage, but as long as the connected device understands it that is all that matters. Let me ask you this. Could you come up with a way of encoding instructions into an audio file which could be interpreted by a computer to say draw a circle? Certainly you could without too much trouble at all. So why is everyone talking about the audio port not capable of doing this? Ignorance is all that I can imagaine. The only possibility I can think of that would prohibit the use of the port is the througput capability. I don’t have the hardware specifications for the audio port on the phone, but I suspect with a good encoding scheme the port is sufficient to carry low frame rate video without a problem. This is where I would investigate further though.

By: crkohler

crkohler — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:24:44 +0000

um… this is just a promo for the movie Limitless. Really Time.. you were tricked by a movie promo??? Watch this guys other video.

http://www.youtube.com/user/BITcrash44#p/a/u/0/tKxG7wQoSt8

By: pullmylegoff

pullmylegoff — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:14:46 +0000

This is why children should not be allowed to play with journalism. Even rudimentary competence would have spiked this “story” unless of course Time is being paid to help promote this viral video for advertising purposes. Don’t know what is being advertised, but obviously, video doesn’t come out of the audio port and obviously, this magic drive can’t know what the pixel dimensions are of any screen it is held next to.

By: Guide

Guide — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:06:32 +0000

The company behind it already has come out and said how they did it (rented the screens and played a loop on them with timing cues). Furthermore, this post fails to address the obvious issue: whether or not the iPhone is capable of transmitting video out of the headphone jack (which it isn’t, unless modified).

By: ikoikoallday

ikoikoallday — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:03:14 +0000

Even though I’m pretty sure it’s fake. The “faked” point about the “audio” or “headset” jack may not be valid because many devices these days use the headset jack as the port for USB communication to other USB devices. The jack connector for USB has 4 pins,which is all USB requires. I don’t have an iPhone, but I do have 3 different devices which use a 4-pin cable which connects into what looks like a normal headset jack. When a normal headset is plugged-in, that works normally as well, but when the 4-pin USB cable is attached, that switches to USB automatically. Just FYI folks.

By: monotrophic

monotrophic — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:02:35 +0000

It’s called hacking for a reason. Unless you know, for a fact, 100% how his device was put together, you’re just rambling like an idiot. Considering how many converters there are for headphone jacks, you’re gonna have a hard time proving that you can’t convert it to run a current of electricity the way you want. It’s electricity, and we’ve been using it for a long time now, we should be able to manipulate it better then “That’s a headphone jack, that will never work.”

By: gn7465

gn7465 — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 19:41:17 +0000

Of course this is fake. Video through the headphone jack? I think not.

By: lorenzenj

lorenzenj — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 19:11:38 +0000

Even better, the video from his video transmitter is sent to his video repeater via the headset jack. I am not aware of any hack that sends video out via the headset jack. :-)

He should have at least plugged it into the dock connector.

By: punkboy318

punkboy318 — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 19:05:34 +0000

Pamela Cosman obviously needs to retire from teaching. You can clearly tell that the video is a hoax.
It is simple to figure out. The device that’s attached to the iPhone to transmit the video is plugged into the audio port of the device. I am not a professor, but I don’t think it is possible to output video from an audio output.

By: carboncow

carboncow — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:32:06 +0000

You don’t need to be a genius to know this fake. This guy clearly shows hacking many different solutions.

This would be like saying you have one key to start any car…there is no standardized technology/protocols that would allow this.

Even if he was the developer of the jumbotron he still wouldn’t know how to do the other screens…unless he made them too!