iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

The following article is for people using any kind of external display with their iDevices, and for programmers who would like to provide as good of external display output in their apps as possible.

People have a lot of misconceptions regarding Tv output from iDevices; most importantly regarding the black borders on the left and right sides of the external image and also on the top and bottom. As an engineer well versed in video technology, engineering, and iOS programming, I found it necessary to get the facts right in a manner digestable for advanced iOS users (and all programmers).

This article explains how you can output still images to your external display (TV, projector etc.) from your iDevice and what you should do to maximize quality. While some of the material requires advanced knowledge (including having read my previous multimedia-specific articles), the “All in All” section at the bottom is digestable for beginners (at least I hope it is).

Apple's stock image slideshow implementation output is, unfortunately, half-hearted. (iDevices utilize the native TV output while playing slideshows. Apart from Retina iPads, it is the only way of making full use of the more advanced output types, namely, HDMI and VGA.)