Connector, Maybe I need to pick a better game for comparison sake. I own a lot of gameloft stuff... I just need to free enough space to install one of the newer games. Or if you know someone with a 4S you could compare in person. Yep. It should work like a champ.
Asect ratio has nothing at all to do with resolution, iPad also doesn't display on device at 720p. The device will affect your maximum resolution on screen unless its upscaled, which would affect image quality negatively. Do a little research independantly and you'll find there's no real debate. Edits: Your TV regardless will have a lower PPI than your retina device, pixel games if done properly should be the same on any resolution providing they're upscaled correctly retaining edges.
As I stated before, 1080p is 1920x1080, 720p is 1280x720. Standard resolution modes on modern day tvs, even though most broadcasting is done in 1080i which is dramatically worse than blue ray 1080p movies. Ipad retina resolution is 2048x 1536 and iphone 4s resolution is 960x640. Ipad 2 and mini is 1024x768. Iphone 5 is 1136 x 640. Ipad retina over twice better than the resolution of the iphone 4s which will factor into hdmi conversion. As you can see ipad retina resolution is better than 1080p. Both iphone 4s and ipad 2 resolution is worse than 720p, and have to be upscaled not downscaled. Now, I never thought about it before, but you may be right that the iphone 4s and ipad 2 are indeed putting out a 720p output for mirrored games. You see the old hdmi adapter only did output at 720p, so it could be possible that these lower resolution devices are putting out 720p. But if this is the case, then the iphone is upscaled to 720p, and then it gets upscaled again by your tv from 720p to 1080p, which is then displayed on your tv as 1080p. This is a heck of a lot of upscaling multiple times. Upscaling is always worse than downscaling which the iphone and ipad 2 do, but I am almost positive that mirrored games are outputting 1080p for ipad retina. Since ipad retina is better than 1080p, the image is downscaled. Airplay games are totally different than mirrored games and can vary. For the older devices the standard used to be 720p, so most airplay games look far worse on hdmi tv than ipad retina hdmi. That is why I kind of prefer mirrored games over airplay games. But that tech can also output 1080p as shown below. If you look at my screenshot of pilots path, it shows the resolution of 1920x1080 which is 1080p which is proof that ipad retina hdmi is 1080p. Can you please post the pilots path resolution options, you mentioned that it said 720p. Maybe you can also post a picture of gameplay like mine. So this is proof that the resolution of iphone hdmi is significantly lower than ipad retina hdmi.
Alright more pictures. This time I was using yet another tv, an LED 27" (I think that's the size) that actually supports 1080p. The one the previous night didn't, and so the picture of Pilots Path was at 720P and it would only let me set it to a maximum of 720P but as shown below if connected to a higher res device, 1080P out of my little iPhone So yeah, wow... I didn't even know that was possible. Everything I read prior to this said 720P was the max game res over hdmi and airplay. Connector had pm'ed me a request for some of these... so sorry if no one else is interested... but here's the rundown on this batch: 1. Youtube - this is running over HDMI. I don't have the youtube app since I'm on 6.1 and don't need it... the browser of course is just mirrored but when you launch a compatible video on youtube it goes full screen resolution. So the video quality is that of the video, not because the phone downgrades it or something. 2 cool points if you can name the video. 2. NFS:MW. Took a shot of this because it's just such a dang impressive game on the graphical side. 3&4, Pilots Path - This time at 1080P. First one shows the screen resolution options (wish my camera was as good as what Connector is using, it looks just like his iPad over HDMI)... second shot is full widescreen 1080P in game content. Very VERY nice looking game. I love seeing such a huge amount of content. 5&6, Beyond Ynth - Beautiful little game... just wanted to show off the detail a bit. 7&8. First is mirroring over HDMI to show a picture slideshow... second is AppleTV showing a slideshow. Note AppleTV has animations and shows multiple pics and so on. Much nicer way to show pics than the way the device does it on it's own. Yes, those are my original pictures taken with my 4S... actually very close to my house.
Yeah, don't worry about posting stuff, this is actually a thread created by the mods for me, since hdmi talk would often totally hijack a lot of threads. I actually wanted to create a thread called using an ios device as a console or something, but since this thread had been made already, decided to use this thread to talk about anything that related to this idea like airplay, apple tv, wireless controllers, joypad app, icade, hybrid styluses etc. Anything you want really, the more tech demo ish the better. So feel to post or talk about anything related to this, it is not just an hdmi thread, it is a thread about how to make your ios a console and the awesomeness of the experience. You gave me another big chuckle (yesterday it was when you said iphone hdmi maybe even better than ipad retina hdmi). Today, it is that Connector has a good camera.... What??? That camera is my piece of crap Iphone 4. It is the WORST camera that I have had all my life, it takes crap pictures. But I am a semi pro photographer. Used to be my hobby long ago. But as you have experienced, hdmi pictures come out terrible compared to what you really see. I too get a little frustrated like you do when I know people don't realize this, but it is hella hard to take a picture that basically is 3 light sources, with no good lighting in my room, from a sucky camera, no tripod, and worst of all the games are blurred cause I can not pause a game to take a picture. Here is a picture of pilots path of mine, looking at the one in the post above which is a iphone version, which do you think looks better night? I am curious...
Yeah it looks exactly the same as mine. Same exact level of detail. Really though this game is pushing 1080p, it's not really taxing the hardware on either system I think. I think real performance differences would show when running something completely un-optimized for HDMI/AirPlay. Maybe Backstab or some other gameloft game. Here's something else to consider as well. LAG. Looking at some of the HDMI pics has revealed to me that there is more of a time delay in iPad displaying HDMI versus my iPhone. The proof is in looking at game pics where the device and the TV screen are shown. There is a slight lag between something being on screen in HDMI versus the native display. I noticed this on my final freeway 2r pics. But it's worse on yours. Same for after burner climax. Look at your pic on page 9. It's not a huge amount of lag but its there. Focus on the ground formations. This is interesting because I suspected that there could be a graphical difference due to the hardware and the pics reveal some HDMI video lag. It's not lag like appletv but in twitch gaming this could be important. I think I may try to do some action shots with Mikey Shorts to see how much display lag there is. Of course it could simply be lag due to the TV itself and not the hardware. I should be able to test that tomorrow because my youngest son has a friend coming to spend the night and he has an iPad 2. So not a diffinitive test but I can use the same cable and TV to see what difference there is. Hopefully he has a few good games. It should at least prove my theory one way or another. At least as far as iPad 2 vs iPhone 4S at HDMI mirroring. I'm all for talk about using these devices as consoles. If only apple would release some universal controller and devs supported it or they made an app for user created controls. I'd be in heaven for those times where I'd like to play on the big screen.
Yes, I had a feeling that airplay games are similar. But there will be differences in mirrored mode. I much like mirrored games much much better than airplay. I always considered airplay games equivalent to ipad 2 hdmi. For Syntheticvoids sake, try the ipad 2 with hdmi as much as possible and report how it compares to iphone hdmi. About lag, yes I was going to post about it, but it is pretty complex. I will post more about it soon, but yes both iphone and ipad hdmi is not instantaneous like some might think. But I do think it is similar between all devices even ipad 4. I doubt if the lag differed by device, but I am not sure. But it is really really small not viewable by the human eye like apple tv is. Very interesting, I will write more later. Attached picture matches one of yours for Frederick music game.
Hey, good to see you are interested in hdmi tv for your idevice. Yes, I love hdmi tv and love playing my new ipad as a console with my tv, rocking soundbar, wireless bluetooth joystick, and iphone as a joystick using the joypad app. If you have any questions, feel free to ask or take a look at this thread from the beginning, there is a lot of good info from the beginning. Take care!
I've been meaning to do this for a while now - so that you guys can see what my crappy adapter from China puts out... =oP Here's a pic of Repulze and one of Mass Effect - both have pretty noticeable pixelation; Repulze Mass Effect And here's Catch The Ark and Bastion, where the pixelations definitely not as bad, but still pretty noticeable, especially IRL. Catch The Ark Bastion **Just a little warning to people who are thinking of saving a couple bucks by ordering a cheap ass adapter from China. =oP My cable is the same one that Connector got, if anyone's wondering. =o/
Wowzers, even though the pictures are small, there is something really wacked out. Your screenshots are showing a HUGE amount of pixellation and also the colors are totally dull and unsaturated. Wow, seeing Night's pictures, I was actually really impressed with how well an iphone can put out hdmi so well (ahem, maybe even better than ipad retina hdmi hehe as Night likes to point out, hehe). Hey did you ever play that ipad 2 hdmi on your tv like you said you were going to do the other day? Did you notice the huge pixellation and dull colors that SV is seeing on his setup? While it could be an ipad 2 thing, I kind of don't think so. I have attached a really bad screenshot (my first) of Repulze, that is a very hard game to get a good screenshot of due to the fast framerates and action, I have gotten better with time on the hdmi photography from my iphone 4, so I will try to take another one, but even this photo that I have attached, shows absolutely no jaggies, brighter colors, and more saturated colors. I don't know how many zoom modes you have SV, but have you tried it with other zoom modes, cause my zoom 4x mode, I start to notice some pixellation, not never on original, zoom 2x mode, or stretch. So try that if you haven't, but this you probably have unless maybe your tv has only one zoom mode. Looking at Catch the ark and Bastion, it is harder to the see the problems you describe cause the photos are visible, but I have posted pictures of catch the ark somewhere in this thread. Night, you should buy it too, in fact, buy it and I will pay for it in a $1 amazon gc, I promise. It is a great hdmi tv game. It's on me. One last thing Syntheticvoid that I did want to mention that maybe tv specific is that the tv settings for hdmi in are different from tv or the other inputs, at least on my tv. I use totally different tv settings for brightness, color, contrast, filtering, etc for my hdmi settings. So try fiddling with your tv's video settings, maybe like some tvs there is a video game console setting, or some tvs have motion speed setting or a frequency setting. Adjusting these may solve your problem. Anyway, only thing other than that is try buying an apple hdmi temporarily at a local store like target and see if it is any better. It could even be a problem with your ipad 2 for all we know. Anyway, hopefully any of this helps. I am sad to hear of this strange pixellation problem, but I am glad you are getting a chance at least to experience hdmi. Sorry I can't be of more assistance.
I'm not a graphics guru... so other than the color saturation issues with SV's images... it's hard for me to see the problem. It looks like the images are stretched if that's iPad2. I think everyone should have Pilots Path by now (it went free recently, but had many $1 sales which is when I got it). Try that out. See what resolutions it offers when you start it up and how good it looks. That could tell a tale about what signal your ipad is putting out as well as the capabilities of the tv/monitor and the cables involved. I ran into issues with some only offering 720p while others offered 1080p. I imagine there could be a scenario where a bad hdmi cable or something would force 480p and the conversion to downgrade the images may not be as good when that happens. Before giving up completely on the adapter, I'd change HDMI cables (for me that's easy, I just took over the one my DVD player or AppleTV box or something else was on)... try changing which tv/display you are using as well as which port it's plugged into (if you have multiple HDMI inputs). Sometimes my main tv in the house I get oversaturated images from my dvd player which makes faces end up looking washed out. I think it's either the DVD player not being able to keep up with upscaling the content or the cheap cable I have connecting it to the tv. I don't have this problem with my AppleTV which is on a much shorter cable and tucked up under the edge of the tv. Something else... dust out that connector on the iPad with a little compressed air. My iPhone is always in a pocket and it collects stuff but even if it were an iPad and sat around the house it could pick up dust in that huge open port. I don't know if it'll make a difference, but cleaning it out could prevent some other issue from creeping up later anyway. IF you have an AppleStore nearby, maybe check that out and see if they'll let you demo the official adapter. That could make a difference. Some games though do look more jaggy than others. After Burner for instance really stood out to me on the between level segments. Maybe it was the monitor/tv... but it just didn't look as good as I expected. The gameplay parts looked great. Still... I think a good benchmark game is just to stick with Pilots Path. It gives out that resolution option screen which can help diagnose any issues.
What? Look carefully at SV's picture here and compare it to mine above. Look at the road towards the top. It is almost so bad, looks like dotted lines!!! Also look at the side the road, it looks like huge pixels. Also look at the sky, it is the same, looks like pixels. It almost looks like a SNES game or something... I dunno, maybe cause I have ipad retina hdmi, I am seeing something different from you all, but judging by most of your screenshots night, I don't see this high level of pixellation. I would expect some of course because of the lower resolution of an ipad 2 over new ipad, but by looking at the iphone hdmi, it seemed pretty good in comparing it to SV's screenshots. But night is right, let's try an airplay supported 1080p game, you and I have posted a screenshot, I think you have it SV, can you check to see if you first are even allowed to use 1080p resolution? It will appear as an option when you first plug in hdmi. You can pick 1080p, 720p, and others. Please post us a screenshot especially of the 1080p version. There might be a possibility that the generic adapter you bought SV is a clone of the OLD hdmi connector by apple which was 720p more than likely. If this is the case, then your ipad may be upscaling to 1080p from native ipad 2 resolution, then downscaling it to 720p via the generic hdmi adapter, then having to upscale the 720p signal to 1080 for your tv. With all this upscaling and downscaling, maybe that is why you are getting what you see. Would make sense, I have no idea about the older hdmi adapters, but back then, 720p was the standard, so those older hdmi adapters may not work well with ios 6. But night is right, that game is good cause you can see if you are getting a 1080p option, it is an airplay hdmi game, so it is fullscreen with no stretching, and please if you get a chance post a screenshot for us. Also, if your tv has a forced 720p or 1080p option, try toggling between 720p and 1080p, or try it on a 720p tv. It might work better on a 720p tv. Just a hunch.
It's just hard for me to tell much from the pics. I see the jaggies but so much detail is lost in pics of TV screens that its hard to tell what is what. I looked at GC for Pilots Path and SV does own it. Benchmarking the signals should help some. But I'd switch HDMI cables, try different tvs and so on. I wasn't able to do any iPad2 stuff this week. We had two different kids spend the night and neither brought their iPads. Next time the opportunity arises though, I'll do a comparison. I'm interested in how much lag games have over HDMI.
I don't think it is the cable, he got the same one that I did that is a great cable both on function, but also in size (very light) and does not coil up. But yes, it is worth a try to switch with another hdmi device or cable to see if that helps. It is hard to tell too much from screenshots as you say. But I can see the problem that SV is having and it must be even worse in real life. Well, we'll see when SV comes back, probably Wednesday. But you are right, Pilot's path is the best test cause it will tell you what your idevice is trying to send out, 1080p, 720p, or 480i. Would be weird if it turned out to be 480i as you mentioned. Or even rca resolution or something. That chinese hdmi adapter must be doing something funky. Attached is Mikey Shorts menu screen to match with one of your pictures from before.
Hey... Sorry guys. Im on vacation for a week. But ill make sure and post pics from pilots path when i get back home. Should be around Saturday or Sunday. =oP
SV, have fun. It'll be interesting to see your results after you get back. ........ Connector, On the cable thing, my hdmi adapter has a port to use whatever hdmi cable I have available. So that's what I was referring to. Not the adapter, the actual hdmi cable (if it has one)... to try a different cable as part of the process of elimination to see if it's part of the issue. Yeah, interesting how that looks versus mine. Something doesn't quite match though. Maybe it's in the numbers under Story and Challenge...
Hehe, night, I knew you were going to say that. Mikey Shorts is one of my favorite games, but with so many games that I play, you can see how you look like an expert, and me the newbie hehe. Also, your screenshot is very close to mine on that game, so I am impressed, that iphone hdmi looks so good, makes me really wish my adapter would work with an iphone 4. Makes me wish I had a 4s, sigh... Wow, just noticed 22/25 to unlock those challenge levels, I am doing that tonight on my tv! I got Real Racing 3 yesterday, and have been enjoying it even though it has its good and bad. Too all that are reading it, it is not an airplay hdmi game, but a hdmi mirrored game, but it plays very well on tv. Kind of strange since Real Racing 2 was an airplay fullscreen game, so I was a little surprised when it was just a mirrored game. But it looks pretty enough on the tv screen, sense of speed is much better on my tv than my new ipad. Here is a screenshot from my new ipad, will post an hdmi photo later. And SV, enjoy your vacation, I hope you brought your ipad and are playing some games.... Maybe...
Ha, thanks, yeah... Havin a blast. We all just saw dolphins for the first time. And i brought my iphone but deleted everything on my ipad so i could fill it with movies, tv shows, and books. =oP
Yeah, couldn't resist with bait that good. My scores on GC for it are competitive too. Overall #1054 of 13,787 players. It's weird how often I hear someone praise a game or something like they are the biggest fan of it... but then on GC it's like they barely played it. I've been playing music games pretty hardcore lately and it's the same thing there.... folks recommend stuff (like Tone Sphere) but then on GC they barely have scratched the surface. Same is true for many other games. I think one of the things folks here are going to get to know about me over time is, I play the crap out of the games I love. Not just play them, but I want to dominate the scoreboards as well if I think the game is good. It's easy to get distracted with tons of new games and newly-free games and stuff... but honestly, I play what interests me first and foremost no matter what others are into. Everything else is shoved to the side until I'm ready for it. But I've had my moments where I bought games like crazy and barely played new acquisitions before jumping to something else. I've had several times where I needed to course correct even last gen with the Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox... where I bought more than I'd ever play... and ended up only playing certain games while others just sat and collected dust. Heck I bought a lot of stuff because it was popular. Granted, when I played a game on the DS, I played it till the end... but I can't say that with every system. I may have owned most of the Dreamcast library, but I seriously played maybe 1/2 of it. The only good thing, making money back on ebay selling stuff off. I typically always bought used or on sale/liquidation... so I probably broke even since some stuff jumped to crazy prices (like Shantae selling for $250).
