Just like CBS I don’t know if this is real or fake. However, it is interesting and intriguing. The video shows a man who uses his iPhone, a video transmitter, and a repeater to hijack video billboards in Times Square. In a sense it looks like he’s hacked the video feeds going to these video billboards displayed in Times Square.
He starts off with small video billboards at ground level and eventually works his way up to a giant CNN billboard high above the middle of Times Square.
Real or fake? Tell us what you think by leaving a comment.
[via CBS News]
David W. Martin has more than 20 years of experience in the industry as a programmer, systems and business analyst, author, and consultant. David has written for CNET’s iPhoneatlas.com, MacLife.com, CultofMac.com, BYTE.com and recently for aNewDoman.net. He comes to Cult of Mac’s website with deep knowledge and passion for the all things Apple. Follow David on Twitter @david_w_martin or see what he’s up to now at davidwmartin.com.
78 responses to “Man Hijacks Time Square Billboards With iPhone [Hacks]”
This looks cool but feels faked. The headphone jack doesn’t supply video out or the power to drive a video transmitter. Video scenes could all be faked by a competent editor. And where’s the repeater/transmitter getting power from?
I’m 99% sure it’s fake. The “transmitter” is plugged into the headphone jack. If it were real, there’d be no need for a repeater with the transmitter that close. I’m pretty sure these displays have local playback devices, not wireless TV tuners.
Fake
pretty hard to do if you didn’t prep the screens with the luminance and the reflections of the surroundings,
1. look at the guys glasses when he walks to the first billboard, u see thru them when he walks up to it, and you see the light reflection, in his glasses on his face and clothes, when the screen switches to his feed, its gone, and he moves around, and that is pretty hard to do with tracking,
2. the big billboard, when the picture flickers the balloon has a shade and light of the picture from behind, when the feed switches off to his feed its gone, that is also pretty hard to do by the amateur.
3. and the iPhone jack has a power, low but it has, and the video feed can be retransmitted to it thru a cable, but I wouldn’t bother, if you jailbreak your iPhone you can actually reroute the video to it, and the repeater can have its own power.
The guy knows the video feed signal, and I think he has a inside knowledge of the billboard working, I say its real.
If you look in the second place he transmits his video, the reflection on the blackend screen is real. the reflection continues when the original video comes back up.
fake. 99% sure he’s just using compositing software.
If it is real, I want this guy’s phone number
Looks fairly real to me, just look at the balloon. The light going through it would be hard to render that accurately.
Nice viral but fake, there is not video output from the headphone jack and you regularly see nothing plugged into the bottom. Nicely done though!
100% fake not even remotely possible especially with those screens. Overriding a wired digital video signal just can’t be done like that. Even if you could the screens would blank out between signals you could never have partial bits of each feed on the screen.
real.
the cool thing is the bigger the display the further away he can be. the 50 inch he has to be within 6 inches to work but the jumbotron he’s 10 feet in front of the whole time. Transmitting a crisp clear digital signal thru analog headphone jack with no power source or digital ics on the board hmmm.
Anybody that was not sure if this was 100% fake must now turn in their geek card and leave this site.
He is from the future. It is real.
As a professional video editor, with two decades of experience, I can state with 99% certainty, it’s legit. It’s nearly impossible to sync the motion of a hand held cam, with the images on the screens. Put another way, beyond the mathematic algorithms of even 500k software suites. Now *how* he does it I have no freaking idea. I would also say he must have some kind of inside knowledge.
This is so cool! This guy should be employed by Apple! lol This guy is a genius! One of the best inventions in history of Apple hacks!
He probably has a friend or himself who does the set up for the big screens, and they decided to have a little fun, by actually playing the video on the screen. I believe they recorded the video on the iPhone, Edited it onto the existing video that was on the screen. Then started the newly edited video onto the display from the start and walked up close when it came to the parts they edited the new stuff in. If that makes any sense…
OK so here’s what I think. This guy you see in the video is working for, or is in charge of these displays.. Right. He has taped himself in the beginning. Then taken that recording and edited ONTO an existing video that normally plays on the screens. Then all he has to do, is TIME it right for when to hold his fake device next to the screen, which has now been set up to play an edited version of the normal video… Its more realistic than a device which can remotely HACK a display which WOULDN’T have wireless capabilities, and would be set up to play a continuous loop from a WIRED connection…
Agreed – if it’s fake, he’s superbly talented. Which is to say, I question postulations that this was faked in post production – faking it in other ways (friends with keys…) remain just as likely, if not more so.
Dang it, re-watching the video and reading some of the comments…I’m doubting myself. :D Maybe he’s just that good…and the perfectly placed video flicker while the camera zooms (notoriously difficult for tracking) does seem rather convenient.
He is actually playing those vid’s on the boards but he is not broadcasting it thought the iPhone headphone jack w/o power. My guess is he records a vid at the start on his iPhone. Then he uses a totally different vid filmed with a better camera, and shows in both on the iphone and the jumbotron at the same time by having his buddy play it.. image is practically HD on board the iPhone has what 5 megapix and 30 fps? neat trick tho.
Completely fake. There are lots of indicators as to why that is:
1. The iPhone 4 (unless jailbroken) will not output video on both the internal display and through the external method.
2. There’s no way that the little thing plugged into the headset jack can send video as far and as smoothly as it did.
3. Sometimes, the video on the screen played ahead of what was on the iPhone 4’s screen.
Want more? I can post ’em.
wait a second…didn’t anyone notice what he was doing??
It’s half and half.
The giant billboards don’t receive their video signals wirelessly. They get them through wires ran into computer systems that feed the video. In order for this to be possible, you would have to have the “receiver” extremely close to the computer, not the display screen.
Another indicator is that if someone was able to build something like this easily and so compact (small), you can bet your ass this guy would be selling these things to big companies and investors.
The reason it’s half and half is because what we are seeing on the screens are actually what is on the screens, not CGI. But they signal isn’t coming from the functionless “receiver”. It could be a publicity stunt or he knows some people.
Composted. Note original videos playing on the screens is composted too. What your seeing on the screens is never real. Easy giveaway…on jumbotron scenes often there is motion blur on the entire scene due to camera movement while the video screen stays crisp.
Indeed. Cool fake. Faking this kind of thing is fairly trivial. It’s just a matter of having videos prepared on both the screens and the iPhone, and recording them in sync. I’ll bet they are either broadcasting TO the iPhone over a wireless hotspot from a computer which is also plugged in to the screen, using Quartz Composer or a similar live video tool to add the appropriate splicing effects. Either that, or they prepped the videos before hand and practiced off site, using some small animated hint within the supposed advertising videos like the burn marks used in film. A little glitch or detail an unobservant viewer wouldn’t notice clues them in to the precise moment on site to hit play on the iPhone, bringing both devices in to pretty good sync.
It really all falls apart around the transmitter. There is simply no way to get video out of the headset jack on an iPhone 4. It doesn’t work like the older iPods with video in those plugs. You could try to encode data and send it out as audio, but the audio jack couldn’t even keep up with a 56K modem. A dock plug would be more convincing, but then the simply wrong glitches disqualify it from being real. The rest of it all seems quite reasonable. An impressive hoax. :)
I think it’s real.
Stupid mac drones. its fucking fake. if you think ALL the billboards in times square are wireless, your retarded.
If you think you spelled “your” correctly then you are illiterate.
of course, its fake. but they are so cool!!
you sound like you know a lot. very impressive
Fake all the way, it’s as fake as the promise for a revolutionary new tablet and then giving us the iPad 2!
And that’s a good one, they actually are wireless, not the video feed, just the controllers.
The iPhone 4’s camera is HD…
Who cares if its a fake or not?
I get more fun reading the *cough* “experts” on here all writing about the technical pro’s and con’s of this (clearly) fake piece, and I bet the creator of the video is laughing his head off over all of the hype surrounding this.
Well done for creating something, rather then being like so many who sit back, do nothing creative but sit there criticising the work of others.
I think it’s more likely to have been done in post production editing. A composite.
Composited.
Well It smells like compost.
and as a professional curious, with one decade of software development and my father has 3 decades of hardware engineering, I can state with 100% certainty it’s fake. there is just no way to hijack a bill board wirelessly the way he did with our current or next generation technology. plus I’ve seem some very impressive stuff while working on a top-notch video creating company here in Brazil (vetor zero) not to mention so many professional youtubers able to do freaking great stuff (check out CaptainDisillusion and freddiew) that I doubt there is no after effects on that video.
idk … he sort of seems like the kind of guy that can pull apart an iphone and rig up pretty much whatever he wants inside it.