One frustrating aspect of Apple’s decision to do everything through the iPod Dock Connector is that unless you buy some special cables, there’s no way to use your iPad to, say, pump video to an external display while also charging your tablet… something you might want to do, especially for extended video sessions.
Enter this clever cable that will charge any iOS device whilst simultaneously pumping video out to an HDMI port which you can hook up to any HDMI-equipped television or external display. It’s not a cheap cable, coming in at around $84, and it’s Japan-only for right now… but if you’re looking to use your iPad 2 to drive your plasma screen television for hours on end, this might be your only bet.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
44 responses to “Output Video While Charging Your iPad With This HDMI Dock Connector”
Doesn’t Apple offer this same thing for $39.00 bucks? The divigital av adapter it will put out video and mirror display for the iPad 2 at least and you can also charge it.
yes they do but obviously the Author doesn’t know that LOL!
Apple Digital AV Adapter $39 and its a True Apple product and looks a lot better and smaller and easier to carry than the one shown here. It offers a Dock port pass thru cable port so you can charge your device while you do everything this one does.
But this one goes to 11…
So basically anyone can just write for this site eh? Take a look at the Apple store. What a joke.
A member of the cult or just its paid employee?
“there’s no way to use your iPad to, say, pump video to an external display while also charging your tablet”
Umm… Do you live in cave? You might want to look at the currently available accessories from the Apple website!
Here I’ll save you some time.
Apple Digital AV Adapter
A second 30-pin connector built into the AV adapter lets you charge and sync your device while it’s connected to your HDMI-compatible display.
http://store.apple.com/us/prod…
oops!
Good job creating what already exists for triple the price
This is kinda embarrassing…
Embarrassing.
Stick to cribbage amigo, your Apple knowledge stinks. Even the older iphone/pad component cable allowed for charging whilst conecting to an external display, and that too is much cheaper than your ‘only bet’ solution!
What a fail. Digital AV adapter fool!
Brownlee does it again. what a moron.
Crappy paid-for editorial. Rubbish article – check the Apple store for cheaper alternative.
So apparently the old saying “quality over quantity” applies to your resume as well as your reporting.
Fail
I usually do not pay attention to who writes the stories I follow, but every single time that I read something moronic, or of very bad quality, I do check who wrote it and what blog it came from. It is ALWAYS John Brownlee. ALWAYS. I don’t care where he has published his work before, he sucks at this blogging thing at Cultofmac. Let him go already! He gives you guys a bad name.
Listen, to all of you bashing out John for this, I’m sure there just something in this article that we are all missing, or a special feature for the cables that were accidentally not mentioned. Take it easy. People make mistakes.
I agree. I don’t usually comment but the quality of Brownlee’s posts is getting ridiculous. The guy obviously has no clue what he’s doing. Time to let him go Leander!
The author really should revise this article to correct the mistakes. Right now it is very misleading, and if a reader doesn’t peruse the comments, they will be left with the wrong impression.
OMG!! Great fail in here, in fact I’m writing this as I mirror and charge my iPad 2 with apples cable! lol