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.
