Installation, Testing and Comparison

For testing, I will be hooking the iDock to a 32-inch Samsung HDTV (720P/1080i) television via the RCA and S-Video inputs. I will be using video that I encoded from DVD via Handbrake (http://handbrake.m0k.org/) which is available for both Mac and PC. I used the Mac version with the iPod preset using the two-pass option. This will set the video to a max resolution of 640×480 using the H.264 encoder.

Setting up the iPod involves turning on the video output to TV setting under video options on your iPod menu. Next, either place the iPod into the iDock with the RCA and/or S-Video cable attached or attaching the RCA cable AV cable directly to the iPod itself.

Now, press play on the iPod and make sure your TV is set to accept either component input for the RCA cables or S-Video for the appropriate cable.

This was my first time using the iPod video shown on another monitor and I was impressed. The quality is pretty close to Enhanced Definition TV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced-definition_television).

This is especially impressive on an HDTV which would show a poor picture more readily. Although there is obvious pixilation gradation on the black segments of the video, they are not very discernable at the regular viewing distance.

Besides watching movies, the iDock allows you to project photos onto the Television or monitor.