Hi guys.
I am considering buying an A100 tab (at about 239€ now).
Can it be used also as a nettop? I plan to connect it to TV via HDMI and connect a bluetooth logitech mediaboard (keyboard + touchpad).
So my questions about A100 are:
1) can the screen be turned off when using HDMI connection? (I do not want to have screen light on)
2) what is the HDMI resolution?
3) Does it work with no problem with bluetooth keyboard and mouse? (I suppose it's only question of OS)
4) is the standard performance OK? (popular games as GTAIII etc.), video playback, browsing)
5) does anyone have experiences with the dock? What are the dock advantages over using a plain HDMI cable?
Thanks a lot in advance.
When connected to a TV via HDMI, if the screen is off on the tablet then the screen will also be off on the tv. Youtube videos will not play if the screen is off. Music (Pandora, iHeartRadio, etc) will play with the screen off. Connected to my TV, there is no letterboxing, it may be different on your TV. The very top and bottom of the tablet screen are cut off when displaying on my TV, due to the slightly different aspect ratios.
I've attached a picture of my tablet screen showing on my tv. My current wallpaper has a pixelated look to it, hence it will also look pixelated on the tv screen. I tested the output from the tablet to the tv screen using a Netflix video before and the picture quality was high, however I cannot recall my Netflix password at this time to take a picture and show you at this time.
Read the posts in the accessories section for info about bluetooth keyboards and mouses. Posts in the themes and apps section can give you more info about games. I play GTA III occasionally and have noticed no issue. I have no issues with the browser or watching videos, I use ICS Browser +.
Have you considered getting a netbook for what you are trying to accomplish? You can connect to the tv via hdmi, close the lid and still have a display on your tv screen.
As the title states I got the MHL today. Output to a 73" 1080p DLP, 55" Samsung LED 7000 series smart TV, 50" 1080p Panasonic Plasma, and 39" 1080p westinghouse LED all produce similar results... and if I do say so myself, it's really bad.
Lets see where to begin:
The Good:
-Watching 1080p content from local or network storage produces a pretty good picture
-Text is sharp, webpages look great
-Phone charges while mirroring
The Bad:
-Audio output is descent at best through HDMI, when connected with a very nice surround sound decoder it only decodes as "multi-channel", so DTS and other streams are not preserved on output
-Lag. And let me say this again... LAG. Don't even bother playing a game, it's unbearable. The phone experiences no lag while mirroring, but the output is about 1/3 the framerate.
-Lag on movies. On every TV the lag was exactly the same, whether I hardware decode or software decode the lag is present. Youtube videos look laggy even.
-Netflix does not properly mirror. I presume this is related to HDCP or copy prevention, but streaming HD content to the phone produces a nice widescreen image on the phone, but the output to the connected monitor is pure crap. Take a nice 720p HD movie, compress it using the bitrate of a low quality MP3, transmit it via AM radio to your least favorite country somehow, and then watch it on a ****ty color TV from the 1980's. This is my experience with Netflix output. Also, you can tell it is not "mirroring" because when you tap the screen, the position slider appears on the phone but not the TV.
-Cannot turn screen off while mirroring
All in all, I'm somewhat pissed off. In its present state I would have preferred the phone not support HDMI. I would accept this as a "Oh hey the phone doesn't technically support MHL HDMI mirroring but we hacked it and look what we can do" but this is definitely not a finished product to advertise. Anyone else experience similar problems? Anybody have HD output with no lag? Maybe I have a defective MHL adapter/phone?
I think you may have a defective adapter/cable. I got the adapter tip today and most of your cons were nonexistent for me -
Audio Output - I don't know much about audio but I have a 5.1 surround sound setup and it worked perfectly.
Lag - I had 0 lag. I played a racing game and watched a few episodes of Breaking Bad (MKV so the phone was working hard at decoding it too) and I had no lag.
Turning screen off - I see this as a pro since you cant accidentally turn it off while mirroring
But this brings me to my point about netflix...
Netflix has been horrible with MHL on my last 3 phones, including this one. If I try to watch a 16:9 HD show on netflix through MHL, it plays fine on the phone but becomes 4:3 on my 16:9 HDTV somehow. I don't know why this happens, but if there was a way to make it mirror exactly what was on the screen, that wouldn't happen.
I'm actually quite pleased since the signal is very solid with this phone. With previous phones, the signal constantly dropped and reconnected. I tried every cable but it was a no go.
The Netflix I don't believe is the phones fault directly, I think it has to do with Netflix restricting output. As for the lag, I will return the unit as defective if I can and get another one. Hopefully that's the problem, the lag is incredibly noticeable for me. Audio wise, it's not bad, but I don't see why it can't just output (or at least give as an option) uncompressed audio from the source. My main irk is the framerate I've seen, hopefully it's limited to this unit. Anybody else experience lag or more importantly not experience any?
I ran Netflix ok.. but same ratio issues as above... didn't look great but was ok. Any regular video files looked great.. but I had to order 2 adapters before I got the right one.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using xda app-developers app
I also received my MHL adapter in the mail today. I like the picture quality and sound quality on my 42" 720p plasma, but I am wondering if it supports headphone port output somehow.
I got a connector also, but does seem to work with my monocable NHL,
Sent from my SPH-L710 using xda premium
I have a Samsung mhl and it works great
Sent using my Galaxy S III
I just used the official Samsung one today to deliver a training for a few new hires, and it worked perfectly. I had a full 10 slide powerpoint, afterwards I opened up the camera app and used the connected LCD screen as the viewfinder.
Issues with the MHL adapter lag, and possible fix
I have noticed similar problems as the OP. About an 1/8 of a second lag when trying to play SNES. For those of you who wanted to retro game with a bluetooth controller (like a PS3 sixaxis) I was able to get it to work. It could be my TV, but I got the lag down well below a second, enough so that you can play a game like donkey kong country and dodge opponents. The game plays at 30Hz which isn't the best frame rate, but fine for SNES.
The TV is a Samsung 1080p and there are two options that I enabled that seemed to help; video game mode, and BD mode. I don't think the TV should matter but I thought I should mention this. After much tinkering I realized that the phone is sending two different streams instead of exactly mirroring the phone's own stream. I think this is the case because when I was playing with settings I noticed in some cases it would send a landscape view to the TV when the phone's own display was in portrait mode. There were a couple other things that indicated that this is the case.
The Fix:
Anyways using a third party app like Titanium back up you need to freeze almost everything, anything that is not essential to running the game of your choice; this includes things like Verizon bloatware, Samsung bloat ware, s voice, maps, Facebook etc. You also have to turn off things like wifi, GPS, sync, etc. I also enabled force GPU rendering in the developer settings. Make sure you don't have a live background running. I also overclocked my phone to the max with setCPU. Also if you use an app like nova launcher you can make a back up of your settings and app placements which you can restore to keep your icon placements. I realize this is not a very viable fix, but this seemed to work for me.
End Fix
It's a pain, but worth it if you want a portable retro game machine. Samsung or someone at XDA needs to look into fixing this because I am pretty sure it is a software related issue. I hope anyone who bought a MHL adapter and wanted to retro game finds this useful.
So with the guys who have good results where you ordering it from.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using xda app-developers app
Hey just an update for anyone having issues such as screen flashes and lag I did a little more research and found in Samsung documentation that when connected to hdmi the s3 disables the output when a text or phone call is received but this was not implemented. I found that the device still checks for phone use and texts when connected to mhl. I actually had random screen flashes at set intervals on my TV! I disabled the phone and sms and this seemed to stop the flashing and help with some lag. I also noticed if you restart the device with the MHL to hdmi cable inserted the connection is a tad better and it also fixes screen flashes. I wish the damn thing worked and I have already replaced the MHL to hdmi cable twice now, and the slight lag (noticable when gaming) seems to affect a lot of people. It could be a problem with the actual device and not the software which would suck
Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
Hi!
I was thinking of using my Note as media player (streaming 1080p through Wifi and watch on LCD TV). The questions:
1) I'm reading that the HDMI output is the same resolution as the device screen (1280x800). Is this true? Can apps switch to 1080p output? I mean, it's ok if the Android system shows at 1280x800, but I want the player apps to display full 1080p (I'll be using BSPlayer or MX Player to watch 1080p MKVs).
2) 1280x800 is 16:10. That doesn't match 16:9 TVs. How does the HDMI output work then? Squeezes the image from the top/bottom to fit in 16:9? Can't it be 1280x720?
3) What about the black crush? Watching videos on the Note screen is a pain. Does the HDMI output do well with blacks and grays banding? (last thing I want is watching black crushes at 42")
4) Can I turn off the device screen while using the MHL? I'd use the Note's screen to open the player and play the MKV, then I want it to stay off while I watch through the HDMI output. Is it possible? (for example by locking with the side button)
That's all I think. Any warning or anything I should now about the MHL? The thing is pretty expensive in my crappy country (even the generic ones) so I don't want to take a risk.
Thanks :3
Hi,
The HDMI output has a 1280x800 resolution (or 800x1280) which is translated into 1080i resolution, cropping out the top and bottom to make it 16/9. However, some apps (youtube, stock movie player, Moboplayer...) detect the MHL connection and send a 16/9, 1080i video signal, while the phone displays the controls.
The black crush is only a bug/feature of the hardware, it doesn't happen on your TV. I use my phone quite often to watch movies on TV when I'm not home and the image is very nice.
Finally, about turning the screen off, I cannot be sure since I did not test it (and I'm missing a HDMI cable right now) but I usually put the phone face-down when watching movies so I'm not annoyed by the screen light.
Keep in mind that you also need to plug the phone to a charger or the HDMI output will not work. So you need a plug next to your TV. Also, some home theaters are not compatible with MHL, you're better off plug it in straight into the TV inputs.
Last but not least, it's worth having, if you want to watch movies on the go, show some pictures on TV or play a powerpoint presentation at work without a laptop, for example.
i love using the hdmi adapter. but i cant use it at work because it only has 720p (and 1080i) not 1080p so when i connect the phone to those tvs it works for a short while trying to force 1080i but then gives up after like a minute and displays a (out of range) message and stops displaying the phone output.
i have verified thats whats going on with my ug007 which allows for output selection natively. it works with 720 on those work tvs but not win 1080.
so im trying to find a way to force the phone to output 720 instead of 1080. scince the phone lacks that native functionality. im fully root on a touchwiz rom.
noone?
Got a tab 3 8.0 rooted, latest twrp and fastdream with custom kernel installed. Having trouble with viewing any video like netflix, youtube etc. The main display is fine on the t.v. Screen mirroring seems to crash as well. I need help here. Thanks! Also just to verify, does hdmi work with kitkat? I don't think so but worth asking.
Ok I figured it out, you have to leave disable hardware overlays unchecked to get the video. Since my older onkyo does not accept hdmi from tablet, I have to use t.v hdmi and optical out back to the amp forsound through my main speakers.