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S. Hamon “Super Mom” (Seattle, WA) –

  

  

Yes, there is a wire for EVERYTHING now days…and even better, Amazon has their own line of them!! I own quite a few of the AmazonBasics wires and they all are of excellent quality, if not better than the brand names. AND, this bad boy comes in the frustration-free packaging….no more ER visits for sliced open hands from those hard, clam-shell plastic packages…woo-hoo!! Anywho, the wire itself is a perfect length (6.5′) and has this awesomely (yes, that is a word in my world) soft feel to it…kind of like a brushed cotton feel, which makes the wire less slippery. The connectors have a solid feel to them and feel like they will hold up for some time…although I don’t recommend pulling them out by the wire but rather pinching the connector itself and then pulling. This should be done for all plugs, but come on…admit it, there is a lazy side in all of us and we rarely pinch the connector. I mention it should be done correctly on this wire because although the main part of the wire is thicker, the connector end separates into 4 wires (red, white, yellow & USB) and those are much thinner than the rest of the wire. I’m sure yanking on those thinner wires can’t be good, but we’ll see. I say we’ll see because I am one of those lazy people who rarely pinches the connectors.

Okay, moving on…this wire is no different than the Apple branded one or any of the other aftermarket wires. It doesn’t have special Jedi powers making it do more than the other wires. It simply displays videos and pictures along with music on your TV. I must admit I was hoping I could play Angry Birds on my 60″…but no such luck. I was amazed with the clarity of the pics on my ginormous TV…unsure if that can be credited to the wire, my TV, or if my kids iTouch just takes darn good pics. Either way, I was in awe.

Sooooo…if you have an iPod, iPad, iTouch, iPhone…all of them, or a couple of each like our family does, this is a handy little wire to have around. Three thumbs up for Amazon!!

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Jojoleb “jojoleb” (Pittsburgh, PA United States) –

  

  

PROS
Inexpensive way to connect your iDevice to your TV
USB connector for charging
6.5 feet
Easily portable
Can double as a synch cable
Well made/solid build quality

CONS
Only works with a LIMITED subset of apps–this is NOT like Air Play
You can only view photos in the Photo app when you play a slide show
RCA inputs only, no HDMI

A generous 6.5 feet, this cable is a fine and inexpensive way to hook your iDevice to your television set. The Apple 30-pin connector slips into the appropriate slot and the three RCA plugs hook directly into your TV set. Set up was about as easy as could be–just plug in the color coded cables to the corresponding ports. On my home set, I have to fidget just a bit with the video connector to make the picture appear but I didn’t have this problem on any other television set that I tried. The cable actually sports a USB connector for charging. So if your lucky enough and your TV has a powered USB port or your have access to such a USB port within about a foot of your RCA connectors, you can power your iDevice while you watch the tele. This avoids the obvious embarrassment of running out of power in medias movie. The USB connection can also be used to synch your iDevice with your computer, if so desired. Note: The USB connection cannot be used to transfer video to your television or other device, it is only for power and synching.)

I have an iPhone 4 and my son has an iPod touch and both work well with this cable. The video quality is reasonable enough, especially considering that all the transferred images are low res. The televisions colors do not always agree with the iPhone’s retina display, but with a little adjusting of the monitor, the colors can be corrected and everything shows up just fine.

The cable basically functions as advertised, so long as you are running a supported application. YouTube played via the YouTube app, videos played through the native iDevice app, and slide shows played through Photos will all play handily on your TV. You can forget any dreams of being able to surf the net on your television, cuing up Hulu via a browser that poses your iDevice as a desktop, or using your Crackle app to play a few videos–only selected apps will play video via the cable. The sound will be transferred, but the video will remain on your iDevice’s small screen.

This is NOT Air Play–you don’t get to see everything that is happening on your iPhone’s screen on the TV. For that you’d have to spend the big bucks and purchase an AppleTV. Another example of this is the Photo app. If you are browsing through the pictures, this only seems to show up on your iDevice’s screen. Once you hit ‘play’ for a slide show, however, the pictures start coming up on the TV. Interestingly, some apps, like netTV and FilmOn TV, do support cable video out and WILL play over the TV set. However, the video from apps like netTV is pretty horrible and often pixilates and stutters on the iPhone itself. At best, the results for these types of apps are strictly okay to pretty lousy on a larger screen.

This isn’t the only TV cable for the iPhone out there. Although it certainly beats the price of the Apple brand Composite Cable [Apple Composite AV Cable (OLD VERSION)[Retail Packaging]], there are similar cables out there that can be had at the same price.

All in all, the quality on this item seems to be relatively high. The connectors all seem solid and the cable seems sturdy rather than flimsy. So long as the app you are using has compatibility with video out through a cable, this connector will do just fine.

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Karl (Bozeman, MT USA) –

  

  

I’ve used APPLE COMPOSITE AV cable ZML for more than a year and have been happy having it connected to my home theater. This AmazonBasics cable provides the same electronic connectivity in a cable design that is much less usable. I asked for a review copy because its always nice to have a spare cable for traveling.

If you do NOT need to use the USB plug to power your IOS device and you want both the video and audio cables to plug into your TV, then this AmazonBasics cable is a great deal. Picture and sound are excellent. (Do note that only those applications that support video/audio-out will show up on your TV.)

I’ve attached some photos showing the Apple cable vs the AmazonBasics cable to illustrate the differences that I’ll describe here.

Power to your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad is provided by plugging the USB cable into your own power cube. The audio, video and USB plugs are on cables that are only 8 1/2 inches long. Thus, you must have a power outlet within 17 inches of your TV audio/video input jacks for the USB cable to reach your power cube. That might be the case in certain limited situations where you happen to have a power strip sitting on your TV stand behind your TV, for example. For many situations, including my own, my A/V input jacks are 20 inches above my stand and several feet above the floor. The only option with the AmazonBasics cable is to purchase a USB extension cable to reach your power outlet, or to use an extension cord to bring power closer to the end of this cable.

In contrast, the Apple composite cable splits the A/V and USB cables so that each is 31 inches long – allowing the power outlet to be as much as 5 feet away from your TV inputs. Hugely more flexible for a variety of usage situations.

What about the audio/video connections? If you play your audio through your TV, then the AmazonBasics 8.5 inch cables are not an issue – just plug the red/white audio plugs into your audio jacks and the yellow video plug into your video input jack.

But, what if you use a surround-sound system? The 8.5 inch cable is way too short to plug the video into your TV and the audio into your amplifier. If you have a special video tuner set-up, you can plug everything into the tuner and you’ll be fine. Again the 31 inch Apple split cables are way more flexible – the amplifier can be up to 5 feet away from the TV’s video input jack.

In summary, this cable works perfectly, but is difficult to connect to power and to various unique setups (TV and amplifier, projector and surround sound, etc) compared to the Apple cable.

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