madmaxmedia said:
1. Jhollington above says the original dock has an authentication chip, just not the video authentication chip. That does strike me as a bit odd though, since 3rd party docks have always worked fine, so not sure what another authentication chip would be there for.
Authentication chips are used by Apple for a number of things, and since Apple makes the authentication chips, they started putting them into just about
all of their accessories around the time they released the spec -- when the original 5G iPod came out.
The first purpose for the authentication chip was for third-party voice recorders -- in fact this is the reason it took so long for the first 5G-compatible iPod voice recorders to appear.... The accessory manufacturers (Griffin, Belkin, et al), were having problems getting sufficient quantities of the authentication chips from Apple in order to mass-produce their accessories beyond the prototype stage.
Authentication chips are also used to trigger other features on the 5G iPod and nano -- the iPod camera connector, the Nike+ Sport Kit, the Apple FM Radio/Remote, and the iPod Hi-Fi all use authentication chips to enable their various functions.
Keep in mind that thus far the iPod classic and iPod nano do not require a
video-specific authentication chip, whereas the iPod touch and the iPhone
do -- at least up to version 1.1.2. I have not yet been able to personally test v1.1.3, so I cannot confirm or deny the rumour that it works with either universal dock.
2. If there is an video authentication chip in the new dock, then why does the old dock now work? If there isn't an authentication chip in the new dock, why does it now work where it couldn't work before?
The new dock does not have a video authentication chip -- just a general one it seems. Both docks will enable the video output capabilities on the iPod classic and iPod nano, but the problem is that the 2007 Universal Dock does not have the actual
electrical connections to pass the video output through the line-out jack -- it's basically just missing the necessary
wires, as compared to the 2005 Universal Dock.
As for why the iPod touch may now work, the authentication chip requirement is entirely in the
firmware -- it is not a hardware restriction. Apple could remove this authentication chip restriction simply by taking it out of the firmware update -- if the iPod touch now outputs video through the old universal dock, it would appear that this is exactly what they've done -- be it deliberately or by accident.
Part of the issue with the distinction between the iPod classic/nano and the iPod touch/iPhone is simply because of the way video output is triggered on each of these devices -- with the iPod classic/nano you have to turn on the video output in the settings, whereas with the iPod touch and iPhone, it will always prompt you when you start playing a video if a compatible accessory is attached -- it's therefore more important with these devices to ensure that a
video-compatible accessory is attached, otherwise the prompt is going to be irrelevant and confusing to the user.
3. The Appleinsider article said that s-video out was removed from the dock connector, to make room for component video output. But that seems not to be the case, if with 1.1.3 a Touch can output video through the old s-video jack on the older dock. Can this be changed through firmware/software, or are the dock pin-outs hard-wired?
While the Appleinsider article is relatively informative in terms of the general aspects of video output, the points it makes about the authentication chip and Dock Connector wiring being rearranged is pure Apple-apologist bunk.
The never
was a separate S-Video output channel on the Dock Connector -- there has only ever been
one video output channel, and this has not changed. It just so happened that the 2005 Universal Dock provided both an S-Video and component-based output (ie, the
dock provided two outputs for the same signal).
The evidence that the pinouts have not changed is very simple: Connect the iPod (classic/nano) to an authentication-chip video accessory, such as the new Apple AV cables, and then,
while the movie is playing, remove the cable from the Dock Connector port and connect the iPod to
any 5G-compatible accessory, whether it be S-Video or component based -- the video will continue to play, and will play properly through the older accessory.
This is obviously a little bit harder to provide with the iPod touch, unless v1.1.3 behaves differently, since the iPod touch and iPhone will
stop the video when the cable is removed.
4. I wonder if the Touch will now output video through 3rd-party devices -docks, video displays, etc.?
Probably not. Since most older docks do not signal their capabilities to the device
at all, the iPod touch would have no way of knowing if a compatible accessory is attached. It would be ludicrous for it to always prompt to enable TV Output just in case a video accessory is attached.
Or is there still something special about even the old Apple dock? (This doesn't seem to make sense, since the old iPods worked equally well with the old Apple dock and 3rd-party devices.)
The old Apple Dock
did have an authentication chip, but the 5G couldn't care less about authentication chips for the purposes of video playback. The most likely reason for the authentication chip in the 2005 Universal Dock was to enable the pass-through volume control on the iPod itself (the ability to adjust the dock and iPod volume together -- a feature that is also common to the iPod HiFi).
It seems like no one really knows for sure what is going on. Or at least everyone is doing their best to interpret what is going on in the black box (or should I say black chip), but there are different conflicting reports and pieces of info out there...
Well, we've spent the last week at Macworld talking with a number of the major accessory manufacturers, and they're
quite clear on the presence of the authentication chip and what it's there for, as they're now required to build their devices with them if they want to enable video playback.
In fact, those manufacturers that
don't want to provide video playback through their accessories are being required by Apple to take out any video output features in order to remain "Made-for-iPod" compatible, since if there isn't an authentication chip, video output cannot be provided. A good example of this is the Altec Lansing iM600, which used to include a video-out port. Altec Lansing quietly removed this port in all models produced after last September, since they had no desire to retool their process to include an authentication chip just to provide a video output feature on a device that doesn't really need it.
The Apple authentication chips are not a myth or a "conspiracy theory" as some have claimed, and they're nothing new. This is also not a word that's been made up by us or anybody else in the blogsphere.... "Authentication Chip" is Apple's own terminology for them, but of course you won't find much mention of it outside of their Made-for-iPod program and possibly a few support documents that might be hiding on their site.
The problem is that there are a number of Apple apologists out there who are unwilling to believe that Apple could ever do anything wrong. While I've always been one to give Apple the benefit of the doubt in many cases, I'm not blind to their faults, and this is one area where I will freely admit that they've made a very poor decision, both in terms of changing their original policy on the authentication chips (that they would never use them to lock down
existing features -- only
new features), and in not advising their third-party accessory manufacturers of this change until
after the new iPod models were released (thereby resulting in a serious deficiency of options for video-capable accessories).