Scott Hanselman

I received an 80GB iPod Video for Christmas and immediately wanted to watch a movie with it. I went up to iTunes and got the free 40 minute "Battlestar Galactica: The Story So Far" video. I didn't get an official $20 iPod Video Cable or $100 AV Connection Kit, and I'm also a cheap b*stard, so I went looking for a standard RCA adapter around the house that one uses to hook up a camcorder.

I plugged it in, started the video after setting TV Out to On on the iPod and selecting NTSC as the format as we're in North American, and...nothing. Zippo.

I thought I might have to buy a real cable, but come on, it's just four wires, this should "just work."

Then I realized that the thing that's unique about the iPod (or at least different from my camcorder) is that one headphone connector is used for audio and video.

A 1/8" standard headphone connector has three "connectors" in the form of three rings in the plug itself. One ring corresponds to one output cable.

So, on a standard microphone, there's three rings:

• Tip - Left Channel
• Middle Ring - Right Channel
• Ring closest to the cable - Ground

When hardware folks want to add functionality, they add a ring and make the connector longer.

In the picture at the upper right (from CameraHacker.com) there are FOUR rings on this standard video cable.

• Tip - Left Channel
• First Ring - Video
• Second Ring - Ground
• Ring closest to the cable - Right Channel

Notice that the rings are very different...that wouldn't be a problem if the 1/8" jack was ONLY used for audio. However, remember that the iPod needs the jack to work for both standard headphones, and for video.  Thus, they had to change the pin assignments for compatibility. (Folks have apparently accused them of changing pins to make money. I don't think so, this makes more sense.)

Since they had to make the tip longer than a standard headphone tip, it makes sense that they'd put the video farther down (deeper into the headphone jack).

• Tip - Left Channel
• First Ring - Right Channel
• Second Ring - Ground
• Ring closest to the cable - Video

This means that when using an standard RC 1/8" AV Cable on an iPod, that the Video now runs through the red wire and the Right Channel is now in the yellow wire.

After I figured this out, I saw this article on O'Reilly, but this gentleman, IMHO, got it wrong, as he has reversed his right and left audio channels now. You just need to swap Yellow and Red.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

Z is one year old today if you can believe it.

Feel free to celebrate this momentous occasion by perusing some Classic Z stories. Also feel free to give Z gifts from Dad's Wishlist. ;)

Baby Posts

• The Big News
• Z Quincy
• Fatherhood
• Z Rolls
• Babies Sleeping Through the Night
• Zero to Three Month Baby Ultimate Tools List
• Z is Six Months Old
• A Day in the Z
• Pumpkin Z
• Z Walks
• Baby Sign Language

Happy Birthday! And NO, Z is not coding in C# yet, and there are no current plans for his MCSD.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

Last night I had an almost-full-on-computer-emergency. I was trying to sync an iPod with content for a coming 20 hour plane flight, and suddenly Vista announced an "Unknown USB" device. Then another, and another. The iPod died, and every device on my system started a full scale revolt. I was stressed a bit, but I figured a reboot was in order. So, orderly shutdown and reboot, BIOs black screen comes up...and nothing. Zero. My system was hanging on BIOS POST. I couldn't even get into the CMOS via F2 to try other settings.

I started unhooking stuff. USB devices, internal drives, even the floppy for gosh sake. Nothing. At this point I'm getting uncomfortable. So what did I do? I did what anyone would do. I called Jeff Atwood.

Here's a little something about me. Back in the day, I knew a metric crapload about computer hardware. I could go on and on about the different between an SX and DX Processor. If you needed an MFM or RLL hard drive, I could give you a recommendation. You needed a TSR loaded into the UMB, screw QEMM, call me. I could put a field of DIPPs on an ISA add-on board and get your 286 up to a MEG of RAM.

But, alas, after the Pentium 4, everything got complex. People started talking about Northbridge this, and DRAM that, and this whole code name thing with Intel (Conroe? Tahoe? Who knows) just put me off.

I no longer know what motherboard to buy. Those brain cells have long been overwritten with more immediately useful information like the internal workings of System.Web.UI.WebControls.TextBox.

Jeff knows, though, and I called him at 10:45pm last in a sweaty panic. Well, actually I SMS'ed him, and he called me back, but still, details.

I explained the situation in exquisite detail with voices for all the characters involved. He said "remove your USB drives." I said, "I did already." He said "Humour me." He's from the Bay Area, but you can always here the "u" in words like Humor with Jeff. It's how he maintains quiet superiority over you and I.

Anyway, I went back upstairs, and alas, I'd missed a drive. My precious Iomega 35G USB Rev drive was still plugged in. (Not sure why, Iomega has no Vista drivers, and their support site sücks. Notice the Heavy Metal umlaut indicating that they don't just suck, but they suck über-ly.

So, I removed my USB Rev Drive, and boom. I'm back in business. Sweet sassy mollassy, I'm back in business. Danke Jeff Atwood.

The sad, silent tragedy about this whole sordid affair? My wife had given me the go ahead to buy a new motherboard, thinking the USB Root Hubs were toast before Jeff came up with the solution. Um, thanks Jeff?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

It's funny, when folks see me using SlickRun, they always notice that I've bound it to Windows-R, replacing the standard Start|Run dialog.

This is one of the questions I get the most often. Unfortunately it's not very well documented in SlickRun, and if you try to set it via the options dialog, you'll get get a a message saying it can't grab the global hotkey.

You have to open SlickRun.ini in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\SlickRun and add an option under the [General] section "GrabWinR=1".  I also like to set ChaseCursor=1 so SlickRun will come up under the current mouse cursor position.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

After reading Omar's list of recently purchased gadgets, poor man that I am, I figured I'd update my Amazon.com wishlist.

It's a kind of window shopping, I find, updating one's list. I don't make purchases of any kind frivolously, so I like to add things to my wishlist and let them sit there for a while. If they stick around for a while without me deleting them, I'll be more likely to consider getting it.

What's on your wish list this holiday season?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By