We currently have limited video sources for our HDMI monitor in the van.
We will have the Nintendo Switch, laptop and my iPad but they are not the most practical for dedicated video use.
I want my iPad and laptop reserved for my use (work and navigation) and since the Switch doesn’t play movies we needed something else.
Since I need to bring the kids’ iPad’s along anyway I thought they would be a good source for video. Unfortunately they, unlike my iPad mini 6th generation, have lightning ports and no USB-C.
Not wanting to pay Apple’s premium for an official Lightning to HDMI adapter, I bought a cheap HDMI to Lightning adapter from Amazon to solve this problem. It did not work.
After some more research I realized that finding a non-Apple adapter that actually works would be anything but trivial.
I gave up and went with a different approach. I am going to use a USB media player. I found a fairly inexpensive player that would do 1080p. The device was a few years old and did not support H.265 so I went with a slightly newer version that supports 4K (which I do not care about) and does support the H.265 codec. My reasoning for purchasing the more expensive newer unit is that if they claim it will handle 4k it should be VERY able to handle 1080p.
This dedicated media player has a few other advantages over using an iPad.
- It has a remote so the kids can use the device themselves – we only let them use the iPad’s in guided access mode
- It can play any content, we don’t have to worry about HDCP or other copyright protections.
- The unit is cheap enough that it can just live in the van
Hopefully it works as described.