Coincidentally, last week, both Blake Krikorian and I worked out methods to move compelling HBO GO content from smartphone to television. Blake, who you might recognize as the inventor of the Slingbox and champion of the Crestron Android app, ultimately got it done via his Motorola Atrix… in conjunction with the multimedia dock. Like the Atrix’s netbook enclosure accessory, the multimedia dock launches Motorola’s Linux webtop OS/interface and Blake merely brought up HBO GO via the desktop version of Firefox. On a 103″ plasma. As I quipped on Facebook, 320×240 never looked so good. (Although, HBO is definitely streaming higher res than that.) Jason Hirschhorn, who you might recognize as a former MTV, Sling, or MySpace executive and curator of the must-follow MediaReDEFined, snapped the incriminating photographic evidence.
Likewise, I attempted to harness the power of my iPhone in ways it wasn’t intended… by HBO. Having picked up Apple’s digital AV adapter, I had plans to pipe iPhone app content onto the TV via HDMI (as screen mirroring is only offered from the iPad 2). Unfortunately, although not unsurprisingly, most app providers haven’t enabled this functionality. And, once again, I jailbroke my phone to extend its capabilities. The $4 DisplayOut app (purchased via Cydia) provides iPhone 4 display mirroring, in addition to pushing audio out over the aforementioned HDMI. Stretched Flight of the Conchords quality wasn’t great on the big screen and the process of streaming while mirroring pretty much crushes the iPhone battery. Not to mention Apple’s dongle is not compatible with their iPhone bumper. So while I figured I’d end up writing a post chronicling how this $40 cable would replace my more bulky Roku on travel, it just wasn’t meant to be.