TV Out Is...Incredible

If you have a need to do live demos of Android applications over a projector, the HTC Incredible is an excellent device, for one key feature: it’s TV-out capability works for the regular Android screen.

Some devices have HDMI out, but I have yet to find one that does HDMI out of the main Android screen — mostly it is for video playback, or maybe photos in the Gallery. Everything else, such as the home screen or other apps, only appears on the device.

The Incredible’s TV out shows everything, in near real-time. I couch that with “near” because I haven’t done exhaustive testing. Suffice it to say, if I fire up Barcode Scanner, I see the camera output on the TV without any obvious hiccups.

The TV out cable is not widely available, though I picked one up from HTCPedia.com. It plugs in the micro-USB port on the device and gives you component output. A plus there is that more LCD projectors right now will support component input than HDMI, at least in my experience.

The fact that it is component output means there is a grainy quality to the display. That is worse when the device is in portrait mode. But, compared to software projectors, it is lightning quick, allowing for demos of games or other things that software projectors just cannot offer today.

I will be putting it through its paces in some upcoming training events, and if I run into particular snags, I’ll try to remember to blog about those as well.

If anyone knows of other devices that support TV out for the main Android screen — not just video playback — please join the cw-android Google Group and let me know!