Our DVDs get scratched too quickly, so we put movies that we purchased from iTunes and our own home movies on iTouch, connect it to TV and play them from the iTouch. No more scratched DVDs! For information about how to copy your own DVDs to iPhone, click here
There are connectors, av cables from different vendors for connecting iPod Touch and iPhone to a television, and they are cheaper than Apple's connector. However, after reading on Amazon all sorts of incompatibly problems that they have, I decided to get the following connector from Apple Store and it worked well for me:
Apple Composite AV Cable $49, http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB129
After this has arrived, I have followed the following steps to play iPhone/iTouch videos on TV:
1. I connected the "audio and video RCA outputs" to the back of my TV. They were all color coded, so it was easy. I connected my iPhone to the "iPhone connector" part of the cable.
2. I selected 'AV' option on my TV, so that it shows the input coming from iPhone, not cable TV. At this point I thought I would see my iPhone screen but I was wrong. I just saw a blank screen until I played a movie or a video clip. If you are unsure do the following step and come back to this step.
3. Select a movie on your iPhone or iTouch and play. At this point you should see the movie on you TV. You can play with your TVs zoom functions to get the best viewing experience.
I did not need to, but you can also play with video settings of your iPhone to set some preferences. For this, on an iPhone go to Settings -> iPod and view the settings under "video". For iPod Touch, go to Settings->Video to access these settings.
Did you find these tips useful? Do you have additional tips, other connectors that you can suggest? I'd like to hear your thoughts.
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This is a very good explanation. I followed all the step, unfortunately I got only the video and slideshow to work, the sound didn't work, neither from the video nor from my itunes. what happened?
Posted by: PeterG | 12/31/2008 at 09:55 AM
Peter, I posted a similar question to apple discussion forums a while back. You're right, apparently only photos and video can be displayed on TV.
About your audio problem: If you are sure that you connected the audio part of the connector correctly to your TV and your audio volume is set to high, and still not working, it might be a problem with the connector. I'll keep my eyes open about this problem and post about it if I come across any other solutions.
Posted by: Erin B | 01/01/2009 at 10:41 AM
I have keep getting a different problem. The audio is fine, but no video. It plays on iPhone, but not TV even though the audio is coming out TV? I've gotten error message about airplane mode and one other. I just ordered another cable to eliminate that as source of problem.
Posted by: iPhone4idiots | 10/09/2009 at 09:45 AM
Buying the $49 cable made me think, "why not buy the Apple tv for $99?" LOL
Posted by: Ipad Accesories | 11/12/2010 at 05:15 AM