Standards, as in general rules to follow, are all around us. From the way we print an address on an envelope, to the qwerty layout of the keyboard I'm typing on, to the layout of the gas and brake pedals in our car. Mess with standards and things get harder to use.
What brought this to my mind is a recent quest to provide my children with entertainment in the back seat of our car on an upcoming trip. Yep, an in-car video system. I checked out screens mounted in the headrests, on the ceiling with drop-down screens and portable systems that attach to the headrests but are removable.
A Seemingly Simple Goal
My goal was to have a system that wasn't DVD dependent. Burning DVD's is a slow and painful process on my system, and having to carry around a stack of DVD's just doesn't seem necessary with current MP3/Video systems like the iPod.
I found a two-screen portable DVD system that has a good headrest mount and has an A/V input plug, the Philips PET708. Reasonably priced at Target. Then the decision on what MP3/Video player to drive it. The choice are many these days: iPod Touch, iPod Classic, Zune, Creative Zen W and other choice from sources like iRiver.
I almost went with the iPod Classic, not wanting to shell out for the new Touch, but I ended up with a 30 GB Zune.
Oh The Joy
Now the fun part...getting them to talk to each other. The Zune has A/V out capability through a 3mm A/V jack. I looked at the Zune website and saw what look like standard composite video cables (yellow for video, red for audio right, and white for audio left, with a 4 band 3mm jack). I had two already, one from the DVD system, and one from a camcorder. I tried using both of them to get video out from the Zune. No luck.
After a trip to Radio Shack I had another, higher quality, cable to try. I went next door to Target to test it out since the input jacks on my own TV are tucked far behind a large and heavy set. I ended up with only garbled video out with one of the cables.
Once I got back home I had the bright idea of switching the plugs going into the TV to see what would happen. Turns out the Zune was sending video signal out the Audio Right jack of my cable (at least for two of them, the third didn't get me anything).
How It All Mapped Out
Then I sat down with a voltage meter and mapped out the various connections on the jack to the audio and video plugs. Turns out the two cables that worked were both wired the same (and gave me video out on the audio right jack). The third cable's ground was in the wrong place, but I'm sure it worked for my camcorder.
So is there a standard layout for these types of cables? I surely don't know but I assumed there would be, and the 3 systems I was working with (DVD Player, Camcorder and Zune) didn't follow the same rules.
What should have been a a quick and easy interaction between video devices has turned into a time-wasting excercise in futility.
Worst of all instead of being able to go to a Radio Shack or Target and get a standard cable I had to order the Zune compatible A/V connection cable, and I had to order another A/V connection cable for the DVD system so I can get them to talk to each other. It will still require another trip to Radio Shack to by a coupler for the cables, but at least they can't screw with that.
I guess Microsoft and Philips got a little more money out of me this time, but this little experience will be hanging around my brain for a while.
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