Inogeni 4K HDMI to USB 3.0

[Andrew Reid]

Anyone up for testing this?

http://inogeni.com/4k-usb3-0/

Along with USB capture app on Android smartphone or tablet (i.e. CameraFi)?

Here's my article on it.

[LimitBreak]

I tried something similar to live stream to youtube with a DSLR & my phone last year as I could not get my laptop to a press conference, but was not successful.

I ended up live streaming to youtube with RTMP Camera app and my phone's camera, the quality was poor to alright as I switched streaming settings, I had 32000+ live viewers so it was alright, and the app had a mute option that i utilized to block copyrighted music. Youtube disables your stream if copyrighted music is played in the background.

Would be great if the capture device worked with a streaming app, and if that app had the ability to switch audio source to play stored mp3 files when selected then switch back to the hdmi audio source when possible.

[Grim Fandango]

I'm not so sure about this - there is a lot of development into this technology right now, HDMI to USB converters are key in live streaming setups used on twitch tv and the likes. Currently the gold standard is the XCAPTURE-1 USB 3.0 HD Capture Unit, and this is the only external card of acceptable quality for a professional. There are amateur units avaliable, but they have issues, such as the Avermedia Live Gamer Extreme, and the quality is barely acceptable.

Such a small unit, I would expect massive latency and significant signal degradation.

[Michael Scrip]

I was interested in something like this to turn a relatively cheap Android tablet into a field monitor.  Decent field monitors tend to be very expensive.

And then I heard about the Aputure VS-2 FineHD.  Article and video review.

Under $300 and it's an ACTUAL field monitor at 1080p with focus peaking, zebras, histogram and all sorts of other things that real field monitors have. Sounds great.

Sure it's got a big Sony battery sticking out the back... but in the places I would use a field monitor I'd be plugging it in anyway.  And not moving around.  The Aputure monitor is definitely on my wishlist.

I dunno about this device though.  It's $400 by itself and I'm guessing its compatibility with Android tablets might be sketchy.  How many tablets have USB 3.0 input? And it still won't have all those features of real field monitors.

This device might be better served as a capture device into a computer. That's the way it's decribed on its website.  This article is only suggesting it might work to allow an Android tablet to be a field monitor. But I have my doubts.

 

[gsenroc]

11 minutes ago, Michael Scrip said:

I was interested in something like this to turn a relatively cheap Android tablet into a field monitor.  Decent field monitors tend to be very expensive.

And then I heard about the Aputure VS-2 FineHD.  Article and video review.

Under $300 and it's an ACTUAL field monitor at 1080p with focus peaking, zebras, histogram and all sorts of other things that real field monitors have. Sounds great.

Sure it's got a big Sony battery sticking out the back... but in the places I would use a field monitor I'd be plugging it in anyway.  And not moving around.  The Aputure monitor is definitely on my wishlist.

I dunno about this device though.  It's $400 by itself and I'm guessing its compatibility with Android tablets might be sketchy.  How many tablets have USB 3.0 input? And it still won't have all those features of real field monitors.

This device might be better served as a capture device into a computer. That's the way it's decribed on its website.  This article is only suggesting it might work to allow an Android tablet to be a field monitor. But I have my doubts.

 

I've got the VS-2 FineHD monitor. But I think at the moment it's not very usable. The image on the screen is way too contrasty, even with the contrast dialed down, no details in the shadow, it's crushed to totally black. Color is wrong too. I am able to adjust the RGB settings to make it close to the LCD of the camera or other field monitor, but it's still not very good. I hope they can fix it with firmware upgarde, but I'm not sure.

[Cinegain]

Lilliput's still a thing too, e.g. http://lilliputdirect.com/lilliput-hdmi-monitors/lilliput-7-inch-hdmi-monitor/lilliput-663-version-2 or their new update to other ones: http://lilliputdirect.com/new-lilliput-monitors/lilliput-339-high-definition-field-monitor . But yeah, these 7" monitors do tend to be bulky and heavy. 10"-ers even more so. But then again... quality and functionality. I doubt your smartphone will have any monitoring features, except for it displaying the image that is being output? So then it's more just a display than a field monitor. If it would be that easy, noone would bother with the costly SmallHDs...

[Luca Acerbi]

way too expensive!!! And it's 8 BIT!!!

[Andrew Reid]

4 minutes ago, Luca Acerbi said:

way too expensive!!! And it's 8 BIT!!!

Fine for monitoring.

Remember idea here is not to compete with an Odyssey 7Q+...

It's simply to make use of those lovely thin and portable AMOLED displays on our smartphones and tablets.

[Luca Acerbi]

Is there any technical reason for the 8bit limitation?

[dhessel]

I used one of these a few years ago, it wasn't 4K, with a Microsoft Surface tablet pc and was able to get it working as a field monitor. It worked fairly well, got a realtime feed but there was a 1 second lag. 

[Snowfun]

I'm surprised Sony

 have never done something with the PS Vita for this. It exists (with what appears to be limited success) and could - I speculate - be useful as a field monitor. 

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

This article comes off a large ignorance of the technology used in HDMI monitors/recorders. No offence at all. 

You'd be surprised to know the actual size and cost of hardware that's required for receiving and displaying a image through an HDMI input. Your phone/tablet does NOT have it, and ant attempts like these (or even if companies put in an HDMI in on their phones) it will give you extreme overheating and severe frame dropping, just not even barely usable. 

[blafarm]

I wouldn't count on this being a usable solution.  Here are the potential problems I see in no particular order:

1.  Android device must support USB 3

2.  Assuming the requirement specified in Number 1 is satisfied -- the device must also support USB Host Mode

3.  Assuming the requirements specified in Number 2 are satisfied, the OTG cable must support this capture device

4.  Assuming the requirements specified in Number 3 are satisfied, the Android device must be able to adequtely power the capture device from the USB 3 bus

5.  Assuming the requirements specified in Number 4 are satisfied, the solution must not require the Android device being rooted (for obvious reasons)

6.  Assuming the requirements specified in Number 5 are satisfied, un-rooted Android devices currently cannot simultaneously function in USB Host Mode and be charged at the same time. Currently, you get to choose only one -- an Android device is either a USB device, a USB Mass Storage device, or a USB Host device.

7.  The latency of the entire signal chain (capture device, data transmission, device-based app processing, device-based display output) will likely be unacceptable for real time applications.  Of course it's impossible no know, but I would 'blue sky' estimate the latency as being somewhere in the ballpark of the Sony A7x PlayMemories Android app.

There is a reason no one is doing this -- it's just not practical.  Generally speaking, Android devices are architected as media consumption devices -- not content creation.  Over the years, I have run into a couple of Canon-based apps that display Live View with minimal latency.  And, there are small number of Android devices that have HDMI inputs -- but their form factor would not satisfy this need.  As much as I would like a solution like this, I've concluded that a dedicated monitor is the only viable approach.

 

 

 

 

[Cinegain]

Well, if it's for monitoring only, you might as well rely on liveview with the app over Wi-Fi.

[Andrew Reid]

8 minutes ago, Cinegain said:

Well, if it's for monitoring only, you might as well rely on liveview with the app over Wi-Fi.

That's a battery drain, a pain to pair every time you turn on the camera and also unreliable, occasionally jerky and mostly pixilated. No thanks

2 hours ago, Ebrahim Saadawi said:

This article comes off a large ignorance of the technology used in HDMI monitors/recorders. No offence at all. 

You'd be surprised to know the actual size and cost of hardware that's required for receiving and displaying a image through an HDMI input. Your phone/tablet does NOT have it, and ant attempts like these (or even if companies put in an HDMI in on their phones) it will give you extreme overheating and severe frame dropping, just not even barely usable. 

However since the Inogeni acts as a capture device, you don't know how much of the workload this takes over from the Android phone or tablet. The Android device might need to do very little with the signal once it has been converted to USB 3 by the capture device, which I am sure has dedicated hardware in it for the job. The general purpose CPU on the tablet probably doesn't need to do much. Just my opinion. If you have any hard evidence why the opposite is true I'd like to hear it and broaden my understanding.

I am surprised there's so much chatter about this and so few people willing to just TRY it. No harm in that is there? I am tempted to find one on Amazon and return it if it doesn't work, no harm in trying.

[Cinegain]

 

[shijan]

$399 for adaptor, lol. today you can buy 5" full hd ikan dh5 for #349 or oem ikan dh7 (which is actually Neway CT710HO, 1920 x 1200 monitor) for $359. and it will be way more rugged and usable. and in near future i believe there will be oem dh5 for less than $200 from china manufacturers.

[blafarm]

20 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

I am surprised there's so much chatter about this and so few people willing to just TRY it. No harm in that is there? I am tempted to find one on Amazon and return it if it doesn't work, no harm in trying.

If you look hard enough, you will find dozens of people that have already tried myriad variations of this.  I have already done that -- so I have no interest in wasting my time.

However, I say, knock yourself out!

Just know that you are tying to change the function of a purpose-built device -- transforming it into something it was never designed to do -- and that it will never do well.

And even if you can achieve a remote image display, it will not be usable for the function you intend (for reasons I have already documented above) -- and it will have deal-killer limitations what will cause you to just spend the money on a product that was designed to do what you want.

[Tony Hernandez]

..

[Andy Welch]

1) Won't work. It requires 5v/580mAh and I think Android devices usually only output 5v/500mHa. I could be wrong. 

2) The majority of mobile phone OLED displays are not a good choice for monitoring. Most have horribly inaccurate and oversaturated color. Even if you were able to calibrate them, you still wouldn't be able to take advantage of their increased contrast ratio and wider color gamut color because you would be feeding it an 8-bit, Rec709 signal. IPA displays, such as those used on the iPhones, are probably a better choice because they conform more closely to the Rec709/sRGB standard.