N900 as a home media centre: Best Nseries TV-out experience

A major strength of the nearly all Nseries range is their ability to hook up to a TV screen via the 3.5mm jack [and CA-75U cable-included].  The N900 is the first Nokia tablet that allows this and amongst all other Nseries provides the best TV-out experience. This makes the N900 a serious contender as a home media entertainment system.

CA-75U - 3.5mm jack one end, RCA the other. Connect to any TV with RED/WHiTE/YELLOW connectors or easily attach via adapter, e.g. scart.

1. 32GB on board storage + expandable with microSD (grab MicroSD’s from other media devices and N900’s will recognize applicable files – no computer needed)
2. Fill it up with tons of media: Documents, music, photos, video, games.
3. No need to hook up to PC to share photos/videos you’ve just taken.
4. No external power needed [enough juice for a 160 minute movie)  but you can plug it in to the charger if you’re using it heavily for more than 3.5h
5. Out of the box, the N900 was wide video coded support. No 3rd party app needed (though they are available). Over the past couple of days, I’ve had by N900 hooked up to the TV and the family have been watching movies on it.
6. You can hook up your N900 to a bluetooth headset, e.g. BH-905 and control video/music playback without having to use the phone (though music is played only through headset)
7. Particularly nice is that you can turn off the N900’s screen (by locking it) to save on battery whilst a video is playing.
8. It helps that many applications on Maemo 5 looks much better than what we’ve previously seen with S60.
   1. Browser is stunning, fast and accurate – here it feels like I’m browsing on a computer. Flash works great; major example is YouTube – works great directly on N900.
   2. Scrolling through pictures is smooth
   3. Panoramic desktops – a dream over TV-out
   4. Everyone found N900 easy to navigate without instructions on what to do
   5. Oddly, it’s very easy to navigate the N900’s screen by looking at the TV output (and all with one thumb)
9. Using the TV as the camera’s viewfinder is really fun – the dogs bark at themselves thinking there’s a stranger in the house. This is great if you like making video blogs so you (your family and friends) can see exactly how you look in your video recording. Would make a great mirror if you could reverse the image too.
10. GAMING! – The N900 has the power to play graphic-intensive games that iPhone can.There are a few games for the N900 at the moment; the only one showing some eye candy is Bounce Evolution. This is an accelerometer based game and it’s even better being played over TV-out because you don’t get awkward viewing angles that you get when playing any accelerometer based games.

As well as for home use, it’s great when you’re at your friends/work/UNI and you can show them a video/presentation/photo/document via their TV/Projector from your phone.

The only things I would have liked are:

• a higher resolution output – at least match the 800×480 resolution of the N900’s screen, or better go 720p.
• support for bluetooth keyboard – as well as making typing easier on the big screen, it could make it easier to navigate the media player.

Below are a collection of TV-out demonstrations with the N900. [note cable is included in the sales package – unlike with N900]

Short intro to TV-out

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDsse8nNnp0]

[YOUTUBE=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si5oXLwvdEE]

Video – DivX 4MBs

[YOUTUBE=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYgiOvINlOA]

gaming – Bounce

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBzUNe5ov_o]

Gaming – Quake III

[YOUTUBE=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHSZfhY25Jc]

Gaming – SNES and Wii Controller

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qJT7qA-1UM]

Via a projector

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpcdUoF7_YQ]

Tags: Maemo 5, N900, Nokia, Nokia N900, Nseries, TV-out, Video

Category: Nokia, Nseries, Symbian