Bronwyn Harris1d ago

OK techy friends, I have a mystery.

I have an Ipad that I use to watch TV and I connect it to an external monitor using an HDMI cable with an adaptor to whatever the ipad uses (I can't keep track of connector names).

ANYWAY. It only works for some streaming services and not others. Like why does it connect perfectly for apple TV and Hulu but for HBO it will play two minutes or so and then act like it's not connected to the monitor. Even weirder, Netflix used to work fine and now it doesn't. I can play Netflix on my ipad but if I hook it to the monitor, it gives up. But if I switch it immediately to Hulu, it plays on the monitor.

What is happening? Shouldn't the monitor just mirror the ipad?

oh yeah and sometimes it does exactly mirror the ipad and sometimes it doesn't show on the ipad and plays on the monitor only.

Show threadSteve Barnes1d ago

@Bronwyn –

> Shouldn't the monitor just mirror the ipad?

To my memory as a developer: not necessarily. It does by default, but it's up to apps to decide what to show on a second screen. (For example, in the Photos app, the second screen displays the current photo without the interface.)

That could be what's happening with some streaming apps – perhaps they deliberately display nothing on the second display – but your description also sounds like perhaps a glitch or an HDCP thing.

Show threadJohn McChesney-Young1d ago
@Starfia @Bronwyn I do first-line tech support for Berkeley English (= flailing around a lot until something works) and I recently discovered a campus-licensed streaming service would not go from the prof's laptop to our projector, so I too have seen that situation where the service blocks it.
Show threadBronwyn Harris1d ago
@jmccyoung @Starfia ok so I’m not hallucinating. It’s weird though- why wouldn’t they want me to be able to send it to a monitor? It looks better on the monitor!
Show threadDrYak20h ago

@Bronwyn @jmccyoung @Starfia Why: because iPads don't really "send" to monitors.
afair, there's no video out on Apple's Lightning connector. So HDMI dongles instead run a very stripped down AppleTV-like mini iOS, and the iPad streams compressed video to it, similar to Air Play but over a USB2 wire.

See: doom on an Apple HDMI donlge - https://hackaday.com/2025/02/06/running-doom-on-an-apple-lightning-to-hdmi-adapter/

...

Running Doom On An Apple Lightning To HDMI Adapter

As a general rule of thumb, anything that has some kind of display output and a processor more beefy than an early 90s budget PC can run Doom just fine. As [John] AKA [Nyan Satan] demonstrates in a…

Hackaday
Show threadDrYak20h ago

@Bronwyn @jmccyoung @Starfia ...

It possible that to video apps like Netflix this could look like screen recording (as used for piracy) and be blocked by default, unless the app recognize it's just a HDMI dongle?

If your HDMI adapter is 3rd party there's a higher chance that it accidentally trips the "no screen rips" protection of Netflix?

Show threadBronwyn Harris10h ago
@dryak @jmccyoung @Starfia oh that might be. Sadly I can’t afford an Apple monitor
Show threadDrYak
@Bronwyn @jmccyoung @Starfia Maybe try plugging different HDMI adapters into your iPad if you have (or can borrow) some, until you find one which doesn't trip the "anti-screen-rip" protection of NetFlix?
3:51pmWeb
Show threadBronwyn Harris5h ago
@dryak @jmccyoung @Starfia don’t have any extra believe it or not. And I don’t really want to buy some if it’s not going to necessarily make a difference. So I’ll probably just live with it as is and be annoyed.