Hacker with iPhone takes over Times Square screens | Hacker News Reader

Hacker with iPhone takes over Times Square screens

alexandrosmaragos.com

205 pointsMatBailey66 comments

I'm waiting for the explanation. It looks cool, but the description sounds like a Hollywood understanding of computers:

  > the transmitter instantly sends the video signal to the video
  > repeater and the video repeater overrides any video screen
  > that it's being held next to

It almost sound like they are hacking from some computer with six monitors and an interactive 3d OS. I'll be waiting for the explanation of the prototype though. If it's real (which the video seems to imply), it's some seriously cool stuff.

The odds of it being real are not looking too good.

Apart of all the handwaving on how the override work, there's many others technical issues with it. For example, videos played from the camera roll wouldn't be outputted to the audio jack.

Also, the digital "interference" shown during the transitions is pretty, but it's not technically feasible... Sometimes it has horizontal scanlines, sometimes vertical, sometimes scaled chunks, etc. There's no codec or transmission method that would have artifacts like that.

This is just someone showing off their After Effects skills.

This is the part that instantly convinced me it's fake.

While I'm no codec expert, pretty much any real-world transport stream I can think of would either start losing macroblocks or, most likely, drop to black, and the new stream would start with the first full keyframe. The effect shown in the video appears to be the product of imagination fueled by a conflation of digital artifacting (rectilinear dropouts), analog artifacting (flickering, crosstalk, snow), and even CRT physics (lateral distortion).

The irony, of course, is that if he didn't have those transitions -- if, for example, he had actually built such a device -- the video would be much less convincing because it would look too good. Instinctively, we feel a small, hacked-together device should have visible difficulty commandeering a giant screen.

for me, the tell was that at some point, the video was stretched horizontally and a bit later, stretched vertically.

Sounds fake to me, this is not possible with the iPhone through default software and even with a jailbreak there is no way you could ever cram the video through the headphone jack, you would have to play it back through a very specialized app, that would need to compress it down to an unrecognizable mess and you still would have to figure out a way to push it to the screens. Not possible IMHO.

I know on the old iPod's with video out you could get an RCA cable that went from 3.5 mm to AV cables:

http://www.macworld.com/article/149335/2005/11/apple_ipod_av...

That looks to be because the jack is an AV jack, not just a simple headphone jack, where the connectors are arranged such that when you plug headphones into it they only make connection with the audio part but when you have the right cable (with a much longer connector with more segments) it would make connection with both audio and video out, but each have their own separate physical connectors.

The "hacker" is claiming that every video system works the same. That's crap.

"six monitors and an interactive 3d OS" - LoL! Password Swordfish, anyone?

I know some of the apple products -can- send video through the headphone jack, so that's not why I don't believe. I also know there are a lot of interesting public-space electronics hacking kits coming out of small arduino shops like Adafruit. Still though, I'm a bit skeptical. Really looking forward to seeing if this is legit.

99% chance this is just a Photoshop. The blog is about "visuals", not hacking or computer security, and I doubt that being a graphics designer is the key to figuring out how to transmit video to a Times Square video screen.

I call bullshit too. I know a bit of electronics, and the transmitter that's plugged into the iPhone looks like a nonsensical circuit: it has something that looks like a transformer (the big black box with an horizontal metal frame that would be the magnetic loop), 2 quartz rezonators (the 2 small vertical rectangular-with-rounded ends metal things next to each other), a red LED (that's off!) and a switch on top left. I'm pretty sure the white plastic horizontal rectangle at the bottom is a capacitor. Actually, if what I first said are quartz crystals are rectifiers, this thing would be a power supply! The wires hanging on the right are the 110 volt leads. You can even see the thicker copper tracks on the circuit board that lead to the transformer. Also, the bit that goes into the iPhone (what port does it go in btw ?) looks just like a metal bit, not a cable or jack.

There's also the hand waving. Usually experimenters are so proud of their puppies that they can't wait to publish the schematics.

Finally, the author is a film maker. Film maker get it ? He made a cool fake film, kudos to him, that's what he's good at, and he got us to talk about it.

I doubt that being a graphics designer is the key to figuring out how to transmit video

Film-making and HDSLR does not translate into "graphics design". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSLR

I'm guessing fake too. If you notice, one of the "demos" splits his video evenly over what appears to be 4 screens. If this were a real device, as described, it probably should have shown the same video on every screen.

I agree, in the video it's kind of surprising how no one notices it.

I don't think that's a very strong counterargument.

Most people probably aren't really watching these things. They either process it with their peripheral vision or glance at it for a while when they're really bored and there's nothing else to see.

Now, the image is rather ordinary and stays there only for a few seconds.

This isn't flying saucer or a plane crashing into a building. It's just a dude on a TV that displays ads.

How different is it, really, from the famous Blade Runner ad?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ17UsZ0DEQ

Also, the camera almost never films people who actually see the screens. So even if there was someone pointing finger at it, we wouldn't see it in the video.

If you notice closely, you'll see almost the exact same video being repeated in all the screens- no matter how big/far they are. The size of the receiver/transmitter certainly isn't really big enough. If it was real, it would be grainier too. Good effort on the video though.

Is the video stream even accessible via the headphone jack? That would be news to me.

Regardless of whether the results (hacking the screen) are real or fake, I have to say this would be close to number one on my 'things I wouldn't have the courage to do list': Hook an electronic devie to a balloon and send it skyward in Times Square while my friend films me and holds up a mobile phone with an electronic device poking out of it.

but if its fake, it is fake.

As someone that makes content for these types of displays I can almost guarantee that this is fake. Usually, my clients ask for a projector (Flash or maybe Processing) or have an embedded player. They are usually powered by PCs that have a direct connection to the display (or display array).

I’m trying to imaging the signal strength needed to override a cabled connection. I suspect it’s in the “lightning bolt” range of electrical power.

At 55s into the video he "hacks" 4 different screens and his one video span across all 4. If it was real it should have overtaken each individual screen, not the computer chopping the video for each screen.

This is without a doubt fake. Not to mention this was posted on a "visuals" blog

So a few things... the video through the audio jack, probably not at the rate that the video is displaying...

Notice also in the begininng demonstrations that he has to get the device super close to the screen in order for it "to work"... and when he moves it less than a foot away, it stops.

Now.. when he ties it to the balloon, it would require that the balloon would happen to fly within less than a foot of the screen. Errr..

So, the next clue is the muxing couldn't be accomplished without having input to how many screens there are. For example, he holds it up to the video screen with 4 screens... How would the device know to map the video across four screens? It would have to be doing 4x the work as well.

Clever video, funny.

I'm 100% sure it's fake but on the 4 screen example, we have a setup like that here at work. They have a daisy chain board on them that is used to chain the inputs together and the screen is set to only display a certain section of the image (the daisy chain board do the interpolation or whatever is needed) so if it was even possible to send that signal which I doubt very much, the screens would only show their portion.

Reminds me of this Dutch guy on youtube, who'd pretend to hack all kinds of stuff. Quite funny, but clearly fake. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcmmFQGxMNU (subtitled)

Why wouldn't the CNN bar be replaced as well? It seems to be part of the same Clear Channel video screen.

First thing I noticed as well. Unless they happen to be different screens...

Fake or not they did a very convincing job of making it look real.

Should be "Video Editor with Adobe After Effects takes over Times Square screens".

Reverse Van-Eck Phreaking?

EDIT:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking

http://movieclips.com/DByG-hackers-movie-kind-of-feel-like-g...

I dont buy it, a Giant screen a'la times square is not just a scaled up TV. The "repeater" would need to be where the video controller hardware was housed. I'm guessing here, but I doubt that its directly behind the display like it is on the flat screens in a sidewalk kiosk. I also agree that the multi screen displays are controlled by external signal sources that handle splitting the source up.

Clever production, but wildly implausible: video frequency through audio DAC (best video compression in the world is still a postage stamp if you're trying to fit through a dial up modem); device sorts out screen characteristics; device sorts out picture should be split across four monitors; device so "powerful" to take over jumbotron yet so weak it has to be inches from bus stop screen, etc.

Or an older iPod video that has a video out on the 3.5 mm jack.

http://www.macworld.com/article/149335/2005/11/apple_ipod_av...

Several comments on the Youtube page say it's fake, chiefly because the iPhone jack cannot output video.

Is this true? If so, is it possible he wrote an app with special drivers to pull this off?

Yes, it's possible. See project HiJack:

http://eecs.umich.edu/~prabal/projects/hijack/

Ah, thanks all. So it is possible, but most likely a hoax for other reasons mentioned in this thread.

Looks like Square (http://squareup.com) to me.

I don't know about the headphone jack as a quasi video output. You could, in theory, sample the video and create an audio stream that was an encoded version of the video (though I suspect resolution, frame rate and color accuracy would all suffer to the point that it was noticeable on the large screens).

The bit that makes it suspect to me is that the iPad already has a VGA output, and even then standard iPhone/iPod Touch has had a composite video output available via the dock connector forever. Since this hack is more about hardware than software, why would you create your own video encoding stack to use the headphone jack instead of just taking the video that already comes out the dock connector?

In order for this to work, the piece that goes next to the screens would have to output a signal that was stronger than the signal actually being fed to the screens to cause the internal circuitry to lock onto the new signal. Seems unlikely to happen in a device that appears to be powered by watch batteries.

I think that something like this is theoretically possible, but requires much different/larger hardware than what is shown in the videos. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though.

Humorously enough, early television in the UK (from 1929-1935) had only 30 lines of resolution and so could be recorded at audio frequencies onto a "Phonovision" disk. You can see some examples at http://www.tvdawn.com/recordng.htm of the low quality of the results.

For a little while, the BBC did broadcasts of 30-line video using two AM radio frequencies (one for the video, one for the audio) that could be picked up by special recievers.

I think the iPhone jack has been abused as a general-purpose communication port before. I'm sure it can output some signal that something can interpret as/translate into a video signal...

That doesn't mean this isn't fake, of course. And I'm not convinced that the jack would have decent bandwidth...

I wondered this myself. While technically you could on a generic computer (a wire is a wire, digital and/or analog), there certainly don't exist any APIs to do this on the iPhone. It would make far more sense to hook up to the dock (for which I believe there are APIs for).

The second giveaway is that you definitely cannot get enough power out of the headphone jack to run any serious electronics, not to mention a transmitter that can apparently transmite hundreds of feet in a crowded place like Times Square.

The iPhone jack can output an analog signal. What if you convert a digital video to an analog signal that can go out through the jack? The transmitter would just amplifies that signal.

Clever trick that. They appear to have plugged the circuit board from a 'wall wart' type power supply into the headphone jack. Also, the 'antenna' is weird (why is it connected at both ends?).

This is fake.

In the Netherlands there was also a fake hacker like this, it turned out to be a viral ad for an IT degree at university.

It's cool but obviously fake. Why the hell would a video signal be coming out of the headset port?

http://thinkmodo.com/ probably did this viral

Fake or not, could this actually be done (perhaps w/ other device than an iPhone)? If so, how?

For anything like this to work remotely, there would have to be some point where the video the screen is playing is being transmitted wirelessly that you could overpower. While I obviously don't know how those screens work, I would be very surprised if it wasn't wired all the way; why add the vagaries of wireless to all the other possibly problems you might have with those, even putting aside the security issues? Even when it's playing a TV station back I would imagine it's conventional cable, not pulling it in over the air.

I just confirmed that it's a hoax with someone at a company that owns screens in Times Square.

Please forgive me, but I feel the need to say: "this is a shop i can tell from the pixels"

We would have heard of this here in NY if this was real. Gimme a break....

This HAS to be fake, right?

Yes, would he perhaps be "demonstrating" it on April 1st?

why is this on front page?

great video montage guys

hoax

this is not an hoax, I think those video streams have to be updated remotely, maybe he figured out the protocol and the transmission frequency

They do have internet access, not some random radio update protocol.

When I wrote the software for the Coke and Samsung screens in Picadilly Circus in London (the times square equivalent) we used wired internet or brought hard drives in. We did actually have wifi access (firewalled though) to ground level.

All running Linux then. Alas i didnt get a photo of the one time we got a bootup screen on the sign with penguin after a power cut.

This totally reminds me of the movie, "The Recruit". :D LOL

I guess none of you have seen The Recruit.... :(

Great demonstration, bad explaination

Could you please explain the down vote?

Screen syncing and screen sharing seems to be the theme of HN today...

You can already easily do this using TubeMote (tubemote.com) without the need for all the hackery.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com