Steven Hoskins, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, recently told me the following story and I begged him to write it up for us. Basically, he observed that Apple reversed the colors of standard AV cables so that people who try to hook their iPods up to a TV using a non-Apple cable assume it won't work:

For years I have used a standard AV cable that connects from the mini-AV-out on most digital cameras to composite video and audio RCA jacks on televisions. The jack/plug color coordination is standard: red and white is for stereo audio; yellow is video.

Apples latest iPod can be connected to a television as well, and I immediately uploaded an iPod movie and plugged in my trusty cable, but to no avail. After re-reading the manual, I turned to Apple's website, where I found a wealth of information on Apple's AV Connection Kit for iPod, about $100, which included a cable to connect the iPod to a television. Hmmm. I was fairly miffed my trusty $30 cable could not do the job.

Noted on its website: "Important: You should only use the included cable. Other RCA video cables won't work. Though other cables may look similar, only the Apple iPod AV Cable works with the iPod Headphones and AV port".

Somehow during later experimentation, I accidentally attached the wrong color plugs of my cable to the television RCA jacks -- and it worked! It looks like Apple has merely changed the standard color scheme to make people believe their regular cables are incompatible. Sneaky Apple.

If anyone has similar results, please let us know. (We don't know if experimenting is dangerous to the devices, though.) I should add that the AV cable is now available from Apple without the full kit for $19.

By Carrie McLaren.


Posted by: Ryan    Source