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Wong is the president of the MHL Consortium, which is trying to establish Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) as a new standard to connect mobile phones to big-screen TVs and other display devices. Think of it as a replacement for HDMI that is especially suited for mobile, if you will.

Check out a quick demo of MHL featuring the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, or keep on reading below.

MHL’s awareness problem

Wong’s chances to compete with HDMI aren’t actually all that bad: The MHL Consortium was founded by industry heavyweights like Nokia, Toshiba and Sony. It has about 80 licensees, and the technology is embedded in more than a dozen new handsets from Samsung, HTC and LG. Walk into any AT&T store in the U.S. and you will see seven MHL-capable devices on display, Wong told me.

But talk to the salespeople and you will find that no one has ever heard of MHL. Handset manufacturers don’t advertise the feature, and CE makers don’t even bother to label the MHL port on their TV sets. “This is my fundamental problem,” Wong told me this week. It’s also the reason why he is practically in nonstop campaign mode, traveling to Germany, China and throughout the U.S. to get the word out. “The awareness just isn’t there today,” Wong admitted.

Gaming, presentations, 1080p video

Wong is trying hard to change that, and I caught up with him in San Francisco during yet another day of press briefings. He gave me a demo of MHL, and the technology is pretty impressive: MHL-enabled handsets basically repurpose their micro USB port to connect to big-screen TVs through special MHL cables. A few select TV sets already support MHL natively through a port that doubles as an HDMI input.

Once connected, MHL offers not only mirroring but also up to 1080p video playback and the capability to control your handset through your TV’s remote control. Essentially, your phone becomes something of a mobile set-top box. Don’t have an MHL-compatible TV yet? No worries: MHL-to-HDMI adapters that connect to any HD TV are readily available for around $15. Wong told me that MHL cables could eventually be as cheap as your plain old USB cable. Oh, and MHL is powered, so your phone gets charged while connected to the TV.

So why would you need a mobile set-top box? First of all, showing off your videos and photos everywhere you go is nice, and plugging a Netflix-capable device into your hotel TV sounds like a great idea as well. Wong also ran his presentation off his phone when we met, and he showed me that the technology is great for bringing games like Angry Birds to the big screen (check out the video above for a quick MHL demo recorded by our own Kevin Tofel).

Great for emerging markets

But the really interesting use cases may be beyond simple screen mirroring. CE manufacturers and cable companies like Comcast have long tried to get people to use Skype on their TV set, but using the big screen for videoconferencing usually requires the purchase or rental of a separate webcam. Virtually all modern smartphones, on the other hand, already have a front-facing camera. Connect them to your TV via MHL and you’ve got yourself a video conferencing setup on the cheap.

Wong also told me that BMW is looking to use MHL in its cars, where the port could be used for entertainment as well as emergency services. Phone makers are looking to extend the experience to the big screen beyond mirroring, so you would have multiple or extended desktops, just like when you connect your laptop to a second monitor. And MHL is an interesting proposition for emerging markets, where cell phones increasingly replace computers and people don’t have much money to spend on additional home entertainment devices.

Wireless isn’t really all that wireless

Of course, MHL also has its downsides. For one, phones are intimate devices. You use them to carry around your own media and playlists and get alerts for personal messages on them. Sharing all of that on the big screen can be a daunting proposition. Second, your phone is somewhat out of reach when connected to the TV, even if you have a really long cord.

Apple’s Airplay, DLNA and various wireless display technologies don’t have that stigma, but Wong dismissed them as battery drainers, especially when watching HD video. “Fundamentally, wireless isn’t wireless,” he said. At some point, you always have to plug it in, if only to recharge. So why not just plug them into the TV?

Of course, battery issues haven’t stopped Apple from gaining huge mind share with Airplay. Heck, even iPad HD mirroring is getting more attention than MHL, despite being less advanced and much more expensive. Going up against that won’t be an easy feat, even though MHL seems in a good position to reach millions of consumers in 2012. “Getting people excited about it is easy,” Wong told me. “Getting people to know about it is hard.”

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HDBaseT’s features should make home theater enthusiasts and cord cutters alike happy: Not only is it based on standard CAT5e/6 networking cables, which is going to make networking your home theater much cheaper than HDMI, the new standard also supports cable lengths of up to 328 feet. In other words: There’s really no more excuses for not connecting your PC to your TV, even if the two devices are located in different rooms of your house.

HDBaseT will support the transmission of HD and 3-D video signals, as well as data through an integrated 100MBit Ethernet connection. The technology will also allow true networking of various devices and displays, meaning that your DVR or HTPC can easily output video to any TV set in the household. Users will be able to daisy-chain devices or connect them through a star topology, and even transmit power through the cables. Essentially, this could mean that TV sets will only need one single input cable to receive video from a multitude of devices.

Features like these could be good news for platforms like Google TV that try to unite cable content with over-the-top and local video. Logitech’s upcoming Google TV box allows users to daisy-chain devices via HDMI, but it won’t offer the ability to easily add devices like a 3-D Blu-ray player to the mix.

HDBaseT is supported by LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Valens Semiconductor, and the first devices supporting the new standard are expected to go to market later this year. However, the companies involved estimate that the majority of adoption will happen in 2011.

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Clicker Redesigns Its Online Video Guide; with a web site redesign it unveiled on Thursday, Clicker hopes to guide viewers to the shows they want. (NY Times Bits blog)

Omniture in Three-Screen Data Pact With NBC for Online Video Reporting; Omniture is developing a three-screen system for analyzing consumer interest and behavior, and has signed up NBC as one of its first customers for the solution. (Beet.TV)

YouTube Will Be Profitable in 2010; Patrick Walker, director of partnerships for YouTube, said he expects the online video service to be profitable this year. (Broadband TV News)

Sky Plans Germany’s First Live 3-D Telecast; Sky Deutschland is following in the footsteps of its UK counterpart with a live 3-D transmission of the Bundesliga. (Broadband TV News)

HDMI Group Releases 3D-TV Version of Spec; the entity responsible for licensing the High-Definition Multimedia Interface specification has released version 1.4a of the spec, which adds mandatory 3-D formats for broadcast content. (Multichannel News)

At the core of the upcoming 1.4 update will be the inclusion of a 3-D format specifically tailored to the needs of TV broadcasters, which have to deal with higher compression rates than those found in 3-D content for Blu-ray and other physical formats. The need for an update shows just how much the 3-D market place has shifted over the last couple of months. As Broadcasting & Cable notes, HDMI Licensing initially only included a movie and game 3-D video format when it took a first stab at 3-D with the 1.4 specs, which were released last summer.

HDMI Licensing is apparently also reevaluating its compliance criteria. It had previously declared that hardware makers have to support every 3-D standard included in its specs, but now is saying that only TV set makers have to pass this test. Makers of set-top boxes can elect to just support one standard, though, a move that aims to make it easier to support 3-D TV with existing set-top boxes and avoid confusion in the marketplace.

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For the purposes of this article, I’m assuming you are using a Macbook or Macbook Pro, but the process works with desktop Macs, too, just make sure you know what kind of port your computer has. Your goal is to get both the audio and video from your computer into your TV. Unfortunately, Macs don’t have HDMI (audio and video combined) yet so we have to use two cables. Your new TV definitely has HDMI so we’ll use an adapter to make the connection.

Hardware

HDMI cables are very affordable on Monoprice: High Speed HDMI 1.3a Category 2 Certified Cable 28AWG – 6ft w/Ferrite Cores. You definitely need one of these.

First you must figure out if you have Mini DVI or Mini DisplayPort. If you have a unibody Macbook or Macbook Pro then you have Mini DisplaypPrt. If you have an aluminum Macbook or Macbook Pro then you have Mini DVI. If you’re not sure then take a look at these pictures.

Mini DisplayPort:

The adapter you need for is available here: Mini DisplayPort to HDMI. Connect the adapter to your computer and the HDMI cable, then connect the HDMI cable to an available input on your TV.

Mini DVI:

The adapter you need for Mini DVI is available here: Mini DVI to HDMI.

As for audio, you can use a basic stereo audio cable: 3.5mm Stereo Plug/Plug M/M Cable – 6ft. Connect it to your computer’s headphone port and your TV’s audio input. If your TV has an optical audio input then you can use this cable: Toslink to Mini M/M OD:5.0mm, Molded Type – 3ft. Your Macbook or Macbook Pro has a very unique audio output that offers both stereo and optical connections. Optical audio is not necessary, but if you can go digital then you should. (I was surprised to see my new TV only offers optical output and not input.)

One thing to note is on many TVs the one audio input is next to its corresponding video input.

As you can see, I purchased my HDMI cables from Amazon Basics.

Also, you are not required to use HDMI for video. You can also use DVI if your TV supports it. In that case you would need a DVI cable, and either a Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter or Mini DVI to DVI adapter.

If you want to get fancy and combine both audio and video into one simple solution then you should get this: Mini DisplayPort Male and USB Male Audio to HDMI Female Converting Adapter. It uses USB audio instead of the audio port. It’s more expensive but it’s definitely cleaner since you only need one cable going into your TV.

Software

Netflix instant streaming requires a subscription. If you have one, you can use your web browser to start streaming a movie, click Full Screen, and you’re done.

Hulu Desktop is a free application you can use to access Hulu content. It’s designed to be controlled by the 6 button Apple remote which may take some time to figure out.

I recommend turning on Mirroring in Display’s System Preferences. Then you can dim the Macbook/Macbook Pro’s screen and focus on the TV.

There’s an amazing app for the iPhone (one that requires an entire review on this site) called TouchPad ($3.99, iTunes link). It replaces the need for a separate wireless keyboard and mouse. The app controls your computer over WiFi. Setup instructions are quick and are available inside the app itself, so you don’t have to go looking through an online support page.

I hope these products and services help you get the most of your Mac and your new TV. I know they’ve completely changed the way I consume media in my own home.

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What’s Up With Live Video Streaming for the iPhone? Companies like Qik and Ustream are still unsure what live-streaming functionality the new 3G S iPhone will allow. (TechCrunch)

BT Wants to Charge Video Content Providers; company says content providers like YouTube should pony up for the amount of bandwidth they consume on its network. (GigaOM) Last week, BT was caught throttling the BBC iPlayer in the evenings.

New HDMI Spec Supports 3D; the 1.4 specification of the high-definition multimedia interface would also allow for 4K HD formats (current is 2K) and make it easier to connect devices and watch HD content from the Internet. (Multichannel News)

Cable VOD to Become More Web Like; as the number of titles available increase, Time Warner Cable looks to improve search, add recommendations and connect to your mobile device. (Broadcasting & Cable)

Bid4Spots to Start Selling Local Cable TV Airtime Today; company kicks off its reverse-auction clearinghouse for unsold ad inventory. (MediaWeek)

Pirate Bay Judge Ruled Not Biased; though the judge was a member of copyright associations, court says that was for him to stay on top of copyright issues. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Comedy Writers Find New Opportunities Online; with sit-coms on the decline on traditional TV, scribes from shows like Human Giant and even Beverly Hills 90210 are creating comic bits for the web. (Variety)

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Apple had finally released OS X 10.5.7, so I downloaded the combo updater in preparation to install on my three Macs. After installing the update on my MacBook Pro and my wife’s iMac without any issues, I ran the combo updater on my Mac mini that’s hooked up to my TV.

My TV’s native resolution is 1360×768 and ever since I got the Mac mini, this has worked flawlessly and with an extremely crisp picture when using a DVI-HDMI cable. So it was to my dismay when, after installing OS X 10.5.7 and the mini rebooted, the resolution displayed was completely wrong. “Ah, it must have reset, I’ll go change it back,” I thought to myself. So I went to the Display preference pane in System Preferences and looked for 1360×768, but it wasn’t there. I blinked and looked again; it still wasn’t there.

I tried all the other various resolutions, such as with the over-scan option turned on and then again with it turned off. Nothing looked right or displayed properly, and I was aghast. My wife would be wanting to watch the latest episode of “Master Chef” being recorded by EyeTV later in the evening and she wouldn’t be happy to hear that I had done something to the setup that was working excellently before I “fixed something that wasn’t broken and broke it.”

So I started searching and found that this is a common issue caused by the 10.5.7 upgrade. Quite simply, it seems that the DVI supported resolution detection is now broken. Apple is apparently aware of the issue and its developers are looking into it — but there’s no word on an ETA for a fix. If you have a Mac that you regularly hook up to your TV via DVI-HDMI, it would be advisable to stay on 10.5.6 for now.

In the meantime, if the horse has already bolted before you shut the stable doors and you’ve already upgraded, there are two workarounds that you can do to restore your TV’s native resolution.

1. Go back to VGA
If your TV has a standard PC VGA input, you can use a DVI-VGA adapter instead of DVI-HDMI. This will make the correct resolution available again in the Display preference pane. Of course this goes backwards in technology to an analog signal, but it will still look better than the wrong resolution. This is what I’ve done for now — my wife can’t see the difference between VGA and HDMI anyway, so she’s happy.

2. Use ScreenResX to get your resolution back
A useful utility called ScreenResX can be installed. This lets you customize and tweak which resolutions are available in the Display preferences (even creating custom resolutions as required). ScreenResX is available as a 10-day trial and the good news here is that once you’ve created the new resolution and made it available in the Display preferences, you can uninstall ScreenResX.

To keep up-to-date on this issue, keep an eye on this discussion thread on the Apple support forums. This also lists various ScreenResX settings people have used to get their resolution back, so is a useful reference point to assist with this. Hopefully Apple will fix this issue soon, as it does great damage to its “It just works” motto.

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