The Gadget: The Dexim AV Dock, which lets you watch videos stored on your iPod or iPhone on a TV.
The Price: $150
The Verdict: Think of this as a cheap Apple TV replacement. Since you can now rent and purchase movies directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch over a Wi-Fi connection, there’s no need to purchase a dedicated box like the Apple TV to do the exact same thing. Sure, the video quality isn’t anywhere near HD, but the convenience of getting to watch your videos on a big screen is pretty awesome.
Still – there’s plenty of room for improvement here. For a start, you need to manually unlock your iPhone before the included remote control will let you navigate through your iPod. Which kind of defeats the point of having a remote in the first place.
For some reason, the iPhone’s screen stays on during playback, which is kind of distracting, although you can turn it off – manually, once again.
The build quality is extremely solid, as you’d hope from a $150 dock. It’s small enough and lightweight enough to be transportable, which makes it a great asset for travellers. It connects to your TV via composite, which does nothing for video quality, but does mean it will connect to pretty much any TV.
The other concern is that for some reason, the dock doesn’t seem to work with the 3GS. Or more specifically, the remote doesn’t let you control the 3GS – it will still output the video when you manually control it from the iPhone. Not that Apple peripherals have ever been future-proofed with future Apple products, but it’s still a little disappointing.