A few months ago, I was listening to an episode of The Talk Show from Daring Fireball, and John Gruber had a developer on. They mentioned a new app from his company that can burn your iPad into an HDMI Monitor. I thought it was silly, but it stuck in the back of my mind. The app had a cool name and website: Orion.tube.
Cut to recently when I started a project to re-do my office. I got rid of the HDTV in the office so I could focus on work. That ended up leaving a void since I no longer had a way to play any of my game consoles. It’s not something I do often, but it was a gap. I recalled the podcast and finally got it a try. I bought the recommended USB-C Capture Card and gave it a go.
I was not anticipating how delightful the experience is. Connecting a Nintendo Switch to the iPad 12.9” with the XDR display looks amazing. It’s fun to play in front of the iPad. Having the Magic Keyboard gives a second USB port so you can play it and keep it juiced.
I recorded a short video to illustrate some of the features. See a little bit of gameplay from Tears of the Kingdom:
You’ll notice that the video is a little strange when trying to use the 4K upscaling feature. Once it’s turned off, the video smoothes out. There’s the CRT option that I’d dying to try out but for some reason my SCART to HDMI converter wasn’t working. I’ll give it another go with the retro Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast.
