Apple News | iPhone Used to Hack Times Square Video Billboards? [Video]

Loud!

A new YouTube video demonstrates a hack which purportedly takes over the video display of Times Square's massive screens using an iPhone. CBS posted the story saying, "First off I'm going to state that I do not know if this is in fact real or fake. My gut is telling me it has to be fake... but if it's real, I'm so going to buy one!"

Here's how the poster describes the hack...

the way it works is pretty simple: plug in my transmitter into the iphone 4 and play back any video clip. you can play it through the ipod feature or through the camera roll. 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 doesn't matter what shape or size the hacked screen is because the hack video will simply keep its correct dimensions and the rest of the hacked space will stay black.

i chose times square for my demo because it has lots of video screens to try it on. it is also one of the most monitored and secured areas in new york city and that made it that much more fun :). you can see in my video that the repeater is pretty powerful but the signal is not very stable yet. i'm working on that. i will post a new video later this week explaining how i made this prototype.

Even if the hack is fake, the video is pretty impressive.