The iPad mini has a decent screen for what it is, a small tablet computer. But its display is nowhere near the size of a living room TV or even a computer monitor that you might find in a conference room or an auditorium. To send iPad content to a bigger screen, you can choose from these connectors:
Lightning-to-VGA Adapter: Projecting what’s on the iPad’s screen to a larger display is the very reason behind the iPad Lightning-to-VGA Adapter that Apple is selling for $49. You can use it to connect your iPad to TVs, projectors, and VGA displays. What for? To watch videos, slide shows, and presentations on the big screen.
VGA (video graphics array) delivers, by today’s standards, low-resolution video output, compared, say to the more advanced HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface).
Lightning Digital AV Adapter: The newest addition to the Apple adapter family is the $49 Apple Digital AV Adapter, which connects to your big screen TV via HDMI, which is pretty much the standard for HDTVs and other modern A/V gear.
It lets you mirror the display on your iPad on a big screen TV, which is great for demos and presentations. Ed has used this adapter to, among other things, play Angry Birds on the bigger TV screen. Bob uses it to watch HD movies in hotel rooms.
Speaking of mirroring the display of your iPad onto a large-screen TV, you can do that wirelessly as long as you’re streaming to another Apple accessory, Apple TV. It’s all accomplished through AirPlay. Apple TV provides a lot of niceties in its own right, even if you don’t own an iPad.
For example, you can watch 1080p high-definition TV shows and movies; watch videos on Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Vimeo; listen to music from your iTunes library on a PC or Mac; and admire photos through iCloud, all for $99.