Gadgetory

the galaxy s4 offers a couple ways to mirror your phone screen onto your TV and when it's set up everything you see here will be duplicated on the TV it's great for playing media like Netflix or firing up a playlist there are two ways to do mirroring wired or wireless depending on which accessories you use for the fastest cheapest and most reliable set up wired mirroring is your best bet of course it means your phone will be tethered to your TV but you'll get super smooth playback for this you'll need Samsung's MHL to HDMI adapter which is about 40 bucks it's a proprietary accessory that lets you output audio and video from your s4 but before that gets hooked up grab your phone and go to settings my device accessory and scroll down to output audio make sure surround sound is selected then just plug an HDMI cable into your TV that goes in the MHL adapter and this microUSB side goes into your phone finally you'll need to hook up your wall charger here so your phone stays juice to power the setup now just switch the TV to that HDMI input and you should see your phone show up and anything you see here and do on your phone will appear on the big screen but as soon as you put your phone in landscape mode you'll see it fill the screen because of all of this wiring it's not ideal for browsing through a lot of short videos like YouTube videos but it is the best choice for streaming a longer movie or music playlist wireless mirroring like Apple AirPlay is a little more complicated later on in 2013 samsung will release TVs that are compatible with the s4 and let you do wireless mirroring but if you don't want to buy a new TV to get mirroring check out the samsung AllShare cast dongle which hooks up to any TV to add wireless mirroring all right if you have any questions along the way hit me up on twitter and check out how to siena comm for more galaxy s4 tips for CNET I'm Sharon Vaknin