Hello,
I am thinking about buying a pro plus controller on eBay for about $400 for my phantom 4 pro. My question is does the pro plus controller help with video lag vs running it on an iPhone 8. I figured since it’s hardwired it should process the images faster than iPhone app. Should I upgrade my controller?
I know it’s a bright nice screen, but I am mainly looking to help with video lag when the drone is out far distances.

Thanks

Hi. Thank you for reaching out to DJI Forum. With regards to this inquiry. Since this remote controller is from eBay we do not have capabilities to test the said remote controller, it is best to get in touch with the seller to test the remote controller before finalizing the purchase. Thank you.

Hardware decoding used to be the thing, but not any more, these days MPEG decoding is done with silicon that is configured by software. But the efficiency is determined by how much silicon is available to do the job. There is no guarantee that the Pro+ controller can decode the signals any better than your iPhone, but I would suggest that the Pro+ contoller may go out of date faster than the latest phone.

With regard to lag, it is an unavoidable part of using the MPEG video stream. Lag can be caused by a slow processor, but as the received signal strength drops off, perhaps due to distance, errors creep into the MPEG stream as received, and the decoding process may have to discard the frame it is working on due to the severity of the errors, thus it takes longer to decode and the result is apparent lag. If this is happening, then a faster video process is not going to make it better.