HDMI and What it Will Do for You

CrzyP writes "AnandTech has whipped up a short but informative article on the new HDMI digital audio/video connection standard that is said to be the successor of DVI. Take a look at what this new standard is all about and what we can expect from it in the future!"

Comments

What WILL it do for you?

[TopSpin]

From the article:

The first question that should pop into your head right now is why we would need HDMI on the PC when it physically does the job of DVI particularly considering how few people actually use DVI instead of analog connections! The answer is, again, copy protection.

Four years ago Cox wrote something in LKML that has stuck in my head since:

So you cant tap the data anywhere.

Think

encrypted music fed to an encrypted audio controller to speakers which
decrypt and add watermarks

encrypted video decrypted and macrovision + watermarked only in buffers
the CPU cant access

audio input that has legally mandated watermark checks and wont record
watermarked data.

That is the dream these people have. They'd also like the OS to scan for
"illicit" material and phone the law if you do, and to have a mandatory
remote shutdown of your box

(and if you read the MS media player license anyone who agrees to it signed
up to that)

Alan

DRM

[af_robot]

HDMI enforces that only trusted (by RIAA) devices allowed to communicate - so no way perfect digital copies.
Morons.

Re:Hooray

[LordOfYourPants]

You forgot one little detail:

"The first question that should pop into your head right now is why we would need HDMI on the PC when it physically does the job of DVI - particularly considering how few people actually use DVI instead of analog connections! The answer is, again, copy protection."

Make you go broke

[ad0gg]

I have HDMI cable from the dvd player to the my tv. Cable was close to $100. I don't know any brick and mortar store that sells than less than what I payed. Tried BestBuy, Circuit City, Good Guys. Even their DVI cables are $50+. I love how retaillers rip off their customers. Only place to get cheap cables is online.

And even with a HDMI cable I don't see any improvement over DVI even though my dvd player is upsampling to 1080i. Also having sound over it is pretty useless in a home theater enviroment, I still have to run a tosh cable from my dvd player into my reciever. I guess it could be useful if the AV reciever had HDMI inputs, but that would still require 2 cables.

Technical note on 1080P over HDMI

[doormat]

While the HDMI interface has the bandwidth to carry 1080P signals (1080P is considered the best HD video standard), the chipsets used in TVs nowadays are not capable of handling the bitrate 1080P would use. This has been discussed on the AVS Forum, in one thread in particular, in the context of the new 1080P Samsung TVs unveiled at CES 2005.

Re:Where is this headed?

[MeanMF]

So on the output of this chip there is a normal RGB (plus sync) signal. This is fed to the switching matrix (where it is combined with all other inputs the TV supports) and then this analog RGB signal is again digitized and fed to the scaler that scales it up or down to drive the LCD panel.

HDCP is designed to protect the digital stream, not the analog signal. If the chip decrypted the digital stream and fed it to the scaler, it would be vulnerable. It looks like that by converting it to analog in the same chip, they're preventing the decrypted digital signal from being copied. Sure you can re-encode it, but you can do that with an analog output just as well.

Re:Go to bestbuy

[over_exposed]

*Almost* off-topic - but not quite.

It usually depends on the brand name and store. I used to work for Best Buy and we got everything 10% above store cost. Cabling and Car Audio were the two most marked-up products. Car speakers and decks were commonly marked up over 600%. I've seen cabling marked up as high as 2000% (yeah - three zeros)! Watch batteries that sell for $3.97 cost me around $0.26. I bought $1600 worth of car audio equipment (deck, four new speakers, all new cabling, amp, sub, box, etc.) for less than $400 - installed.

In other words...
Retail will rip you off! Retailers often make more money off of the USB cable you have to buy (because it's not included with your printer) than they make on the whole ocmputer/monitor/printer combo.

Never buy high-end A/V or computer cables retail. If you see a $100 DVI cable at Best Buy or Circuit City, you should be able to find it online for less than $40. It's still a rip-off, but it doesn't hurt to walk or sit down afterwards.