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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!"
OOOooooooooo!
DVI with DRM!
Sign me up!
That's the question. Will HDMI allow content creators to destroy the ability to eaily copy digital media, whether it's being used for piracy or fair-use? Or, is HDMI headed down the same path as Circuit City's DivX-- a clumsy & eventually transparent attempt by Hollywood to extract more money from customers while providing less service? We all know how that played out, with the savvy early-adopter types shunning it and telling their friends to skip it as well. Or does any of it matter, since the FCC has mandated that all digital TVs must be HDCP compliant anyways?
What does that mean anyways? Will consumer electronics companies still be allowed to include non-HDCP compliant inputs? I hope so, but I wouldn't put it pass our regulators to require the crippling of perfectly legal electronics (witness DAT & the broadcast flag). How can we stop this crap?
Its not really possible to capture video off of DVI at the moment (DVI is basically uncompressed video - 180MB/s), so I dont see HDMI as a big deal. It'll encrypt the audio, but that doesnt seem like a big deal (I'm going to have optical out going to surround sound receiver, not digital audio to my TV through HDMI).
Its not like people are capturing video off VGA/DVI now, at most it'll affect KVM switches, projectors, etc.
The biggest issue with HDMI is the fact that it may become an exclusive output system. IOW, no way to support VGA, DVI, etc. I dont see video card makers and companies like nVidia and ATI saying "you have to buy a new HDMI compliant monitor to run this new video card". Its in their interest to sell the most video cards, not raise barriers to entry to purchasing their products.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
...a massive drawback. Audio support over the connection in exchange for DRM? No thanks. My TOSlink cables work just fine for digital audio. I can see no compelling reason to switch to a connector that potentially takes rights away from me in exchange for one less cable per component in my home theatre rack. I'm sure the content creators are creaming themselves over it, though.
Premium digital cables are a rip-off. Just go to a discount electronics place, or even eBay to get cheap/decent cables.
In the analog world, a logical case could be made for high quality cables because any interference would be propogated through the system and hurt audio quality.
In digital cables, it's just ones and zeros.. As long as the digital data is there, it's not any better or worse regardless of the type of cable.
If your digital cable is not working well, it should be very obvious in the audio/video output.
HDMI
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
HDMI
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
HDMI is something that I despise
For it means destruction of fair use rights
For it means tears in thousands of users' eyes
When they try to record a show, but it's called a crime...
I RTFA, and I still don't understand how this is useful to anyone.
For the DRM to work, the market will need to reach a point where the only input connector that TV's and speakers have will be HDMI ports. I expect this to happen around the year, hmm, let's say 3000. Here we are, a year away from the alleged switch to HDTV, and a huge percentage of the television sets sold still have good old-fashioned analog coaxial antenna jacks on the back of them. Good luck getting Every Electronics Manufacturer In The World to stop offering their customers the feature of analog connections. (We'll have direct-to-brain optical implants running on a descendant of Bluetooth before this happens.)
Audio connections won't go entirely digital until sometime around AD 4500. There's too many audiophiles with investments in $100/foot speaker cable to EVER accept an all-digital interconnect.
Another thing -- my video and audio signals don't output to the same device. The video goes to the TV, and the audio goes to the home theater system. Putting both signals on a single cable doesn't do me any good, I'll just have to break them out further down the chain.
Methinks this standard is just an attempt by Belkin and co. to make a lot of money selling aftermarket HDMI-to-DVI adapters.
This is NOT FUD!
This is exactly what they want to use HDMI for!
Why use this when you have DVI?
This is the only reason. Control your computer from time you sign up to download the file till you output on your big screen TV.
Total encryption. Total Control. Total Trust.
Dammit this is MY computer! I don't want to be forced by industrial Microsoft/Sony/DMCA/RIAA/Who-ever-the-hell-else into giving up the right to control the bits on my own fucking harddrive!
It better be a failure! The corporate media intrests have no right to have this much control even if they risk getting there shit pirated.
If it comes down to a choice between freedom of information and full fledged piracy I'll choose freedom ever time!
I don't like it when artists and businesses get ripped off, but this is bullshit.
It's crap like this we've know has been coming for 10 years now, and is why people went and created free software.
It's not freedom from cost, it's freedom from control!
Now are we going to be forced to create our own computers and hardware standards in the future?
Just Say No to Our Corporate Overlords.
HDMI and What it Will Do for You
It's not so much what it'll do for you, it's more about what it'll do to you.
You replied:
I think you misunderstood tji. I think that he meant "As long as all the bits are getting through reliably, you don't get more fidelity from an expensive cable." Which is, of course, true.
-Peter
Um ... this is just an encrypted version of DVI, with the audio also encrypted and sent on the same cable. Sure all the next generation of devices will have it, but it won't be a good thing. HDMI was awesome when it was proposed a few years ago, but now its just a DRM pipe.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
So HDMI is nice because the cable is much thinner than DVI and combines digital audio and video into a single cable.
The DRM aspect of HDMI is not nice, but talk to the FCC about that one. They are making manufactures implement it, not the other way around.
>You just need to be able to capture & buffer data at 4Gbps...
You also need to live in a country without DMCA equivalent laws...
Yep. The "no one's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to buy it line" is really weak.
Pretty soon, if you want a modern computer or TV, you'll be using this technology whether you like it or not. Sure, you can get along without a TV, but good luck finding a spouse who's also willing to completely give up TV because of your philosophy. But no computer? You're basically exiling yourself from modern society if you try to live without one. Are you going to go back to paying all your bills by check, dump email and write letters to people, etc.? What about a job? Unless you're planning to leave the tech industry altogether and go into construction or janitorial services, you can't even send someone a resume without a computer. Who'd hire a programmer or network admin who can't email a resume?
There's lots of things about society I don't like. I don't like how corrupt local governments are in regards to traffic laws, in that their police issue baseless tickets, and the cost of the ticket is the same as the court costs (which you have to pay even if you win), in order to generate revenue. Am I going to stop driving and just walk everywhere because of this? No; I wouldn't be able to hold a decent job that way.
Unless you're going to seriously cut all ties with society and move into the woods and live in a tent for the rest of your life, please drop this stupid argument.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have real lives to lead, within society. Of course, some of us will hopefully spend a little time trying to break these chains that bind us (i.e., reverse engineering).
Until they start building professional grade, 200 watt per channel 7.1 recievers directly in the TV set, I don't see how this will ever be the sole connector in use. This only makes you buy a second cable to run to whatever amplifier you are using. Pointless, and a waste of money. I'll stick to components and toslink, thanks.
today is spelling optional day.
I'd go for 'barrier of entry for small players'. Since the FCC mandated TV's to have HDMI by mid 2005 any AV device connecting to that TV will be forced to have HDMI as well. So as a hardware you'll pay for it anyway or go out of business.
Same thing happened for CSS. It costs a ton to license and it takes up die space, but forget about building a DVD player without it.
There are bound to be enough people like yourself determined to not 'buy in' to the new technology. Unless they outright ban your legacy hardware, you should find yourself in the company of others who think like you and will continue at least a subculture.
That's fine if all you want to do is play old games or whatever, but if you want to work with anything current, it won't work. Pretty soon (though they've been saying this for a while), you won't be able to watch TV any more without new DRM-enabled equipment, because they're going to turn off the analog broadcasts.
I never said people would go computerless; I was trying to point out myself that it was ludicrous, as this is an extension of the idea of simply not buying any technology you don't like. But for those of us who want to conduct our normal computing activities (using the web, banking online, playing games, working with or playing video/audio, etc.) using open-source software which we control rather than some big corporation, attempts like this to control the way we use our own hardware will make this very difficult.
Robbing people in boats. Garsh! I'd never thought of that! Heh!
Actually, I really like the term "piracy" in this context. Historically, it refers to a practice (and the hence the practitioners) of stepping into the middle of a transaction between other people (say, the provision of a service, like shipping things between the continents) to which you were not invited and about which you did not negotiate, and taking advantage of that service's presence. In essence, the pirate doesn't want to build boats, come up with the money to pay people that do, go through the formalities and expense of arranging for that service to be used... no, the pirate just steps up and takes what that service is providing, frequently damaging it in the process. The pirate's actions also force the other people involved to get more and more draconian, and incur more and more expenses - some of them manifesting themselves as distastefully ubiquitous security measures (in the old days, armed escorts and the like) just to ensure that shipping services could still be relied upon.
Over time, the countries of the legitimate parties that were being ripped off by the pirates decided that, rather than armoring every vessel more and more, they'd be better off going to the places the pirates called home, and even overthrowing local governments that tolerated and profited from their existence. But before that happened, private parties took matters into their own hands, and at great expense. I think the parallels to modern content transaction piracy are actually pretty instructive, and things like private actions against pirates (used to be, you'd hire private navies, now lawyers), and eventually taking the battle to foreign countries (China? Korea?) are playing out all over again.
By the way, with regard to technical oligopolies running the world: check in with AT&T and see how they're doing these days. Lucent (formerly Bell Labs) is in the tank, having been legally divorced from their previously profitable marriage to a country-wide technology provider, and other innovators are running circles around what was once thought to be "Ma Bell." It may take the pendulum swinging farther one way than we'd like before it swings the other, but that equalibrium is out there. As long as we can avoid politically correct judges and legislatures from feeling the urge to bolster the Nanny State (the hollow appeal of which all starts in elementary school these days, and hits its zenith in grad school), then there's hope.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.