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

Re:What WILL it do for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:What WILL it do for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What WILL it do for you?

[The_K4]

Who's forcing you? Just don't buy a PC/GFX card/DVD play/ TV with this! It might limit your choses (or mean you can't buy something you would want). It might mean you can't watch a movie you want to see, but no one is going to hold a gun to your head and FORCE you to use this. There are people who chose not to use credit cards, and while it does limit them in many ways, they survive.....

Re:What WILL it do for you?

[Grishnakh]

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).

Re:What WILL it do for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are so wrong.

The potential of this weapon lies far beyond preventing copyright infringement. It also has the potential of preventing the copying and PLAYBACK of non watermarked music.

Guess who would want that...

The record industry, of course. It would allow them to technically make it illegal for a band to release their own music on CD without being signed, because they can selectively allow watermarking only on CDs released by signed bands.

This has the potential to entirely destroy a whole fucking generation of bands because they would be locked out of music publishing.

Re:What WILL it do for you?

[ScentCone]

Amen, brother! You left out, though, telling them they can go screw themselves and the stuff it takes thousands of people and millions of dollars to produce. Screw watching the Sopranos or Nova. Screw listening to Carmina Burana. Screw cable news!

Come on. No one, at all, would risk their money, their careers, or even a day's work, to produce "Arrested Development" or "Curb Your Enthusiasm" if they couldn't back up the huge investment with the expectation that the people they're selling it to will actually pay the bill. Cable and satellite companies duke out agreements with those producers based on a reasonable expectation that the product in question won't be bought by the parents of one kid on the block and then pop out of every TV on the block through that kid's hot rodded WiFi network with his buddies. Whee! Cool that they can do it. But it's no different than stealing cable access, and the people who own the content should be able to do whatever they want to protect their private interests. If enough people like you get mad enough, there will be indy content on indy hardware for indy people spending indy money on behalf of their many indy friends who are not spending money, and they can all be happy. But if I worked at HBO, and thought that every single bit of data that makes up an episode of "Deadwood" could go flying around the world ten minutes after I broadcast it, and I couldn't do a damn thing to prevent all of Korea from watching it for free... I'd be right behind my industry lobbyist's efforts to give me some leverage.

Of course, this is academic, because you're talking about content you'll be producing yourself, right?

Re:What WILL it do for you?

[Grishnakh]

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.

Re:What WILL it do for you?

[ScentCone]

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.

"For Me"

[grub]

HDMI and What it Will Do for You

From what I read in the article, it will help the media companies to prevent fair use of the signal. Other than bundling audio, how will really benefit the consumer?

Re:"For Me"

[Darth McBride]

how will really benefit the consumer?

1) You go from $6 DVI cables to $99 HDMI cables
2) ???
3) Profit!

Re:"For Me"

[Feztaa]

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.

DRM

[af_robot]

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

HDMI is cool, but do PC Vid cards have plug yet?

[piett134]

I use a Win MCE 2005 box, and hooking up to a TV via HDMI would be sweet, but the only video cards I have seen right now have DVI connectors. Anybody have a luck with using a DVI/HDMI converter cable for their TV? Hows the quality, does it suffer any?

Hrmph.

[GoRK]

OOOooooooooo!

DVI with DRM!

Sign me up!

Re:Hrmph.

[tji]

DVI already has DRM in most TV's. It's called HDCP, and almost all HDTV STBs and TVs support it.

That's the same thing done in HDMI.

HDMI seemed awesome but has problems

[the-pdm]

Between HD Tivo having numerous problems with its HDMI port and my new Samsung HD941 DVD player displaying "HDMI Audio not supported" on a great many DVDs I'm not sure if this stuff is 'ready' yet. On both of these devices I still had to resort to using a TOSlink cable for audio instead of using the HDMI audio.

Hooray

[stratjakt]

I'll save you the time of reading TFA:

It's line-compatible DVI with a pair of lines for digital audio, and a slimmer connector.

It can carry 5gbps over copper, more than enough for 1080p video and 8 192khz audio channels.

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."

HDMI is too complicated.

[jd]

LaTeX generates DVI files just fine for me. What would I need all this multimedia stuff for?

Where is this headed?

[fname]

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?

Re:Where is this headed?

[pe1chl]

I have a new LCD TV with HDMI input and HDCP support.
It also comes with schematics (on CD).

I studied the schematics and was astonished by what I found: the HDMI digital input is terminated at a special purpose chip that deserializes and deframes the data, decrypts the HDCP, and converts the R, G and B to ANALOG!

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.

This amazes me for two reasons:

1. I would have expected that the digital DVI or HDMI signal would go directly to the scaler without first being converted to analog and then back to digital. What point is there in using a digital input, this way?

2. It provides an accessible and decrypted version of the HDCP-protected stream. Assuming this special-purpose chip is commercially available, it will be trivial to build a HDCP-circumventing box, just like the anti-Macrovision boxes...

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:Where is this headed?

[TheGavster]

The advantage here is that the analog signal only has to traverse a couple of inches of copper trace at most before hitting your re-encode chip, rather than the couple of feet of cable to your recording device. I don't think that the loss over that short of an analog link would be something to care about.

Re:Where is this headed?

[Eccles]

I don't think that the loss over that short of an analog link would be something to care about.

It's not cable loss, it's the D/A and A/D converters themselves that are less than perfect, and thus introduce noise.

Re:Where is this headed?

[gblues]

You somewhat miss the point.

The OP describes the signal path as such:

[Device]->[HDCP]->[D/A conversion]->[A/D conversion]->[Display]

Now if I capture the signal between [D/A conversion] and [A/D conversion], I'm effectively capturing the exact same quality signal that I'd be seeing on my TV.

Bit perfect? Nah. Close enough? You betcha.

There's also the irony that a supposedly digital connection is in fact still going through multiple digital/analog conversions.

Nathan

No thanks

[Fizzlewhiff]

I'll wait about 10 years when Brian Hook of Id fame writes about it.

Upfront Costs...

[DaHat]

HDMI is a great technology... except for the costs involved.

The company I work for has been asked by many interested customers when we will be having HDMI addons for a number of our popular video playing products... because of the costs involved, we have had to hold back on any kind of rollout of these things.

In order to do licensed development of HDMI components (on the sending or receiving end), it runs about 30k... for the licensing alone! After that of course you have the joys of per unit costs, which we don't care about so much.

Chances are, we wont be doing HDMI until more customers are demanding it, shame though, I'd love to get my hands dirty with it.

Re:Upfront Costs...

[grub]

So other than bundling 8 channels of audio over the copper, what really makes it great for your company? The DRM and licensing costs? Seriously, I'm not trolling you: What makes this such a great thing for consumers.

Eh, no big deal IMO...

[doormat]

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.

Re:Eh, no big deal IMO...

[rednox]

It's not only possible, it's easy, using off-the-shelf components.

First, convert the DVI signal to HD-SDI, which is the standard that all the professional HDTV editing gear uses.
Miranda DVI-Ramp

Next, capture the HD-SDI signal to your hard drive.
Blackmagic DeckLink HD

You will need a serious disk array to handle the bandwidth, but you will end up with a digital copy of the signal put out over DVI. That Miranda box does sub-sample the RGB (4:4:4) signal to YCbCr (4:2:2), but it is only a matter of time before someone makes a box that keeps it at 4:4:4.

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.

Re:Make you go broke

[tji]

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.

Re:Make you go broke

[DJStealth]

You won't see any video improvement between HDMI and DVI as its the same protocol.

What I've been wondering for a while is if HDMI (or DVI) will give me any improvement over component video cables for HiDef 1080i TV.

Anyone know?

Re:Make you go broke

[RoboRay]

"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." That's a common misconception, but that's exactly what it is... a misconception. I need a 9m DVI cable to reach from my DVD player to my projector, and I assure you that you can't do that with a cheap cable. Using your "just as good" cheap cable, I get sparkling white dots all over the screen. Using a better built, higher quality and therefore more expensive cable gives me a perfectly pristine picture. A digital signal isn't an "all or nothing" situation. Individual bits can be dropped without loosing the entire signal, and it's blatantly obvious with a video signal.

Re:Make you go broke

[pete-classic]

tji said:

If your digital cable is not working well, it should be very obvious in the audio/video output.

You replied:

Individual bits can be dropped without loosing the entire signal, and it's blatantly obvious with a video signal.

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

Re:Make you go broke

[DigitalCrackPipe]

I love how retaillers rip off their customers. Only place to get cheap cables is online

Cables have something like 1000% profit margin for retailers - it's one of their cash cows (after they lure you in with specials on the peripherals that no longer include cables).

I've bought cables online for a few years and only buy retail in a pinch. If you're the kind of person to understand cables are cheaper online, you probably did enough research on your HDTV to know you should have ordered the cables a few days before you wanted to buy the TV ;) Most folks probably don't really notice the price hit since they dropped so much on the equipment already.

I still can't believe it

[morcego]

I'm serious. Who come the people accept it ?
It stupidity to be a new way of life of something ?

I'm all for capitalism, but watermarking the sound my speaks produce ? Isn't that pushing things a bit too far ? Can't we sue the companies for it ? After all, the sound being produced it not the same sound we payed for.

And heck. It is MY computer. I can plug anything I want on it, not only "RIAA approved" devices. And I don't even live in USA, so why should I care if RIAA approved my devices or not ?

I'm still waiting for someone to show up and say: "Laugh! It was all a joke. Gotcha! April fools!"

Re:I still can't believe it

[dark_requiem]

I'm all for capitalism, but watermarking the sound my speaks produce ?

This isn't really the workings of capitalism. Under capitalism, schemes like this would fail, because they would be rejected by consumers, who hold a certain level of sovereignty in the marketplace, and any company basing its economic future on such foolishness would crumble accordingly. However, under the quasi-socialist state that is America, we have an unconstitutional governing body (the FCC) that can MANDATE the inclusion of DMR. Really the success of products and technologies such as this is fostered by government-created distortions in the market.

As to suing the companies, no, you can't, and shouldn't, be able to sue for that. So long as the company is up-front about the inclusion of such features, you had fair warning, and could choose to purchase a different system.

If you don't live in the US, then you might be OK. The FCC requirement to include HDCP technology in all products only applies, obviously, to products manufactured/distributed in the US. Foreign manufacturers can still develope and distribute technology effectively circumventing copy protections (depending on what country, of course. Some might actually cooperate with US law enforcement).

It does a few things right

[blaster]

HDMI does a few things right. Adding audio is very useful for a lot of people (one cable is always easier than than 2 or 3). They also tweaked the signaling to run longer ranges, and added support for YUV (if you thing YUV support is not a big deal then do searches for the whole PC RGB/Studio RGB crush and push issues people have with DVI DVD players).

There are tradeoffs of course. In order to reduce the connector size they eliminated the analog link and the second digital link. I think the improved signaling allows them to run their digital interface a little faster than DVI, so the second link may not be a huge issue. The lack of an analog link means that you cannot make a cheap cable only VGA adapter like you can for DVI-I, which seems like a pretty big issue if somebody were actually going to try to push computer adoption of this, especially for laptops.

If it wasn't for HDCP it would be a pretty nice improvement over DVI for many users.

Louis

Legailty and workarounds

[CompSci101]

I read this article this morning and it really pissed me off (especially how rabidly positive the author was about the connector) -- now PC users will have to contend with all the DRM nonsense that the people who bought new HDTVs recently will soon be exposed to.

It brought to mind some questions though:

1. Is this LEGAL? The only broadcast flag implementation that the providers seem to want to want to endorse is HDCP, an Intel product. Now, the FCC can make all sorts of claims that they have not mandated an encryption/authentication standard, but if the only standard television and broadcasting manufacturers will support is HDCP, they've effectively given Intel a license to print money (just think of all the audio/video equipment manufacturers that must now become HDCP licensees or go out of business). If the FCC has gone so far as to mandate that copy protection must exist, they should mandate that interoperability must also exist.
2. Following on the legality question: is this creating a consumer electronics cartel that bars entry to the market and fair competition? A license for HDCP costs $15,000 and 1,000,000 keys costs an additional $5,000. This, of course, is a pittance to what consumer electronics manufacturers can come up with, but say you're an Open Source developer that wants to bring a software player to market (or Linux) that can play HDCP protected streams. You're SOL as this is clearly the same problem as DVD/CSS.
3. I'm sure this has been already asked, but would it be possible to establish a self-funded Open Source community that would become an HDCP licensee on the condition that it would only distribute the software it develops to members (like a small collective that would make the cost of a license small per developer). Naturally, the cost of a license would go down dramatically once more members signed on, but what's to stop Intel from revoking your license once you released the source to the product?

This is as big a problem as, if not bigger than, CSS.

C

So uh, what's the point?

[spitefulcrow]

I don't even use DVI yet. My card supports it, but I'm using an old analog LCD and the rest of my family still has CRTs. So is this just a way to force restriction of fair use onto consumers by selling it as an all-in-one cable run simplifier, with the nice side effect of making everyone upgrade to devices with the new standard and putting more money in home theatre companies' pockets?

Greed hinders greed?

[swb]

In order to do licensed development of HDMI components (on the sending or receiving end), it runs about 30k... for the licensing alone! After that of course you have the joys of per unit costs, which we don't care about so much.

Is Hollywood greed killing Hollywood greed?

Are they actually greedy enough to want to not only license their DRM technology to people who would actually implement it, thus stifling their ability to completely cripple fair use?

Or is this a subtle way that electronics companies accomplish this -- engage Hollywood in DRM technology, settle on standard, quietly charge big bucks to hardware developers knowing full well they won't adopt your does-nothing-other-technology-can't-but-DRM, continue using cheaper/easier/DRM-less technologies, continue selling tons of copy-enabled (at least somewhat) technology to eager consumers?

Or is this just one of those "barrier to entry" fees that keeps HDMI development kits out of the hands of small players and off eBay so that its secrets stay secret longer?

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.

So it adds a dubious advance in return for...

[samdu]

...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.

Re:It has to be said, so let's get it over with

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, DRM regulates YOU!

s/Soviet Russia/USA

call it: pointless

[poot_rootbeer]

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.

Re:HDMI is cool, but do PC Vid cards have plug yet

[andreyw]

Why is a "Monster cable" better than something I duct-taped together for transmitting digital signals? Is the uber-secret alloy in the cable gently massaging the individual bits to produce never-before-seen/heard clarity in sound/video? Rofl!

Reminds me of a fool I know who spent a fortune on moster fibre-optic cables and then kept ensuring me how the difference was "obvious" when compared to random cheap cables. Heh.

Good idea to have audio and video on same wire?

[good2pets]

regardless of the DRM that will be cracked within a month of release, how could I connect audio and video with one wire? Who has a 8 channel surround sound system built into their television? Stereo/speakers are on a different device than the video...but I do like the idea of not having to have a super thick shielded wire that will not be only like 6 ft long...my monitor wire is stretched to the limit right now.

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.

Re:Could be a great technology.

[TheGavster]

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.

Re:It's already here....

[alex_ware]

really?
I haven't even seen any with DVI, all the stuff on sale near me is SCART.
I live in england and still have a VGA monitor. Am I really behind the times?
15" LCD is enough for me.

Re:DVDs still 480p

[RockClimbingFool]

Because component cables are analog video only and HDMI is digital video and audio combined. HDMI video is exaclty compatable with DVI. You can put an HDMI to DVI adapter on the HDMI cable coming from your dvd player and plug it into a DVI tv. You just lose the bundled digital audio that way.

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.

Re:HDMI is cool, but do PC Vid cards have plug yet

[ponos]

Why is a "Monster cable" better than something I duct-taped together for transmitting digital signals? Is the uber-secret alloy in the cable gently massaging the individual bits to produce never-before-seen/heard clarity in sound/video? Rofl!

Do you think that a 1080p (~2MPixel) signal at 24bit and 60Hz is a trivial amount of bandwidth? A nice DVD player will typically feature a 108MHz DAC to provide sufficient data to the monitor. This is not the kind of data rate you can pass through just any cable. Sure, an HDMI compliant cable should give adequate results (which, by the way there is NO WAY you can build, it is rather complicated, not plain cat5 UTP) but it is quite possible that some applications would require a higher quality cable (e.g. you need 8m instead of 1m of cable for your ceiling-mounted HDMI DLP projector).

Do you think that "digital" signal is somehow magically different from an analog signal and is totally immune to all analog phenomena? Why don't you try passing 100MBps from my phone lines, then?

I'd never advise anyone to buy $200 cables (even if this might seem a small part of a $10000 setup). But be reasonable! A nice $30-50 cable is not a bad choice. As a matter of fact, quality of construction becomes increasingly important for digital circuits because the tolerance for analog noise/errors is getting smaller. I wouldn't be surprised if USB3 of firewire1600 had some rather special requirements. And your memory,CPU and motherboard has gold contacts, I suppose? (why?)

P.

Useless mandated technology.

[ruiner13]

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.

Not possible without big bucks

[SigNick]

Certainly not with SCSI but maybe with SATA+PCIe?
Let's do some calculations!

The raw data rate is 4Gbps/8=500MB/s.
A single PCIe channel is 250MB/s so we need at least two, not counting any overhead.
Very, very few and expensive cards support more than 4 HDDs/card so it's cheaper to get three cards.

Fastest hard drives can barely sustain 50MB/s writes (remember to check the rate for the entire platter, not just the fastest part!) so we need at least 10 HDDs, not counting any overhead.

A 10x73GB SCSI array could hold only 24,3 minutes of programs, maybe a single episode with the commercials cut off in real-time?

A 10x500GB SATA array could hold 2 hours and 46 minutes of data, enough for most movies.
There is absolutely no redundancy so pray every night that no single drive fails or your movie is gone.

Would you buy three PCIe RAID controllers and ten 500GB drives, a new PSU & server case just to record A SINGLE MOVIE?

As for sharing with your friends it's just ~10TB/movie..

The only solution is to use realtime MPEG2/4 compressor, there ARE some (very impressive looking, I might add!) HDTV rips floating around, for instance Terminator 3 is about 8300MB compressed as MPEG2 in 1280x720.

But what happens when your capture card refuses to save the data due to flags/watermarks/the evil bit? Clearly just saving the raw stream is not feasible so better get that capture card now at least if you live in the US. Thank goddess we don't have a Federal Censorship Committee (yet).

I'm sorry for ranting a bit, the very idea that my own hardware doesn't follow my simple orders like "record" but obeys someone elses wishes is downright disgusting. Well, at least I can modify the hardware I bought so they don't obey the overlord's... ..wait, someone's at the door

Re:Get government out of the free market place.

[Grishnakh]

Which is EXACTLY why I want the government OUT of the free market place. We don't need government to patch the system when clearly they themselves are the cause.

Huh?

For one thing, there is no "free market place". A totally free market would be anarchy. Without government intervention, there would be no TV, radio, Wi-Fi, etc., because there would be no standards set and enforced. Every industrialized country has an equivalent to our FCC, for good reason.

Second, the broadcast flag and other DRM measures have little to do with the government. These are initiatives by private corporations, who want to maximize their profit. The only reason the FCC is agreeing to it is 1) because the content providers want it, and 2) the current FCC under Michael Powell is corrupt.

What effect do you think keeping the government out would have? At best, the corporations would immediately cut off analog TV, and require that everyone buy a new digital TV with lots of DRM built-in. At worst, everyone would push their own, different, digital TV broadcast standard and nothing would work.