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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!"
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
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
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?
Trolling is a art,
HDMI enforces that only trusted (by RIAA) devices allowed to communicate - so no way perfect digital copies.
Morons.
OOOooooooooo!
DVI with DRM!
Sign me up!
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.
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.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
LaTeX generates DVI files just fine for me. What would I need all this multimedia stuff for?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'll wait about 10 years when Brian Hook of Id fame writes about it.
'Same speed C but faster'
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.
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.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
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:
This is as big a problem as, if not bigger than, CSS.
C
The Sun is proof that we can't even do fire properly.
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?
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
*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.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton