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There's No Such Thing as 'Wireless HDMI'
An anonymous reader writes "CE Pro magazine interviewed Steve Venuti and Les Chard of HDMI Licensing, LLC to get a preview of all things HDMI at CES. The duo addressed some of the more controversial issues surrounding HDMI, including 'Wireless HDMI' (There's no such thing); Consumer Electronics Control (There will be interoperability); competitor DisplayPort (No traction in CE); and the complications of HDMI ('It is not an HDMI problem. It's a digital issue.')"
Yup, that's why we have analog..
'Number-memorizing Chinese people.'-Anon
Blatant lies like It is not an HDMI problem. It's a digital issue make me want to avoid HDMI like the plague. I'd like to replace my 22 year-old TV and rubbish VHS VCR with a digital system, but I've been putting it off for three years now because I can't bring myself to expend the time and headaches involved in figuring out a system that works.
Are they gonna fix the issue of a limp friction-fit connector at the back of enormous TVs trying to hold back the weight of a thick cable? Who thought that one up? It's hideous.
Would it be too much trouble for the submitter to explain what the acronym HDMI stands for, or at least to link to the WP article? Even after reading the WP article, I don't really know much about it.
Since it's a device for imposing DRM, there's presumably some mechanism for forcing the user to buy and use it. What is the mechanism? What types of equipment require it? The closest the WP article comes to discussing it seems to be this: "Both introduced in 2006, Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD offer new high-fidelity audio features that require HDMI for best results." Well, I'm still in the dark. What does "best results" mean? What are your results like if you don't use it?
Another thing I don't understand is how they think this kind of hardware-based DRM can work. All it takes is one hardware hacker to figure out how to tap in to some unencrypted signals, e.g., by connecting onto circuit boards. Once there's a single device that can be hacked by a publicly known procedure, every DRM'd movie out there can be transcoded into a non-DRM'd format.
One interesting sentence from the WP article: "PCs with hardware HDMI output may require software support from Operating Systems such as Windows Vista." So does this mean that you can't use the technology on a Mac, for example? I'm also curious whether any manufacturers are actually making mobos or video cards with hdmi connectors on them.
And how does this fit in with the apparently overwhelming recent trend away from DRM in music? Is it really believable that movies will go the other way?
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Amazing how big CES has gotten in the last 7 years. Now it's the center of the universe. Don't forget to mention DVR for OCAP.
;-)
Don't know if you meant that as sarcasm, but for at least 15 years, I've always waited until after the January CES to make any large tech purchases... Not because I always want the cutting edge (in fact, I usually avoid most of the newest of the new at the CES), but because it drives the price of the last year's toys over a cliff.
Or looked at a bit more cynically - It happens after the holiday season for a reason.
Industrialists say smog isn't a pollution problem, it's an air problem.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
This is the important part, IMHO. They intend to wait until people have "upgraded" to HDMI before they spring the DRM trap on them. Then again, I'm sure that the pirate copies won't contain any image constraint tokens.
Just what the hell kind of business are they running when "thieves" treat their customers better?
HDMI bandwidth is 10.2Gbps synchronous (ie. not packet switched). 10Gbps (theoretical max) wired ethernet therefore won't even do it, not with a single cable. Is there any wireless protocol that could deliver HDMI data without loss, even using multiple channels (if properly supported)?
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make install -not war
HDMI Licensing, LLC
This is perhaps unrelated to the original purpose of the thread, but HDMI Licensing, LLC? So there's a whole company whose purpose is just to license the HDMI Connector? Well, they're not doing a good job, because it's all but impossible to find HDMI to HDMI connectors at most stores.
More than that, has anyone heard of an RCA Cable Licensing LLC? A cursory search of the internet doesn't yield any attempts by RCA to control dissemination of the now ubiquitous cable. Perhaps HDMI doesn't need a whole company....
Dr Cameron looks better in HD.
And why should there be such a thing as a "digital issue?"
I don't remember any "modulation issues" when FM radio was introduced. You just bought the damn radio and it worked, except the sound was better than AM.
I don't remember any "magnetic issues" when cassettes were introduced. You just bought the damn cassette player and it worked, except the sound wasn't quite as good as LPs... but the cassettes were compact and there weren't any ticks, pops, or scratches.
And for that matter I don't remember any "digital issues" when CDs were introduced. You just bought the damn CD player and it worked, except that the sound was better then on cassettes. (And for 98% of all ears on 98% of all recordings in 98% of all real-world consumer situations, it was much better than LPs, too).
If the customer is using HDMI and having "issues," then they're HDMI issues.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
If the morons who designed it had any experience with actual AV equipment, they would have copied HD-SDI instead of DVI.
HD-SDI lets you have 100m runs over standard 75ohm cable, terminated in standard BNC connectors.
Compared to HDMI or DVI which can't be terminated, so it can't be run through walls, and running it through a wall would probably exceed the maximum run anyway. The only way to make a long DVI run is to use expensive extenders that require power on either side. And even then
If the guys who designed HDMI had copied HD-SDI instead, there would be no home theater installation issues.
dom
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HDMI is part of a whole. The idea is to cease analog outputs. No HD will be allowed without HDCP. Note any upscaling DVD players only upscale via HDMI, analog outputs are limited to 480. HDCP is not a requirement of HDMI, but having a license for HDMI means that if I make some sort of HDCP stripper, the agency that licenses HDMI can come after me for violation of their license. It is true that HDMI does NOT require HDCP, but HDMI is not an "open" format or standard, like an RCA jack. So, the industry is not totally stupid. Knowing most consumer electronics lasts 2-8 years, we gently introduce HDMI, allow the analog equipment to mostly wear out, and once the analog ports disappear by industry agreement, you will see the image constraint token used. Think of this like Macrovision. It's a pain in the behind to the casual user, but trivial to the pirate. As the older stuff dies, the new stuff will just happen to have ICT, and HDMI only for any HD output. Anyone who thinks that the voluntary ICT hold back is permanent is deluded. The lockdown is proceeding apace. The only fly in the ointment is the lack of interest in Vista and the new HD disc formats.
Your strawman: "you think copper wiring is cheap" What metal cheaper than copper are your HDMI wires made of?
Well, they admit that "video data is encoded using the JPEG2000 video codec". Since they don't claim it's the lossless version (and the compression ratio down from 10.2Gbps would be too high otherwise), it's got to be lossy compression. Which means it's not HDMI.
But I guess it's better than nothing, where the rest of the system is HDMI and wireless is required, and evidently it will interop with the other HDMI links in the signal path. And later, when when someone uses H.264 to compress only 20-30x, they'll have to replace only that link in the path.
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make install -not war