New HDMI 1.4 Spec Set To Confuse

thefickler writes "HDMI Licensing LLC, the company that determines the specifications of the HDMI standard, is set to release the HDMI 1.4 spec on 30 June. Unfortunately it could very well be the most confusing thing to ever happen to setting up a home theater. When the new cables are released, you're going to need to read the packaging very carefully because effectively there are now going to be five different versions of HDMI to choose from — HDMI Ethernet Channel, Audio Return Channel, 3D Over HDMI, 4K x2K Resolution Support and a new Automotive HDMI. At least we can't complain about consumer choice."

Comments

article summary is very poor

[YesIAmAScript]

There are 5 cables in the spec, but the descriptions are incorrect.

There 4 cables which are the 4 possible combinations of low-bandwidth (often referred to as HDMI 1.1) and high-bandwidth (capable of 1080p/60, deep color, etc., often referred to as HDMI 1.3) with the possibilities of supporting ethernet in the cable (100mbit) or not.

So there are:
low-bandwidth no ethernet (effectively an HDMI 1.1 cable)
high-bandwidth no ethernet (effectively an HDMI 1.3 cable)
low-bandwidth with 100mbit ethernet
high-bandwidth with 100mbit ethernet

Now, in reality, it's already difficult to buy an HDMI 1.1 cable, and likely few going to make a low-bandwidth cable with ethernet added, since low-bandwidth cables aren't popular already.

So that leaves two of these cables to decide between:
HDMI 1.3 cable
high-bandwidth with 100mbit ethernet (perhaps to gain the popular name HDMI 1.4 cable?)

and then there is one final cable, the wildcard, the automotive HDMI cable.

So 3 cables to choose from, one of which is a weirdo cable (automotive).

I don't think this will cause much of a problem.

The options listed in the article, return channel, etc, are all things added to the spec that can be there for an HDMI 1.4 device but without needing a specialized cable.

Re:Set fail...

[im_thatoneguy]

My mistake. They are in fact releasing 5 + mini plug:

o Standard HDMI Cable - supports data rates up to 1080i/60;
o High Speed HDMI Cable - supports data rates beyond 1080p, including Deep Color and all 3D formats of the new 1.4 specification;
o Standard HDMI Cable with Ethernet - includes Ethernet connectivity;
o High Speed HDMI Cable with Ethernet - includes Ethernet connectivity;
o Automotive HDMI Cable - allows the connection of external HDMI-enabled devices to an in-vehicle HDMI device.

But. Standard HDMI cable == HDMI 1.1 cable and I don't even see those for sale anywhere. I assume it's pin compatible. So really the only new cables that people will encounter are:

1.4 Highspeed (1080p -> 4k, 3D, Deep color etc)
1.4 Highspeed + Ethernet.

Automotive will be built into your car hidden away from view. So unless you work at crutchfield you can ignore it.

Mini will be the same cables just with a differently sized plug.

Re:I'm a geek, but...

[LoRdTAW]

That's the way to go. When I bought my HDTV I mainly used it solely as a HTPC monitor and console monitor (have cable now so its a TV too).

The biggest offense of HDMI is the simple fact that multiple HDMI inputs on a TV/monitor are useless. If you want to use a home theater receiver for surround sound then you have to upgrade to one that has HDMI inputs. Why? Well Hollywood decided that HDMI cannot have its digital sound passed through the optical or coaxial output of your TV. So if you are thinking of using that shiny new HDTV with four HDMI inputs as your AV switch box then your out of luck. Even though that TV has an optical/coaxial output it will be disabled for HDMI, only analog outputs will work. You need to buy an expensive HDMI receiver for that setup to work.

My friend learned the hard way after purchasing a 47 inch HDTV with four HDMI inputs. He connected his XBox 360, PC and cable box. After digging through menus and testing his receiver he emailed the manufacturer of the TV and found out that his perfectly working Dolby digital receiver was now useless. He wound up getting an optical switch box to switch between inputs but OH wait the XBox 360's optical port is blocked when using the HDMI port. Fuck them for screwing us like that. HDCP and all the other copyright protection is a fucking sham.

Re:Why not just use Ethernet?

[evilviper]

Forgive me for not having kept up with the progress of HDMI,

...nor having the most basic knowledge of the topic at hand, correct?

wouldn't it have made infinitely more sense to have simply used gigabit Ethernet for all this?

Oh, my, yes. When transferring 16 Gigabits/sec of uncompressed HD video at high frame rates from your DVD player to your TV, what you really want is a 1 Gigabit/sec standard, designed for unreliable communications over 500 meter distances, using a shared-channel, with LOTS of overhead, and very high computational requirements...

Your insight is... stunning.

Re:Why not just use Ethernet?

[TopSpin]

Or did someone in the entertainment industry worry that using Ethernet for connecting entertainment devices would make it too easy for those evil hacker types to connect a computer to the setup and break their DRM?

Forgive me; I'm going to offer something other than 0MG iT'5 Ev1L DEE-ARE-EM zors.

Ethernet is slow. 10Gbit Ethernet is still exotic and costly. Gigabit Ethernet is much too slow for digital video, and gigabit phys cost more than what high volume TV manufactures will tolerate. An HDMI phy manufactured in 2003 sources or sinks 4.9Gbit/s. Two subsequent revisions have doubled this twice to 10Gbit and then 20Gbit. Basically HDMI provides an order of magnitude more bandwidth than the sort of common Ethernet you have in mind. Uncompressed digital video and audio (what HDMI does) requires emense bandwidth.

Ethernet is designed for the LAN use case. Consider the magic 300m minimum distance copper Ethernet is built around. This distance is desirable because it covers a large percentage of facilities where LANs exist without additional infrastructure. Among other things, signal frequency and copper (read cheap) cable construction are both bound by this. HDMI has no such requirement and thus does not incur the cost to achieve it.

HDMI clearly distinguishes between sources and sinks and has different expectations of each. Your digital TV will never suddenly begin transmitting Gbits of data someone will wish to render. It is exclusively a sink. Ethernet doesn't make provision for this sort of asymmetry which means both ends are peers and both suffer a certain minimum amount of complexity (read cost) because of it.

Ethernet is overly robust for digital TV. There are no packet collisions between your cable box and your TV. While HDMI does provide for error detection and correction, the remedy is radically different than what occurs on a LAN (retransmission usually.) The bad data is just spaced. The moment has passed and whatever pixel(s) or audio samples were corrupted are replaced by new bits before you perceive it (hopefully.) Here is some language from HDMI 1.3, 7.7:

The behavior of the Sink after detecting an error is implementation-dependent. However, Sinks
should be designed to prevent loud spurious noises from being generated due to errors. Sample
repetition and interpolation are well known concealment techniques and are recommended.

You wouldn't need to read many IEEE 802.whatever documents see just how far computer networking is from the design of HDMI. It is an entirely distinct use case.

Finally, HDMI provides timing guarantees that are totally absent in Ethernet. Devices are made cheaper through accurate timing (your TV doesn't need a larger high speed buffer for instance.) Recently so-called "Data Center Ethernet" has emerged to address this so that Ethernet can be used in latency sensitive applications. HDMI had this baked-in on day #1.

Some people are convinced that DRM is the only concievable reason for creating HDMI and all other claims offered are a smokescreen. That's the fashion around Slashdot, anyhow. Don't believe it. Those folks don't know what digital TV is.