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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."
For HD.
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.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
â HDMI Ethernet Channel
"The HDMI 1.4 specification will add a data channel to the HDMI cable and will enable high-speed bi-directional communication. Connected devices that include this feature will be able to send and receive data via 100 Mb/sec Ethernet, making them instantly"... OBSOLETE
Thanks for coming out.
I know technology never really stops, but the salesdroids/scammers will milk this mercilessly to generate sales. You only have 1.3 devices on each end, but if you don't have some flavor of 1.4 cable, it'll never work. And only $10 per foot. Scumsuckers preying on the ignorant.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
But the main article is fairly wrong. The Audio Return channel doesn't require a different cable, and the higher resolutions and 3D will both work over the high-bandwidth version. The ethernet options will be different cables, as will the automotive, so there will be quite a few new cables, but I don't think that's particularly confusing. (That's normal HDMI; HDMI plus ethernet; high-speed HDMI; high-speed HDMI plus ethernet; and automotive HDMI.)
dvice.com has some analysis and the press release.
The Audio Return thing will allow your display to send audio to your receiver, instead of using a second audio (e.g. optical or coaxial) cable. Why that wasn't there from the beginning is beyond me, since the connection was already bidirectional (to negotiate DRM).
Are they gold plated?
The TV manufacturers are simply screwing themselves over. They're dreaming. The new standard is going to be a computer screen attached to a PC streaming from youtube or similar.
Deleted
The electronics shop down the road will just come out with a new rev of their HDMI-whatever to DVI converter.
Have gnu, will travel.
Ugh. Maybe you can explain why I'd want to buy an HDTV with all of the accoutrements rather than buy a vastly cheaper flat panel display, and use it with my far more flexible computer. In my opinion, TVs and computers are converging, and new revisions of HDMI are a way to keep them differentiated. Is there really an advantage to an HDTV? This is the thing that has stopped me from buying an HDTV.
Now, as far as cabling goes, I suspect most of this is driven by a marketing department. If you look at computer display technology, which has been in rapid flux for at least 20 years, they've managed to standardize on TWO different connectors: one for analog and one for digital. Sure, there are some weirdo ones out there, like ADC and 13W3, but they never really had any real relevance. But with TVs, which is ostensibly simpler than computer displays, we have this panoply of cables. Why?
Now, Cat5e-- that's an impressive technology. The data rates people have been able to squeeze out of plain ol' twisted pair! But seriously; we do everything in software now. Why does television insist on having cable after cable to do functions that we could do with a single one?
This is the 11th revision of the HDMI specification in the less-than 7 year life of HDMI. Meanwhile, the 22-year old VGA connection still works fine, at full HDTV resolution, and with none of the incompatibility or usage restrictions (DRM) that HDMI brings to the table. Um, progress?
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
The most successful products all have the same qualities.
1. Simple
2. Ubiquity
3. Affordable
HDMI is not simple.
Ubiquity, Well I give it points here. It really was the first popular spec to finally include video and audio on one cable.
Affordable. Not a chance. Ridiculous prices for cables and accessories.
1 out of 3 is not good enough to survive. HDMI is setting it self up to be toppled of it's lofty perch.
Wireless HDMI would rock.
1. It would be simplish ( Some marketing guy would F&*K this up with some screwed up we must know what you are broadcasting so we can tap your wallet. )
2. Ubiquity. No real restriction here on what is on the channel. So basically everything should work with everything else.
3. NO HYPER EXPENSIVE CABLES. So that has to help the bottom line.
Oh wait. The wireless HDMI spec is already here. Can anyone say Wireless USB 3.
Forgive me for not having kept up with the progress of HDMI, but wouldn't it have made infinitely more sense to have simply used gigabit Ethernet for all this? The data is all digital anyway, and networking technology is quite mature, so why did these folks feel the need to reinvent the wheel? Right now, you have to worry about whether your new TV will have enough HDMI inputs for the devices you have or might get later, or you need to get an HDMI switcher. With Ethernet, you just connect everything to a switch or router, and you're all set. One connection per component is all you need, and, if you use a router, everything immediately gets connectivity to the home network or Internet. And if a new component comes out that needs to talk to another component in a different way or using more bandwidth, that can all be handled in the firmware. As long as you don't flood the local network with more data than it can handle, everything is fine, and the rest of the networked devices, including the router and cables, can stay exactly the same.
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? Or maybe that if this gear was too easily networked, we might...GASP!...use it to send video from our Internet-connected computers out into the living rooms, undermining traditional TV?
It amazes me how much the proles gobble this shit up when *gasp* analog component video is perfectly capable of handling a high bandwith video without all the incremental upgrades to a poorly thought out spec. Remember, a VGA cable (not quite as good as separate coax) is able to carry higher resolution and refresh rates than 1080p/60 and it could be all achieved on an early/mid 90's PC with a high end video card.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Hello?
Um... [tap tap tap]... hello?
HDMI stands for High Definition Multimedia Interface. If it was just a monitor cable, there would be no audio either. It would just be video. In other words, it would not be HDMI. It would just be another DVI cable.
The point behind HDMI was to reduce the number of cables necessary to hook up a multimedia device into an entertainment center.
Plus, I don't know of any brand of monitor that comes with a HDMI input. I know plenty of televisions that have them, and those televisions can be used as monitors... but they are NOT monitors. I've seen cables that convert from DVI to HDMI, but that is only video. There is no audio portion to that cable.
Why Ethernet? Can you think of any devices that connect to your home theater (Game console, DVR, etc.), that have video, audio, and ethernet? Here is a hint.. I just named two. Can you look forward and see how more devices in the future will have network connectivity? I sure hope so.
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -D. Adams
> Plus, I don't know of any brand of monitor that comes with a HDMI input
Lots of them, my Dell 2408WFP for once
To watch utubes?
Actually, it will probably be used in reverse. One plug between your cable box and your Xbox. Video goes up, data goes down.
Oh come now, I use VGA to display 1600x1200 at 100 fps (on a CRT). I noticed that at this speed, the picture can become slightly blurry (only slightly mind you) when using an old cheap analog VGA cable. When run at 80 fps the picture was crisp and clear again and indistinguishable from the digital equivalent.
Do I need to explain that 1600x1200 @ 80 Hz is way more bandwidth than 1920x1080 @ 25 Hz?
No you don't, what you do need to do is understand that you are talking about CRT vs LCD/DLP. One is not the other. A CRT is an inherently analogue device. Thus a VGA cables works perfectly fine. An LCD is not. It makes sense to transmit information digitally to it. This is the reason for DVI on computers.
D-A-D is not a lossless process. Converters aren't perfect, and that goes double when manufacturers don't wish to spend tons of money on them. There is also no reason to spend tons of money on them, when you've got digital devices on both ends. They will often cheap out, since it is for older compatibility only.
As an example take my monitor, a nice NEC display. When connected digitally, it has numerous controls, but all relating to things such as brightness, colour, scaling and so on. They are all for the user to configure how they'd like the image displayed. None of them are to deal with image problems, to correct for transmission errors.
In analogue mode, all those same controls remain but there are a number of additional ones:
--H. Position, V. Position, H. Size, V.Size, and Fine: These all control the position and sizing of the picture on the display, since it is no longer receiving absolute information.
--R-H Position, G-H Position, B-H Position, R-Fine, G-Fine, and B-Fine. These control the signal timing of individual colour channels, since they can vary.
--R-Sharpness, G-Sharpness, B-Sharpness. These attempt to control the amount of bleed between adjacent pixels.
On top of all that, they have software called cable comp to deal with color timing difference problems form long analogue cables.
All that, just to use a VGA connection and attempt to get the maximum signal quality out of it. Or, you can use a DVI connection and then there's no problem. All those controls are locked out since they aren't needed. There's no problems with positioning or sizing or timing. The pixels are sent digitally to the display.
When you have digital devices, you want to keep transmission digital. It just makes more sense. All you do by using an analogue cable in the middle is increase your problems and/or costs.
If you mean why not use a VGA cable to transmit digital data, the reason was to go with a balanced signal. VGA uses 5 unbalanced connections for video data (RGBHV). The problem with that is to get longer runs or more noise resistance, you need thick coax cable which won't fit. DVI (and by extension HDMI) use balanced TMDS signaling and signals over 4 twisted pairs.
HDMI is also HDCopyProtection encumbered, For HD signals. If you want HD content it has to be HDCP while traveling from source to display. It is why Linux and Apple don't have blue ray players for HD content(legal ones at least)
As for ethernet other posters have covered that. I am more worried aobut HDMI ethernet also getting forced into so layer of DRM just because it was easier to DRM everything and sort it out later.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
But how would ethernet between the display and the device accessing the network help in that? If the device is a computer, or an XBox or whatever, then it can view youtube and then display the video over HDMI. Having IP between the display and the device using the display doesn't seem to serve any purpose that I can think of but one*.
* And I don't like that purpose because it is a back-channel for DRM authentication.
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You can do audio over DVI too, i have a satellite receiver called a DM800 which does exactly that... DVI on the DM800 end, and HDMI on the TV end, audio works over it.
Some videocards do that too i believe.
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HDMI is also HDCopyProtection encumbered, For HD signals.
*facepalm*
No, it is not. HDMI, at least the kind we use today, is DVI plus Audio. That's it.
HDCP works just as well over DVI as it does over HDMI. Similarly, I currently use an HDMI cable to hook my laptop up to a second monitor -- and that does not use HDCP, as far as I can tell. (It'd be strange if it did, as I am running Linux.)
If you want HD content it has to be HDCP while traveling from source to display.
That depends entirely on where you're getting it from. If I get mine from BitTorrent, or from a video game, no, it doesn't have to be HDCP'd. And I don't have a Blu-Ray drive.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I was tempted to label you troll, but there is a chance you are not being purposefully obtuse. What he was referring to is the "burn-in" plasma screens have. Leave it on CNN all day (with the CNN logo in the bottom corner) and then change it to something else, and you will still be able to see that CNN logo. It issue with static images is how they effect future images, not in quality.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Um... [tap tap tap]... hello? Ever tried this thing called Google? Amazing what you can find...
Computer monitor with HDMI input
DVI/HD Audio to HDMI with audio converter
You can argue that they aren't TVs but there are devices that are advertised as TVs without tuners designed for use with Cable/Satellite. Here is one (notice the category it's under)
First post! (just in case I am...)