HDBaseT Supporters Hope To Kiss HDMI Goodbye

arcticstoat writes "HDMI's short-lived reign over the TV cable racks could soon be over, thanks to a new usurper that combines several connections into a standard Cat5e/6 network cable with an RJ-45 connector. Designed by a coalition of consumer electronics manufacturers called the HDBaseT Alliance, which includes Sony, Samsung, LG and Valens, HDBaseT promises to not only carry video and audio signals, but also provide a network connection, a USB signal and even electricity using a single cable. The Alliance predicts that we'll start seeing the first HDBaseT equipment creeping into the shops later this year, but says the bigger wave of adoption will occur later in 2011."

Comments

One question

[elrous0]

Will Monster make a special gold-plated, oxygenated cable for it? Because the guy at Best Buy said that is only way to really hear the crispness of the digital audio.

Re:One question

[FlynnMP3]

It's not known well, but temperature and altitude affect the clarity just as much, if not more, than the cable construction methods. The colder it is the less jitter is introduced in the signal path as the molecules are not moving around so much. Closer to sea level, the predictability of the air pressure reduces the effects of signal variance. Which you can hear if your listening space is 10 degrees Celsius or cooler.

All Best Buy audio employees know this but are bound to secrecy by Monster Cable. Probably for marketing reasons.

Re:One question

[unix1]

That would be funny if it wasn't true. You can get it from Amazon too.

Re:One question

[Bakkster]

Will Monster make a special gold-plated, oxygenated cable for it?

Of course they will. So would I, if I could manage to get through the sales speech without breaking down in hysterical laughter. Some money just deserve to be taken.

Because they don't understand enough about the physics of digital electrical signals? I assume you expect to be taken advantage of by your mechanic/doctor/banker because you don't know enough about cars/biology/financial devices? Your money deserves to be taken, right?

I'm of the opinion that we should be spreading information, instead of being the assholes laughing in the corner and watching Monster get richer.

Kiss HDCP bye too?

[betterunixthanunix]

Can we please kill HDCP? Please? There is no technical reason why my monitor should not be able to be connected to an HDMI-capable entertainment device by means of an HDMI-DVI adapter.

Re:Kiss HDCP bye too?

[TubeSteak]

Can we please kill HDCP?

Nope.
Searching for hdbaset + drm turns up little of use,
but searching for hdbaset + hdmi shows us DRM has already been included

Valens Semiconductor's HDBaseT Receives HDCP Certification From Intel's DCP LLC
updated 8:58 a.m. ET March 9, 2009,
http://www.valens-semi.com/media/1526/msnbc.pdf

Re:Damn it

[MillionthMonkey]

Use them to tie stuff down in your truck.

Wait...

[Pojut]

FTFS:

thanks to a new usurper that combines several connections into a standard Cat5e/6 network cable with an RJ-45 connector

Does that mean I can use one of the dozens of ethernet cables currently languishing in my closets?

Re:Wait...

[ZERO1ZERO]

And subsequently route the signal via patch panels / wall plates to various locations around your basement/home/place of work?*

Re:Wait...

[Walt Dismal]

The short answer is I expect no, but here's the long answer why.

A Cat5/6 cable has multiple twisted pairs. To reduce inter-signal interference, the pairs are made with different twist rates per foot. This results in slight distance differences between pairs resulting in up to 50 foot length difference internally per 1000 feet. Now, since standard video such as VGA or component video is usually separated into RBG and (maybe) sync lines, the cable length differences result in delay of one or more of the analog video signals relative to each other and this shows up as actual and visible color fringing with a normal cable. (I've seen it.) The solution is that conventional video over Cat5/6 requires active electronics (some vendors use delay lines but those are hard to time-adjust and it locks you to a known cable vendor/mfg spec) to support clean video. This raises the cost. My basis for this is that I'm involved in video conferencing systems, some using long-run video cable in a building as well as packet-based video for external destinations. If HDBaseT involves manufacturers shifting to packet-based video, it's going to be a very interesting different world, because this will require devices on each end to use codecs and video to/from packets, raising costs for consumer electronics.

There comes a point...

[ICLKennyG]

I would tag this as a sudden break out of common sense, but I am not sure that it is. Yes, it's better in that I will be able to terminate my own video cables again, but how many cable standards do we need? I fully welcome our new Cat5e overlords but I just want the madness to stop.

Aaaarrg

[Cylix]

I'm rather divided on this particular bit of news.

I'm invested in the HDMI technology already and I don't really want to replace everything. With the HDMI 1.4 spec they will address most of the current issues with the technology and provide backward compatibility with the existing devices on the market. HDMI 1.3 kinda sucks if you have an AV receiver and 5.1 setup. (Long story short video processor creates delay and without an auto-sync setup there will be issues with video and audio). This is all made possible because of the requirement for a protected path and downgraded audio on analog ports!

In theory HDMI 1.4 provides a built in protected return audio path, networking, power and a kitchen sink. Regardless, it is rather unimportant to me at this juncture because I doubt I will be upgrading my television and receiver in the near future.

The entire HDBaseT looks like they did mostly the same offerings but in an entirely new cable
which has been around for ages. I get the feeling that actually plugging the cable into a switch won't do much good.

I'm going to assume that in the end they really just get around some royalties and introduce even further market fragmentation.

Good jorb!

Re:HDCP

[19thNervousBreakdown]

What on earth makes you think they're going to give up on encryption just because they're going with a connector that encourages senior citizens to plug 100W output cable boxes into their cable modems' ethernet port?

I don't like network connectors

[hkmwbz]

Maybe I've just had bad luck, but the little pin that is supposed to keep the network cable in place always breaks on me. And when it does, the cable never seems to sit as tightly as it should.

Am I doing something wrong, or does everyone else have similar experiences? If it's the latter, using it as the connector for this new thing sounds like a terrible idea.

Light Peak

[TempeNerd]

And let the battle for a new standard begin.

I had thought Light Peak was the likely replacement technology.

10Gbps and backward compatible with USB.

"At 10Gb/s, you could transfer a full-length Blu-Ray movie in less than 30 seconds. Optical technology also allows for smaller connectors and longer, thinner, and more flexible cables than currently possible. Light Peak also has the ability to run multiple protocols simultaneously over a single cable, enabling the technology to connect devices such as peripherals, displays, disk drives, docking stations, and more."

http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/None/1813.htm

Re:The reason you can't connect your monitor

[tepples]

Yes, there is a technical reason your monitor can't be connected to your entertainment device... Your monitor doesn't support HDCP decoding.

Then what's the technical reason to require HDCP in the first place?

Haven't we learned anything from PS/2 connectors?

[Burning1]

Haven't we learned anything from PS/2 connectors? Installing ports that are physically, but not electronically compatible on consumer devices is a stupid solution.

Given that a lot of receivers and devices currently have built in Ethernet ports for network connectivity, I can't see this as being a particularly good idea... It's not as if hard wired Ethernet ports are common in residential walls...

Re:HDCP

[jythie]

This is why I need mod points.

Years ago I worked on jukeboxes that had RJ45 based audio connections.... oh the network cards we blew out when those cables got crossed.. and we were actually TRYING not to mix them up.

No kidding

[Sycraft-fu]

Because, here's a shocker for many smug "I know everything," geek types: Cable quality DOES make a difference! When you start talking extremely high bandwidth signals, like you are talking with HDMI especially the "beyond HD" stuff you are talking some tight tolerances that are needed. This is even more true when using smaller cable for longer runs (you can solve a number of problems simply by throwing copper at it and using larger cables). So you may well find that a cable that worked just fine for an old 720p TV doesn't work at all, or has sparkles and dropouts when you hook it up to a 1080p 120Hz connection. Suddenly your bandwidth is beyond its capabilities.

So you can't just say "Ha! Cables don't matter! Anything works fine!" because that's false. As we do higher and higher bandwidth stuff, cable tolerances become more and more important. That's why you can have Cat-3/5/5e/6/6a cables all of which look fundamentally the same, yet have drastically different performance. They are all 4 pairs of unshielded twisted wire. However Cat-3 is good for maybe 16MHz whereas Cat-6a is good to 500MHz. Why? Much, MUCH tighter tolerances and specs.

So cable quality DOES matter as people can find out, but then there are assholes like Monster that rip people off with it.

Re:No kidding

[Miamicanes]

There's one tiny detail that throws a monkey wrench into just about *everyone's* understanding: a disturbingly large percentage of recent-vintage low-cost cable from China has been made using "copper-coated steel" (CCS) and NOT pure copper.

CCS has been used for years as the center conductor in 75-ohm coax, but its appearance in things like network cable alleged to be "cat5e" is a VERY recent phenomenon (as in, even 2 or 3 years ago, it was basically unheard of). When you throw CCS into the cable equation, everything you know about cable based upon past experience and external observances goes to hell. For the most part, it's safe to say that CCS does absolutely nothing GOOD for applications like ethernet, and has plenty of potential to do really bad things to it. I'd be shocked if the CCS cable pawned off as "cat5e" on eBay (and quite a few discount vendors online) would meet official cat5e specifications at a HUNDRED feet, let alone a thousand or more. Worst of all, unless you're making a point of watching out for CCS network cable, it actually looks BETTER upon casual inspection than decent pure-copper cable, because the wires are thicker. The problem is, the steel core does nothing for the signal, so you're basically trading a hair-thin AWG26 copper wire for a micron-thick hollow tube of copper electroplated onto a strand of steel wire, and using it in a scenario where the conductivity difference really, truly DOES matter.

Don't believe me? Go to eBay and search for "cat5e CCS" (sans quotes), checking the box to search the description as well. You'll find at least a page of results, and when you read the descriptions, you'll see that they most certainly ARE "CCS".

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the reason it's halfway-legal to sell CCS UTP cable as "cat5e Cable" is because (in America, at least), "cat5e" only has specific legal meaning if you use it in conjunction with "TIA/EIA-568-B", or make specific claims about its suitability for network use at a given speed and/or length. As long as you claim nothing beyond "AWG24 Cat5e Cable", you could probably get away with just about anything capable of conducting electricity and 4 twisted pairs of wire.

Anyway, beware. CCS "cat5e" cable is real, and is a growing problem unless you make a point of trying to avoid buying it.