HDMI 2.0 Officially Announced

jones_supa writes with news that HDMI 2.0 is out. From Engadget "The folks at HDMI Licensing are announcing HDMI 2.0 officially. Arriving just in time for the wide rollout of a new generation of Ultra HDTVs, it adds a few key capabilities to the standard. With a bandwidth capacity of up to 18Gbps, HDMI 2.0 has the ability to carry 3,840 x 2,160 resolution video at 60fps. It also has support for up to 32 audio channels, 'dynamic auto lipsync' and additional CEC extensions. The physical cables and connectors remain unchanged." Just like HDMI 1.4, the specification is only available to HDMI Forum members.

Comments

Physical cables the same?

[MrDoh!]

!So we won't see a markup in price on 2.0 cables then. If only.

Re:Physical cables the same?

[MickyTheIdiot]

Start the presses! Time to print the "HDMI 2.0 Ready!" stickers!

Just putting it on the package is good enough for a 50% price hike AT LEAST!

No Mention

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary doesn't say...

Does HDMI 2.0 support new, improved, and even more delicious Digitally Restricted Media? Seems that it must.

Re:No Mention

[gstoddart]

my blu rays play just fine on my TV. what exactly am i missing?

The opportunity to buy a whole new TV which runs at a higher resolution.

Think of it as the companies who make a/v equipment trying to make sure you replace all of your stuff every 2 years to keep up with the latest market trends.

But, I'm with you, I don't see myself needing to get even higher resolution any time soon.

Re:No Mention

[vux984]

Color my cynical but I see all this hype with 3D TV and movies and cable companies looking at these silly things as a way to extort money from $50 a month to $199 for HD. WIth 4K HD here comes $499 a month, now add conference rooms and TV makers, ... oh I guess greenRay DVDs are needed so now Sony can make even MORE $$$ for these etc. Sadly idiots wil pay for these too and then wonder how they are just barely making it with their middle class salaries and how they could have bought a brand new car for the monthly bills they keep paying for such garbage with minor improvements of what they had.

Just because they make it, doesn't mean wel'll buy it.

3DTV is probably here to stay, but not a lot of people are upgrading TVs just to get 3D. And 3D media is fairly scarce and largely irrelevant. Even the TV salesmen will admit that 3D is a flop. Nobody with a 60" edge lit LCD from 3 years ago is even slightly interested in upgrading to 3D. The only people buying them are people upgrading from CRT, upgrading from a smaller TV, or who have a older LCDs/Plasmas/DLPs that are dying. And they are buying them because it doesn't cost any more than a TV without 3D.

4K HD... I'm looking forward to that one with respect to computer displays etc, but I doubt a lot of people care for TV. I doubt it'll gain traction as a must have upgrade, and will instead become like 3DTV... where everyone buying a new TV will end up with it once its no more expensive than buying a TV without it. And half or more of them will never be used with any 4K content anyway for years to come.

oh I guess greenRay DVDs are needed

Blu ray launched just in time for the disc market to collapse as people switched to streaming. I doubt a greenRay tech will ever see the light of day as consumer disc media for movies. Most people are satisfied with streaming stuff at lower quality than DVD, nevermind bluray... the content market for 4HD just doesn't exist no matter how badly the gear industry wants one. Meanwhile the broadcasters don't have the bandwidth for it. The movie rental places have nearly disappeared. The movie stores are struggling and diversifying away from movies.

We'll get 4HD gear sooner than later, and 4HD content eventually, I'm sure, but its going to take some amazing marketing to convince us we need it enough to upgrade.

Attention Cinephiles

[horm]

I am selling platinum-tipped, lead-shielded, kevlar-reinforced Ultra Mega HDMI 2.0 cables for the low, low price of $200/ft.

Re:Attention Cinephiles

[SGT CAPSLOCK]

Do your cables use oxygen-free copper, though? I'm sick of oxygen messing my pixels up!

Also, can I give you more money for some gold-colored connectors??? I don't mind throwing all of my money at you and your cables if you add useful features like these.

Re:Attention Cinephiles

[mrt_2394871]

[...] Can I order a palette now and beat the rush?

You could, but we have so many more colours nowadays.

Re:Attention Cinephiles

[The Grim Reefer]

Do your cables use oxygen-free copper, though? I'm sick of oxygen messing my pixels up!.

Fool. You don't want that cheap-ass copper. What you need is oxygen-free silver. The following is a quote from a silver speaker wire company. With results like these for a simple speaker wire, just think what silver will do for HDMI:

When you replace your copper speaker cables (even more expensive copper cables) with our Teflon-insulated, 99.999% solid silver conductor speaker cables, you may think you have just installed expensive new electronics, because of the across-the-board sonic improvements you should experience-

The highs sounding less harsh and more delicately musical. The bass, less "bloated" and more revealing of instrumental textures and specific notes. The all-important mid-range (where most of the music resides) should sound more natural and warm, with human voices sounding more like real people, and musical instruments more convincingly "live."

A new, "liquid" and flowing quality should reveal more of the intrinsic beauty of the original musical event.

The stereo sound stage becomes more specific, with instruments and voices each appearing from a smaller localized area in the stereo image. There is a more distinct "layering" of the sound, with the ability to retrieve the original recorded "depth of field" to a greater extent.

With results like this applied to an HDMI cable, you will feel like you have been "sucked into" another world, rather than just viewing it on television. In fact, I bet you will be able to interact with the characters in the movie. You may even be able to stop that jedi from saving Jar-Jar. Or smack the shit out of Bill Paxton and tell him to grow a pair in Aliens. And of course there's the porn.

Did I mention the need for teflon insulation?

Re:And how many new restrictions?

[h4rr4r]

No, HDMI is all about audio and video on the same cable. HDCP is the DRM you are talking about.

Re:The real question

[h4rr4r]

See this is the sort of thing you see from laymen all the time. Listen to the GeekSquad expert next time. The gold connectors round out the 0s and sharpen up the 1s. This is really simple, come on.

Re:THROW AWAY YOUR OLD AND BUY THE NEW !!

[oji-sama]

"Version 2.0 of the HDMI Specification, which is backward compatible with earlier versions of the Specification[...]"

Re:New feature

[wonkey_monkey]

HDCP!=HDMI

Re:And how many new restrictions?

[Billly Gates]

No it is not manditory.

However, operating systems like Windows 7 will degrade video quality if they detect a non HDMI cable for blue-Ray content in the RC releases so this way MPAA can make people think DRM HDMI is better.

I use HDMI on my machine due to convenience of less cables and I hate the sound on my mobo. Not because I believe it is better video quality.

But it is just a cable and nothing else. The DRM HDCP is dependent on OS support.

Re:And how many new restrictions?

[markkezner]

digital signal all the way to the monitor means better audio quality (speakers are in monitor).

Seriously bro? Any miniature benefit that digital audio signals would have given you is completely blown away by using speakers that are integrated into your monitor. Integrated speakers are just universally bad, full stop. I'm not talking about an audiophile's definition of bad, either; I bet my grandma could hear the difference.

I'd wager that given the same sound source, a stereo analog signal going into standard desktop computer speakers will sound better than your pure digital setup through your computer monitor.

If this was a troll, well, you deserve a beer, cause you got me.

Still limited to 60Hz?

[sinij]

Still limited to 60Hz? Disappointing and annoying.

Re:The real question

[delt0r]

Well when i was working on RF stuff, there was a lot of silver and gold of course. Skin effect and all and good connections were important to avoid reflections. Since a HDMI cable is working as a high frequency broad band cable. I can see cheap cables not working. Reflection on incorrectly or poorly terminated sockets could really stuff things up. Digital in a computer is far from 1 or 0 at these kind of bit rates. Signal eyes from these can be .. unpleasant. Error codes are used for a reason.

Of course i don't buy the expensive cables either. But we are not talking about "warm sound from correctly polarized oxygen free isotopically pure" monster cables.

What You're Missing

[Anonymous Coward]

my blu rays play just fine on my TV. what exactly am i missing?

You're missing the ability to access the HDMI channel, more specifically the HDCP channel, that your Blu-Ray disc is playing across. Many would use this access to record/copy the video stream, possibly for piracy which is what the DRM is designed to prevent. But, many others would like to be able to access the video stream to do things like:

* Add our own news crawler, or pop-up alerts from our home automation systems.
* We'd like to pop-up caller ID from our PBX while the video is playing.
* Allow the home automation system to mute the Blu-Ray's audio and make an announcement.
* We'd like the ability to switch video feeds on a particular HDMI interface in software, so we don't have to use convoluted mechanical HDMI switchers and computer controlled IR blasters to control the HDMI switch.
* Similar to above; switch our security cameras/gate video on the fly.

All of these things were possible with previously unDRMed interfaces. But, using those interfaces now cause the Blu-Ray player to artificially and significantly reduce the playback resolution. Instead of watching 1080p, the Blu-Ray restricts the video down to 720p or less.

DOES IT HAVE MEANINGFUL ERROR-CHECKING?

[Medievalist]

HDMI is a pure digital signal, with error checking. But since there's no means of retransmitting a broken packet (and thus no valid reason for buffering) in actual practice it's less capable of error checking and bit regeneration than methods used by scribes in the ninth century. You can know you lost more bits than you can regenerate, but you can't do anything about it.

I think this is because HDMI is not really a method for clean digital signal transmission, but rather a way to stealthily carry HDCP into the consumer mainstream. The feature set is primarily aimed at preventing users from doing things (like making backups) rather than providing the maximum benefit to end users.

Re:DOES IT HAVE MEANINGFUL ERROR-CHECKING?

[squiggleslash]

No, HDMI has never included error checking because that would prevent people from being able to use an HDMI-based television system to watch Fox News.

Hahahha I'm so funny.