Slashdot Mirror
New HDMI 2.1 Spec Includes Support For Dynamic HDR, 8K Resolution (techhive.com)
The HDMI Licensing Group has unveiled the HDMI 2.1 spec, adding support for dynamic HDR, 8K60, and 4K120. From a report on TechHive: To take full advantage of the new HDMI spec, you'll need a new 48-gigabit-per-second cable. That cable will also work with older HDMI 1.3 (10.2Gbps) and HDMI 2.0a (16Gbps) ports, but those ports don't support the new HDMI 2.1 features. [...] HDMI 2.1 adds support for the new object-oriented audio codecs -- such as Dolby Atmos and DTS X -- which can position audio events from movie soundtracks in 3D space.
Get your HDMI 2.1 Monster cable to day only $89.99 and ask a blue shirt about our install deals and our audio systems.
I'm sure there's a reason why someone might want 8K, but I've not even been convinced of the benefit of 4K yet.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Don't forget your extended warranty, only $49.99 + 10% deductible.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
48-gigabit-per-second cable
The problem HDMI solves is the problem of shuffling data from one device to another. We've had 100 Gbit/s ethernet for years now, and those solve the exact same problem. USB and Thunderbolt also solve the same problem, but provides DC power on top of it. TV's are basically small computers at this point, there's absolutely no reason they need a specialized port just to receive data.
Can we please bite the bullet? We survived the transition to HD. Remember when plain 1080i TV was 8 grand? People still pay $100 for digital monster cables.
Don't tell me laser are that expensive and yes I do understand about the frequencies. But plain red lasers use to cost $200 and now you can get them at the 99 cent store.
When are we going to transition over to optical? Why are the powers that be holding us back?
what about the directional channels for electrons? i hear those help with maximizing picture quality and audio fidelity.
Yep, they make the ones straighter and the zeros rounder. But the cables have to use oxygen-free copper, braided on the thighs of virgins from a third-world country for it to work right.
That work used to be done by little old Italian widows listening to Verdi but then they unionized and things just haven't been the same since.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Obviously what they're talking about is breaking individual sounds down into their own channels based on assignment to 3d spatial coordinates rather than having individual channels for some arbitrary "standard" set of speakers coming from certain "standardized" directions. Which is IMHO kind of neat. You could have as many speakers as you wanted and put them wherever you wanted. Or perhaps combine face recognition and ultrasonic directional speakers to give a very precise sound direction to each person within the area in front of the tv but nobody else in the building. It also lends itself well to alternative display technologies, such as VR. That's nearly taking the concept of sound capturing as far as it can go; about the only thing they could do more than true positioning would be to be able to capture sounds outside the human hearing range (maybe to get your dogs reacting to movies too? ;) )
I sometimes think about what would be the "ultimate imaging format". What can really capture everything capturable and renderable? You can view a camera as a viewing frustrum, and could have any number of cameras viewing the same scene. Their frame timings won't necessarily line up unless they were specifically coordinated to - but then again, with rolling shutters, even different parts of the same frame often don't already. And why is that a bad thing? You could get rid of the concept of frames altogether and bundle pixel data into timestamped packets - so long as you have a reasonable way to describe what sort of angles those pixels are corresponding with, ideally a pattern (angle start/stop/increment for each axis, for example). Your display devices can likewise subsequently do away with the concept of frames and just update new data as soon as they get it - a virtually unlimited number of frames per second.
With multiple cameras, or single cameras with depth sensing, you could have a z-buffer corresponding to cameras' pixel data. So your 3d display or VR headset could recalculate your stereoscopy with respect to where the viewer(s) are sitting, rather than just having a generic naive left/right positioning that sometimes causes discomfort in viewers. You can also render different objects into scenes post-facto (if the format also supports embedded 3d data), which could give producers some neat options to showcase their creativity and viewers to customize their experience. In an extreme case, with sufficient camera coverage, one could attempt to backengineer the full 3d environment from the different camera shots (photogrammetry), allowing for realtime free motion within it.
A variety of other data could also be captured - albeit of questionable utility. An interesting, although very high bandwidth, option would be to store light as full spectra rather than just RGB. So you have the potential for perfect color restoration - even accurate enough for spectral analysis, for whatever that's worth (tetrachromats at the very least would appreciate the extra precision). There's also light outside the human visual range - for most users, the only advantage I can think of for storing it (apart from helping assist any 3d environment backcalculation - aka to see things that might be transparent to visible light but not UV or IR) would be that sometimes there's a lot of infrared but not visible light, and that makes you feel warm; a display device being able to radiate heat on demand, and from specific locations could actually be kind of neat, so long as it stays within comfort ranges. Another thing of questionable utility to capture is light polarization; the only utility I can think of for it is to assist in 3d environment backcalculation. Lastly, taking it to absurd extremes, you could capture data completely unrelated to light and sound, such as various forms of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. IMHO pretty useless except for physics applications and maybe security cameras at a nuclear facility, but.... Likewise things that aren't even directional - magnetic fields, electric
For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?
1080p Blu-ray was encrypted by HDCP. Intel somehow lost the master key, allowing anyone to decode any past and future content encoded with HDCP 2.1 or earlier. The studios' response was to create an entirely new, not backwards-compatible HDCP 2.2 around the time the HDMI 4k video standard (HDMI 2.0) was released. Unfortunately they did it late, so there was about a 1-year gap when 4k equipment was sold with HDMI 2.0 capability, but not HDCP 2.2. This meant that these 4k TVs and Blu-ray players could not play commercial 4k Blu-rays. If you burned your own 4k movies to Blu-ray they would play, but not the stuff Hollywood released. I spent a lot of time warning people not to buy 4k equipment that first year, and warning them to be careful to check for "HDCP 2.2" in the specs that second year. Hollywood doesn't care if your TV/Blu-ray player doesn't work. They just want their crap protected.
HDCP 2.2 was broken in late 2015. Not sure if it was cracked or someone just made a device using a legit HDCP 2.2 decryption key. But if it was cracked, we're probably going to go through all this again. Hollywood will insist a new not backwards-compatible HDCP 2.3, and it will be used to encode all future Blu-rays starting with 8k releases.
They also enjoy double- or triple-dipping: charging you full price for a license to the same movie in different formats. Same with the record studios, who had no qualms about charging your for the same song on vinyl, tape, and CD. The software industry gets this right - they let you upgrade at a discounted price if you own a previous version. This reflects the reality that you already purchased a license for the previous versions, and thus the new version is only giving you some new functionality instead of entirely new functionality. But Hollywood has self-deluded themselves into thinking that their product is a license when it's convenient for them if it's a license, and a product when it's convenient for them if it's a product. So will charge you full price even if you've already purchased licenses for the movie three times at 360i (VHS), 525i (DVD), and 1080p.
People need to stop putting up with this crap and demand lower-price upgrade licenses for content they've already paid for. IMHO a lot of piracy would disappear if the studios simply adopted pricing which better reflected reality. Most people want to pay content creators for their work, but not if they judge that the content creators are trying to rip them off. The whole fiasco with Windows XP support contracts is a great example. Microsoft pushed support contracts for XP hard and lots of companies signed up. Instead of buying XP, they were buying 3 years of Windows support, which would include XP and an upgrade to the next version of Windows (new versions normally come out about every 3 years). Unfortunately Vista got delayed and wasn't released until 5.5 years after XP - outside the support contract period these companies had paid for. There was hell to pay, with many companies believing Microsoft deliberately delayed Vista so they wouldn't have to fulfil that portion of the contract. Even though Microsoft eventually relented and gave these companies Vista, many of them will never buy a support contract or subscription software from Microsoft again. Because they judge it to be unfairly skewed in favor of the supplier.
8K is TWICE the resolution of human eye, which can only distinguish about 4000 pixels across the field of vision. Higher resolution is only useful if you're sitting close enough to only see half the screen in your field of view! Point it, 4K is the point of diminishing returns in video resolution. At 4K, you cannot distinguish individual pixels when the entire screen is in your field of view. Higher resolution for a TV screen is pointless. Higher resolution for a camera only makes sense if you plan on blowing the image or a section of the image up.Satellite cameras can still use all the resolution they can get.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In a blind comparison test, Monster Cables were indistinguishable from wire coathangers running a couple feet between the amp and speakers. Granted, for really long cable runs, i.e. 100 foot or more, good shielding and impedance matching makes a difference.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The main advantage to good cables is simple mechanical reliability. But you can get $5-10 cables form Dayton (or in some cases Amazon Basics) that look to be made in the same factory as Monster cables.
Even for long runs for digital cables, where shielding and impedance matching barely matter, acceptable quality can actually get expensive as you need larger wire gauge (or a repeater) for long runs. Don't take the cheapest 50-foot HDMI cable, or you'll get one that works most days.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
But why not simply use 100G ethernet ? If they pushed up the production volumes the price should surely come down and every ethernet application would benefit.
Nullius in verba
Who needs future proofing when the cable only costs $4? At the rate new cables come out, it would take monster cable basically 50 years to break even with monoprice.