But people still don't say they want to go out for American. The items you've listed are just available outside the US as standalone items, without being specifically identified as American.
Canada has its share of food, largely regional. In Montreal, I could cite bagels, smoked meat, poutine, tourtiere, a cabane-a-sucre meal, butter tarts, pea soup, baked beans, pouding chomeur, cretons, tire d'erable, buche de noel, etc. If you expand it to all of Canada, there are many more dishes. And, like America (and many other countries), Canada has its own variety of Chinese food distinct from any other country. Having ordered the same dishes in New England and Montreal, some of them don't even resemble eachother.
If you want to route your audio through your gear, then I don't see how HDMI is stopping you from doing that. Either your source device already has toslink, or you can use a cheap splitter that extracts the audio from HDMI and spits it out over toslink.
Personally, I don't even bother with 5.1; I have a 2.1 setup and can't tell the difference between DD and uncompressed. But that doesn't make your strange HDMI hating any more logical.
Fair enough. I still think those cases will be rare. Projectors didn't and don't tend to do those kinds of resolutions over VGA, and a typical CRT monitor probably topped out somewhere around 1600x1200 (my 21" Viewsonic beast certainly did). Of the 54 reviews for the adapter on Monoprice, not a single one complains about maximum resolutions;)
Yes (they can output it), and yes (monitors accept it). I can't tell you what the monitors actually do when they get the 24Hz input signal, but the computer can output it, and the cable can support it. It's fairly typical in a home theatre environment to output video at 24Hz or 30Hz to the TV, to avoid judder.
The player support isn't required, although using EVR-Sync in MPC works very nicely with it. My Dell U2711 supports 24Hz input (as does my projector), and the nVidia drivers are happy enough to output that (as a custom resolution, anyhow).
Dedicated players (like a bluray player) often have an option to do 24hz output. The PS3 does too.
It can be found on most new laptop/videocards/monitors. It's also the basis for Intel's Lightpeak/Thunderbolt type stuff, which is their new crazy-high-bandwidth sucessor to USB; it basically mixes PCI-Express and DisplayPort on a single cable, which gives you a rather lot of flexibility on a single port.
It should be pointed out that while the DP to VGA adapters are active, they're still bus-powered (so they're dongle-sized with no power brick), and really cheap (like, $13 cheap).
They are. If you can wait. If you need it today, then Monoprice is not your friend. Monoprice will take a week or two to get your stuff to you with the default shipping options. You can pay for faster, yes, but that often counteracts most of the price advantage.
My brand new 1080p home theatre projector has an RS232 port. So does my ARM dev board. So does my digital cable box from the cableco. So does my TV.... etc.
I've noticed that some new devices will have something more modern than a DB9 port for RS232, but they still use them electrically as just a plain serial port.
I don't WANT a separate audio cable. I find it convenient to have everything going over a single cable. I like plugging one cable into my laptop and getting both audio and video on my TV.
In practice, it doesn't matter if they multiplexed audio and video or used separate pins. It's functionally identical to the user.
In terms of audio, S/PDIF (and toslink) have severe bandwidth restrictions that result in HDMI actually being a far better format for audio. S/PDIF only has enough bandwidth to handle stereo losslessly; any more channels than that and you need to use lossy compression. HDMI has enough spare bandwidth in modern revisions that it can do lossless 7.1, such as Dolby TrueHD.
In practice, I'm not enough of an audiophile to care; lossy DTS and lossless TrueHD sound identical to me. But the convenience of only having a single cable, THAT is worth it.
In terms of getting audio out of HDMI, it's not that expensive. You can buy a 4x1 HDMI switch from Monoprice for $43 that will split the audio off and give you toslink or RCA coax audio split off the HDMI inputs. Of course, you're then limited to the subset of codecs that both S/PDIF and HDMI support, but for most people, that probably doesn't matter.
It's not the case for HDMI, but luckily, DisplayPort to HDMI adapters are very tiny and cheap. They're bus-powered (so no power brick), they're cheap ($13 on monoprice for the cheapest), they're small...
Stick this thing on the end of any VGA cable to magically turn your VGA device into a DisplayPort device:
Most new laptops and displays seem to have DisplayPort, and not just from Apple (my Dell display and my buddy's Dell laptop both do), there are more than a few videocards on the market that only support DisplayPort, so it's getting reasonably mainstream. Intel's focus on DP as the basis for Thunderbolt/Lightpeak will undoubtedly help adoption.
And yet, I've had multiple HDMI cables go bad for connector issues, and have had those bad cables destroy the HDMI port on equipment by pushing the socket pins out of position...
My XBox 360's HDMI port was destroyed by a bad HDMI cable. Fun.
DisplayPort seems to address many of the issues with the HDMI connector. DP's connector is more obviously directional about which way to plug it in, supports locking the cable in (see the pop-up hooks here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Displayport-cable.jpg), and the connector/sockets seem more robust.
Actually, it was a legitimate problem with early SATA connectors. Manufacturers have since redesigned the connectors so that they don't suffer from this problem; these days, you can feel the SATA connector snapping into place when you plug it in. That wasn't true when they first came out, regardless of price.
DVI has optional analog pins, yes. HDMI doesn't, yes. But DisplayPort, which aims to replace both of them in PCs, sort of does.
DisplayPort itself doesn't do VGA, but they defined how to convert DP to VGA in the DP spec itself, and as a result, unpowered (well, bus-powered) active converters are cheap. You can buy a DP to VGA adapter from Monoprice for $13.
As such, there's no real need to maintain the analog connector in laptops. The need for VGA on a laptop is rare (less rare than desktops, but still rare), so it's not really asking to much to require a cheap and tiny adapter to connect your DP laptop to a VGA projector on the rare occasion you need to do so.
HDMI to VGA, on the other hand, requires powered active converters, which cost several times more, and require external power sources. Basically instead of a simple dongle, HDMI to VGA requires a converter box with an external power supply. So HDMI can't really replace DVI, but DP can.
I'd just be happy if PowerVR would release (or bundle) their full OpenGL drivers; nobody other than Intel has licensed them, so all we get is OpenGL ES. Which is nice for apps written specifically for it, but few things in a generic Linux distro are.
Also, I'd be happy if I could get vsync working on my OMAP4430.
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But people still don't say they want to go out for American. The items you've listed are just available outside the US as standalone items, without being specifically identified as American.
Canada has its share of food, largely regional. In Montreal, I could cite bagels, smoked meat, poutine, tourtiere, a cabane-a-sucre meal, butter tarts, pea soup, baked beans, pouding chomeur, cretons, tire d'erable, buche de noel, etc. If you expand it to all of Canada, there are many more dishes. And, like America (and many other countries), Canada has its own variety of Chinese food distinct from any other country. Having ordered the same dishes in New England and Montreal, some of them don't even resemble eachother.
If you want to route your audio through your gear, then I don't see how HDMI is stopping you from doing that. Either your source device already has toslink, or you can use a cheap splitter that extracts the audio from HDMI and spits it out over toslink.
Personally, I don't even bother with 5.1; I have a 2.1 setup and can't tell the difference between DD and uncompressed. But that doesn't make your strange HDMI hating any more logical.
No idea, but HDMI to DisplayPort adapters seem rare. Monoprice doesn't have any.
Then you're already missing support for Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS HD.
Fair enough. I still think those cases will be rare. Projectors didn't and don't tend to do those kinds of resolutions over VGA, and a typical CRT monitor probably topped out somewhere around 1600x1200 (my 21" Viewsonic beast certainly did). Of the 54 reviews for the adapter on Monoprice, not a single one complains about maximum resolutions ;)
Not when every home theater amp I've ever seen has HDMI inputs and outputs.
It's exceptionally rare to find anything above 1600x1200 on a VGA-only monitor. A 162MHz adapter would probably cover the vast majority of customers.
Yes (they can output it), and yes (monitors accept it). I can't tell you what the monitors actually do when they get the 24Hz input signal, but the computer can output it, and the cable can support it. It's fairly typical in a home theatre environment to output video at 24Hz or 30Hz to the TV, to avoid judder.
The player support isn't required, although using EVR-Sync in MPC works very nicely with it. My Dell U2711 supports 24Hz input (as does my projector), and the nVidia drivers are happy enough to output that (as a custom resolution, anyhow).
Dedicated players (like a bluray player) often have an option to do 24hz output. The PS3 does too.
It's the standard that replaced (or is supposed to replace) DVI (or HDMI) on PCs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort
It can be found on most new laptop/videocards/monitors. It's also the basis for Intel's Lightpeak/Thunderbolt type stuff, which is their new crazy-high-bandwidth sucessor to USB; it basically mixes PCI-Express and DisplayPort on a single cable, which gives you a rather lot of flexibility on a single port.
No, HDMI tops out at 4096x2160. Admittedly, that's only at 24Hz. If you want 60Hz, I don't think you can do more than 2560x1600 over HDMI.
HDMI can, as of v1.3 with high speed cables, do 2560x1600 at 60Hz. So there isn't really much need for a "dual link" version of HDMI.
It should be pointed out that while the DP to VGA adapters are active, they're still bus-powered (so they're dongle-sized with no power brick), and really cheap (like, $13 cheap).
They are. If you can wait. If you need it today, then Monoprice is not your friend. Monoprice will take a week or two to get your stuff to you with the default shipping options. You can pay for faster, yes, but that often counteracts most of the price advantage.
High speed cables are actually rated for 4K. At 24Hz standard-depth colour, anyhow.
My brand new 1080p home theatre projector has an RS232 port. So does my ARM dev board. So does my digital cable box from the cableco. So does my TV.... etc.
I've noticed that some new devices will have something more modern than a DB9 port for RS232, but they still use them electrically as just a plain serial port.
I don't WANT a separate audio cable. I find it convenient to have everything going over a single cable. I like plugging one cable into my laptop and getting both audio and video on my TV.
In practice, it doesn't matter if they multiplexed audio and video or used separate pins. It's functionally identical to the user.
In terms of audio, S/PDIF (and toslink) have severe bandwidth restrictions that result in HDMI actually being a far better format for audio. S/PDIF only has enough bandwidth to handle stereo losslessly; any more channels than that and you need to use lossy compression. HDMI has enough spare bandwidth in modern revisions that it can do lossless 7.1, such as Dolby TrueHD.
In practice, I'm not enough of an audiophile to care; lossy DTS and lossless TrueHD sound identical to me. But the convenience of only having a single cable, THAT is worth it.
In terms of getting audio out of HDMI, it's not that expensive. You can buy a 4x1 HDMI switch from Monoprice for $43 that will split the audio off and give you toslink or RCA coax audio split off the HDMI inputs. Of course, you're then limited to the subset of codecs that both S/PDIF and HDMI support, but for most people, that probably doesn't matter.
Uh, the point of DVI is that it existed before HDMI. DVI was designed in 1999. HDMI was designed in 2002.
If your computer supports DisplayPort, and your KVM only supports VGA, then slap one of these on the end of your VGA cable:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10428&cs_id=1042801&p_id=5135&seq=1&format=2
It's a good thing, then, that DisplayPort is cheaper than HDMI both in terms of licensing costs, and adapters.
It's not the case for HDMI, but luckily, DisplayPort to HDMI adapters are very tiny and cheap. They're bus-powered (so no power brick), they're cheap ($13 on monoprice for the cheapest), they're small...
Stick this thing on the end of any VGA cable to magically turn your VGA device into a DisplayPort device:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10428&cs_id=1042801&p_id=5135&seq=1&format=2
Yeah, it's not ideal that you're forced to buy this adapter to use an old monitor with a new laptop, but it's not exactly an onerous burden.
Most new laptops and displays seem to have DisplayPort, and not just from Apple (my Dell display and my buddy's Dell laptop both do), there are more than a few videocards on the market that only support DisplayPort, so it's getting reasonably mainstream. Intel's focus on DP as the basis for Thunderbolt/Lightpeak will undoubtedly help adoption.
And yet, I've had multiple HDMI cables go bad for connector issues, and have had those bad cables destroy the HDMI port on equipment by pushing the socket pins out of position...
My XBox 360's HDMI port was destroyed by a bad HDMI cable. Fun.
DisplayPort seems to address many of the issues with the HDMI connector. DP's connector is more obviously directional about which way to plug it in, supports locking the cable in (see the pop-up hooks here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Displayport-cable.jpg), and the connector/sockets seem more robust.
Actually, it was a legitimate problem with early SATA connectors. Manufacturers have since redesigned the connectors so that they don't suffer from this problem; these days, you can feel the SATA connector snapping into place when you plug it in. That wasn't true when they first came out, regardless of price.
DVI has optional analog pins, yes. HDMI doesn't, yes. But DisplayPort, which aims to replace both of them in PCs, sort of does.
DisplayPort itself doesn't do VGA, but they defined how to convert DP to VGA in the DP spec itself, and as a result, unpowered (well, bus-powered) active converters are cheap. You can buy a DP to VGA adapter from Monoprice for $13.
As such, there's no real need to maintain the analog connector in laptops. The need for VGA on a laptop is rare (less rare than desktops, but still rare), so it's not really asking to much to require a cheap and tiny adapter to connect your DP laptop to a VGA projector on the rare occasion you need to do so.
HDMI to VGA, on the other hand, requires powered active converters, which cost several times more, and require external power sources. Basically instead of a simple dongle, HDMI to VGA requires a converter box with an external power supply. So HDMI can't really replace DVI, but DP can.
I'd just be happy if PowerVR would release (or bundle) their full OpenGL drivers; nobody other than Intel has licensed them, so all we get is OpenGL ES. Which is nice for apps written specifically for it, but few things in a generic Linux distro are.
Also, I'd be happy if I could get vsync working on my OMAP4430.