Posted on 05/19/2007 9:16:19 AM PDT by george76
How the designers of the HDMI standard screwed up, and what's to be done about it.
HDMI is a format which was designed primarily to serve the interests of the content-provider industries, not to serve the interests of the consumer. The result is a mess, and in particular, the signal is quite hard to route and switch, cable assemblies are unnecessarily complicated, and distance runs are chancy. Why is this, and what did the designers of the standard do wrong? And what can we do about it?
The story begins with another badly-developed standard, DVI. A few years ago, there was a movement within the computer industry to develop a new digital video display standard to replace the traditional analog VGA/RGBHV arrangement still found on most computer video cards and monitors. Interested parties grouped together to form the Digital Display Working Group (DDWG), which developed the DVI standard.
DVI had all the earmarks of a standard designed by committee, and it remains one of the most confusing video interfaces ever. DVI could run analog signals, digital signals, or both, and ....
But the worst thing about DVI was something that the computer-display professionals involved in its development really didn't give much thought to: distance runs.
Had the DVI standard been designed by broadcast engineers rather than computer engineers, things probably would have turned out very differently. In the broadcast world, everything from lowly composite video to High-Definition Serial Digital Video is run in coaxial cables, and for good reasons...
why is there such a big difference between twisted pairs and coax? It all has to do with the electrical properties of the two methods of routing signal from one place to another: balanced, through twisted pair, and unbalanced, through coax.
(Excerpt) Read more at audioholics.com ...
I’ll be sending this on to the hubster, so thanks for posting it!
Whole House Wiring Basics Part 3
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With today’s technology there are three ways to handle the distribution of digital video; UTP, copper, and fiber. Let’s look at each in turn.
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# Gas-injected dielectric for optimum signal strength and ultra-low loss.
# High-density triple-shielding for maximum rejection of RFI and EMI.
Thanks to George76 for the ping..
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Lasvegasdave
Thanks.
Every time I learn one new thing, then there are ten more things to learn.
LOL! I know what you mean.
Show me someone with all Monster cables on their audio/video setup, and I’ll show you someone with more money than sense.
I know almost nothing about this stuff but when I started looking at the price of cables I KNEW there had to be something cheaper. Once again the Internet provided the answers I was looking for.
What a rippoff.
monoprice.com is the place I’ll try ordering from, in the future. Several guys on another forum I’m on, use them.
If HDMI was supposed to be for uncompressed video, why not use four pairs each to send 1/4 of the pixels with a self-clocking and scheme with sync markers? This would add less delay to the signal than would an extra couple meters of cable, but could increase by orders of magnitude the tolerance for variations in relative delay.
Normally, products are designed with the consumer in mind. How can I give the consumer high quality? How to give ease of use, cool stuff? This generally results in the awesome products on the market now. The problem with HDMI is that it was designed by the copyright cartel first and foremost to put restrictions on their works. All other considerations are secondary, as is obvious.
I believe there’s a really high-speed Samsung TV just waiting to get on the market, but it’s not there yet because the copyright cartel hasn’t signed-off on its abilities. Apparently it does just a little too much of what the consumer likes for the copyright cartel’s taste.
His comments about DVI are off the mark though. DVI was meant to replace analog monitors, with backwards compatibility. Of course there isn’t audio, few computer users have audio in their monitor.
bookmarked for hubby
Thank you for the ping.
I bought a DLP projector from Costco online in January. Once I got used to the rainbow effect I liked it a lot. It is like being in a theater.
It only has VGA and component input but I didn’t care because it supported 1080I, which is every bit as good as 1080P. It had no digital input but so what? All DVD players have component outputs and the native signal on DVD’s IS pure component anyway so I should be good to go.
Not so fast.
I first heard rumors that the real function of HDMI was to ensure copyright protection last year. It turns out it has become a brick wall for me. I went to Costco last week and noticed they had $50 DVD players that would “upscale” regular DVD’s to 1080 or 720, but ONLY through the HDMI output. Then I went to a video store and the guy plugged in a blue ray machine into two 42” flat screens, one via hdmi and the other via component. HE assured me they would be identical and my standard DVD’s would be upscaled.
First, the simple “Samsung” logo on both TV’s were not even close in quality. The one over component was clearly “stair stepped”, and coarsely at that. Then when we tried to play the movie, the TV hooked up via component displayed the message, “1080 prohibited, signal reduced to 480”.
It is ALL about copyright protection because you can copy the component signal, but not the HDMI.
Then there is the fact that you can do VERY long runs of component cable, but HDMI hits a finite maximum length at a relatively short distance (< 50’ I believe).
I’ve heard this is an issue with Windows Vista as well. That is, if I get a blue ray DVD for my computer and run it on an XP machine, I can plug my projector in and actually get 1080I, but if I have vista, it will drop it to 480 – unless I use HDMI, that is…
I am thinking of getting a used computer and adding a blue ray DVD, then running W2K pro and just using that as my DVD player.
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