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HDMI and What it Will Do for You 382

Posted by CmdrTaco from the pins-and-cables dept.
CrzyP writes "AnandTech has whipped up a short but informative article on the new HDMI digital audio/video connection standard that is said to be the successor of DVI. Take a look at what this new standard is all about and what we can expect from it in the future!"
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HDMI and What it Will Do for You More

HDMI and What it Will Do for You

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  • What WILL it do for you? (Score:5, Informative)

    by TopSpin ( 753 ) * on Monday January 17, 2005 @03:57PM (#11388204) Journal
    From the article:

    The first question that should pop into your head right now is why we would need HDMI on the PC when it physically does the job of DVI particularly considering how few people actually use DVI instead of analog connections! The answer is, again, copy protection.

    Four years ago Cox wrote something in LKML that has stuck in my head since:

    So you cant tap the data anywhere.

    Think

    encrypted music fed to an encrypted audio controller to speakers which
    decrypt and add watermarks

    encrypted video decrypted and macrovision + watermarked only in buffers
    the CPU cant access

    audio input that has legally mandated watermark checks and wont record
    watermarked data.

    That is the dream these people have. They'd also like the OS to scan for
    "illicit" material and phone the law if you do, and to have a mandatory
    remote shutdown of your box

    (and if you read the MS media player license anyone who agrees to it signed
    up to that)

    Alan
    • > They'd also like the OS to scan for "illicit" material and phone the law if you do, and to have a mandatory remote shutdown of your box

      It's already in development.

      Codenamed 'Microsoft Totalitarian 2007'.

    • Re:What WILL it do for you? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:28PM (#11388497)
      HDMI
      What is it good for
      Absolutely nothing
      HDMI
      What is it good for
      Absolutely nothing
      HDMI is something that I despise
      For it means destruction of fair use rights
      For it means tears in thousands of users' eyes
      When they try to record a show, but it's called a crime...

    • Re:What WILL it do for you? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This is NOT FUD!

      This is exactly what they want to use HDMI for!

      Why use this when you have DVI?

      This is the only reason. Control your computer from time you sign up to download the file till you output on your big screen TV.

      Total encryption. Total Control. Total Trust.

      Dammit this is MY computer! I don't want to be forced by industrial Microsoft/Sony/DMCA/RIAA/Who-ever-the-hell-else into giving up the right to control the bits on my own fucking harddrive!

      It better be a failure! The corporate media intres
      • Who's forcing you? Just don't buy a PC/GFX card/DVD play/ TV with this! It might limit your choses (or mean you can't buy something you would want). It might mean you can't watch a movie you want to see, but no one is going to hold a gun to your head and FORCE you to use this. There are people who chose not to use credit cards, and while it does limit them in many ways, they survive.....
      • Amen, brother! You left out, though, telling them they can go screw themselves and the stuff it takes thousands of people and millions of dollars to produce. Screw watching the Sopranos or Nova. Screw listening to Carmina Burana. Screw cable news!

        Come on. No one, at all, would risk their money, their careers, or even a day's work, to produce "Arrested Development" or "Curb Your Enthusiasm" if they couldn't back up the huge investment with the expectation that the people they're selling it to will actuall
    • Okay, so don't use their player and don't listen to their music. Problem solved.

      Access to entertainment is a choice and a privilege, not a right nor a requrement.

  • "For Me" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Monday January 17, 2005 @03:58PM (#11388215) Homepage Journal

    HDMI and What it Will Do for You

    From what I read in the article, it will help the media companies to prevent fair use of the signal. Other than bundling audio, how will really benefit the consumer?

  • DRM (Score:5, Informative)

    by af_robot ( 553885 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @03:58PM (#11388218)
    HDMI enforces that only trusted (by RIAA) devices allowed to communicate - so no way perfect digital copies.
    Morons.
    • VCRs in the old days supposedly prevented standard RCA-to-RCA cable copying to another VCR. Plenty of people figured out ways to get around that. This cable will be no different. It's a matter of time before a crack comes along. RIAA is just an empire waiting to collapse.

    • no way perfect digital copies.

      I'll accept perfect digital copies of a rip one generation removed from the original. I suspect most others will as well. For the guy with the penis-extending $10K audio system, he was probably planning to spend his next 10 KiloBucks on original sources anway.

      For the rest of is, it will still sound better than AM.

  • I use a Win MCE 2005 box, and hooking up to a TV via HDMI would be sweet, but the only video cards I have seen right now have DVI connectors. Anybody have a luck with using a DVI/HDMI converter cable for their TV? Hows the quality, does it suffer any?
    • Is it just me, or wouldn't this be pointless? What are you trying to gain by doing this? The quality won't be any better (since your going through DVI anyway)

      Why would it be 'sweet'?
  • what we can expect from it in the future

    Another must-buy limited edition collectible format for the Star Wars Hexalogy!

  • Hrmph. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:02PM (#11388255) Homepage Journal
    OOOooooooooo!

    DVI with DRM!

    Sign me up!

    • Re:Hrmph. (Score:3, Informative)

      by tji ( 74570 )
      DVI already has DRM in most TV's. It's called HDCP, and almost all HDTV STBs and TVs support it.

      That's the same thing done in HDMI.

  • HDMI seemed awesome but has problems (Score:3, Interesting)

    by the-pdm ( 685864 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:02PM (#11388259)
    Between HD Tivo having numerous problems with its HDMI port and my new Samsung HD941 DVD player displaying "HDMI Audio not supported" on a great many DVDs I'm not sure if this stuff is 'ready' yet. On both of these devices I still had to resort to using a TOSlink cable for audio instead of using the HDMI audio.

  • Hooray (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:03PM (#11388260) Journal
    I'll save you the time of reading TFA:

    It's line-compatible DVI with a pair of lines for digital audio, and a slimmer connector.

    It can carry 5gbps over copper, more than enough for 1080p video and 8 192khz audio channels.

    • Re:Hooray (Score:4, Informative)

      by LordOfYourPants ( 145342 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:06PM (#11388305)
      You forgot one little detail:

      "The first question that should pop into your head right now is why we would need HDMI on the PC when it physically does the job of DVI - particularly considering how few people actually use DVI instead of analog connections! The answer is, again, copy protection."

  • HDMI is too complicated. (Score:5, Funny)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:03PM (#11388270) Homepage Journal
    LaTeX generates DVI files just fine for me. What would I need all this multimedia stuff for?

  • Where is this headed? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fname ( 199759 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:03PM (#11388271) Journal
    That's the question. Will HDMI allow content creators to destroy the ability to eaily copy digital media, whether it's being used for piracy or fair-use? Or, is HDMI headed down the same path as Circuit City's DivX-- a clumsy & eventually transparent attempt by Hollywood to extract more money from customers while providing less service? We all know how that played out, with the savvy early-adopter types shunning it and telling their friends to skip it as well. Or does any of it matter, since the FCC has mandated that all digital TVs must be HDCP compliant anyways?

    What does that mean anyways? Will consumer electronics companies still be allowed to include non-HDCP compliant inputs? I hope so, but I wouldn't put it pass our regulators to require the crippling of perfectly legal electronics (witness DAT & the broadcast flag). How can we stop this crap?

    • Re:Where is this headed? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pe1chl ( 90186 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:23PM (#11388450)
      I have a new LCD TV with HDMI input and HDCP support.
      It also comes with schematics (on CD).

      I studied the schematics and was astonished by what I found: the HDMI digital input is terminated at a special purpose chip that deserializes and deframes the data, decrypts the HDCP, and converts the R, G and B to ANALOG!

      So on the output of this chip there is a normal RGB (plus sync) signal. This is fed to the switching matrix (where it is combined with all other inputs the TV supports) and then this analog RGB signal is again digitized and fed to the scaler that scales it up or down to drive the LCD panel.

      This amazes me for two reasons:

      1. I would have expected that the digital DVI or HDMI signal would go directly to the scaler without first being converted to analog and then back to digital. What point is there in using a digital input, this way?

      2. It provides an accessible and decrypted version of the HDCP-protected stream. Assuming this special-purpose chip is commercially available, it will be trivial to build a HDCP-circumventing box, just like the anti-Macrovision boxes...

      • Re:Where is this headed? (Score:5, Informative)

        by MeanMF ( 631837 ) * on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:44PM (#11388664) Homepage
        So on the output of this chip there is a normal RGB (plus sync) signal. This is fed to the switching matrix (where it is combined with all other inputs the TV supports) and then this analog RGB signal is again digitized and fed to the scaler that scales it up or down to drive the LCD panel.

        HDCP is designed to protect the digital stream, not the analog signal. If the chip decrypted the digital stream and fed it to the scaler, it would be vulnerable. It looks like that by converting it to analog in the same chip, they're preventing the decrypted digital signal from being copied. Sure you can re-encode it, but you can do that with an analog output just as well.
        • The advantage here is that the analog signal only has to traverse a couple of inches of copper trace at most before hitting your re-encode chip, rather than the couple of feet of cable to your recording device. I don't think that the loss over that short of an analog link would be something to care about.

          • Re:Where is this headed? (Score:2, Informative)

            by Eccles ( 932 )
            I don't think that the loss over that short of an analog link would be something to care about.

            It's not cable loss, it's the D/A and A/D converters themselves that are less than perfect, and thus introduce noise.
        • You somewhat miss the point.

          The OP describes the signal path as such:

          [Device]->[HDCP]->[D/A conversion]->[A/D conversion]->[Display]

          Now if I capture the signal between [D/A conversion] and [A/D conversion], I'm effectively capturing the exact same quality signal that I'd be seeing on my TV.

          Bit perfect? Nah. Close enough? You betcha.

          There's also the irony that a supposedly digital connection is in fact still going through multiple digital/analog conversions.

          Nathan
    • How can we stop this crap?

      For starters, Join the EFF [eff.org]!

      Please!

  • "Take a look at what this new standard is all about and what we can expect from it in the future!"

    Dear slashdot editors,
    I think you didn't have to include this sentence from the submitter. This is not some highschool newspaper or corporate newsletter from HR. Don't take this as approval for any other sentences that makes reference to Linux in a non-Linux story or a question that just needs a "Yes/No" answer.
  • And I've either got to deal with an adaptor or ditch that really nice LCD I just bought? Oh boy!

  • No thanks (Score:5, Funny)

    by Fizzlewhiff ( 256410 ) <jeffshannon@nosPAm.hotmail.com> on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:04PM (#11388283) Homepage
    I'll wait about 10 years when Brian Hook of Id fame writes about it.

  • Upfront Costs... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DaHat ( 247651 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:05PM (#11388290)
    HDMI is a great technology... except for the costs involved.

    The company I work for has been asked by many interested customers when we will be having HDMI addons for a number of our popular video playing products... because of the costs involved, we have had to hold back on any kind of rollout of these things.

    In order to do licensed development of HDMI components (on the sending or receiving end), it runs about 30k... for the licensing alone! After that of course you have the joys of per unit costs, which we don't care about so much.

    Chances are, we wont be doing HDMI until more customers are demanding it, shame though, I'd love to get my hands dirty with it.

    • Re:Upfront Costs... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by grub ( 11606 )

      So other than bundling 8 channels of audio over the copper, what really makes it great for your company? The DRM and licensing costs? Seriously, I'm not trolling you: What makes this such a great thing for consumers.

    • Greed hinders greed? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by swb ( 14022 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:15PM (#11388377)
      In order to do licensed development of HDMI components (on the sending or receiving end), it runs about 30k... for the licensing alone! After that of course you have the joys of per unit costs, which we don't care about so much.

      Is Hollywood greed killing Hollywood greed?

      Are they actually greedy enough to want to not only license their DRM technology to people who would actually implement it, thus stifling their ability to completely cripple fair use?

      Or is this a subtle way that electronics companies accomplish this -- engage Hollywood in DRM technology, settle on standard, quietly charge big bucks to hardware developers knowing full well they won't adopt your does-nothing-other-technology-can't-but-DRM, continue using cheaper/easier/DRM-less technologies, continue selling tons of copy-enabled (at least somewhat) technology to eager consumers?

      Or is this just one of those "barrier to entry" fees that keeps HDMI development kits out of the hands of small players and off eBay so that its secrets stay secret longer?

  • Eh, no big deal IMO... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by doormat ( 63648 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:07PM (#11388309) Homepage Journal
    Its not really possible to capture video off of DVI at the moment (DVI is basically uncompressed video - 180MB/s), so I dont see HDMI as a big deal. It'll encrypt the audio, but that doesnt seem like a big deal (I'm going to have optical out going to surround sound receiver, not digital audio to my TV through HDMI).

    Its not like people are capturing video off VGA/DVI now, at most it'll affect KVM switches, projectors, etc.

    The biggest issue with HDMI is the fact that it may become an exclusive output system. IOW, no way to support VGA, DVI, etc. I dont see video card makers and companies like nVidia and ATI saying "you have to buy a new HDMI compliant monitor to run this new video card". Its in their interest to sell the most video cards, not raise barriers to entry to purchasing their products.

    • It's not only possible, it's easy, using off-the-shelf components.

      First, convert the DVI signal to HD-SDI, which is the standard that all the professional HDTV editing gear uses.
      Miranda DVI-Ramp [miranda.com]

      Next, capture the HD-SDI signal to your hard drive.
      Blackmagic DeckLink HD [blackmagic-design.com]

      You will need a serious disk array to handle the bandwidth, but you will end up with a digital copy of the signal put out over DVI. That Miranda box does sub-sample the RGB (4:4:4) signal to YCbCr (4:2:2), but it is only a matter of time

  • Make you go broke (Score:5, Informative)

    by ad0gg ( 594412 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:07PM (#11388311)
    I have HDMI cable from the dvd player to the my tv. Cable was close to $100. I don't know any brick and mortar store that sells than less than what I payed. Tried BestBuy, Circuit City, Good Guys. Even their DVI cables are $50+. I love how retaillers rip off their customers. Only place to get cheap cables is online.

    And even with a HDMI cable I don't see any improvement over DVI even though my dvd player is upsampling to 1080i. Also having sound over it is pretty useless in a home theater enviroment, I still have to run a tosh cable from my dvd player into my reciever. I guess it could be useful if the AV reciever had HDMI inputs, but that would still require 2 cables.

    • Re:Make you go broke (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tji ( 74570 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:27PM (#11388489)
      Premium digital cables are a rip-off. Just go to a discount electronics place, or even eBay to get cheap/decent cables.

      In the analog world, a logical case could be made for high quality cables because any interference would be propogated through the system and hurt audio quality.

      In digital cables, it's just ones and zeros.. As long as the digital data is there, it's not any better or worse regardless of the type of cable.

      If your digital cable is not working well, it should be very obvious in the audio/video output.

      • Re:Make you go broke (Score:2, Informative)

        by RoboRay ( 735839 )
        "In digital cables, it's just ones and zeros.. As long as the digital data is there, it's not any better or worse regardless of the type of cable." That's a common misconception, but that's exactly what it is... a misconception. I need a 9m DVI cable to reach from my DVD player to my projector, and I assure you that you can't do that with a cheap cable. Using your "just as good" cheap cable, I get sparkling white dots all over the screen. Using a better built, higher quality and therefore more expensiv
        • tji said:
          If your digital cable is not working well, it should be very obvious in the audio/video output.

          You replied:
          Individual bits can be dropped without loosing the entire signal, and it's blatantly obvious with a video signal.


          I think you misunderstood tji. I think that he meant "As long as all the bits are getting through reliably, you don't get more fidelity from an expensive cable." Which is, of course, true.

          -Peter
      • True... but thats not what Monster wants you to believe...

    • Re:Make you go broke (Score:3, Informative)

      by DJStealth ( 103231 )
      You won't see any video improvement between HDMI and DVI as its the same protocol.

      What I've been wondering for a while is if HDMI (or DVI) will give me any improvement over component video cables for HiDef 1080i TV.

      Anyone know?

      • From my understanding, HDMI was DVI plus digital audio (up to 7.1).

        FWIW, I noticed some slight improvement for the 1080i using the DVI connector vs the component video connectors from my Hughes HD receiver (outputs RF/composite/S-video/component/DVI/HDMI) to my Sharp LCD HD display (accepts all those and odd firewire, pc data cards).

        My DVD player is older and its highest output quality is component, but since it's only 480p I'm not sure I'm missing too much. I'm accustomed to viewing DVD's under S-video,

    • Then why the bloody hell didn't you get them online? Cables for Less has them [cablesforless.com] in the low teens.
    • To me HDMI holds little interest because I always end up routing audio and video to seperate boxes.

      It does make some sense if you are routing a DVD player output to a receiver that also acts as a video switch. But if you are going that high end you will probably not be sending anything but video to your display.

      They've got all the bases covered though with DVI-HDCP which adds encryption to the DVI signal so you can't play it from a standard DVI unit unless it also supports HDCP. But this to me seems a l
    • I love how retaillers rip off their customers. Only place to get cheap cables is online

      Cables have something like 1000% profit margin for retailers - it's one of their cash cows (after they lure you in with specials on the peripherals that no longer include cables).

      I've bought cables online for a few years and only buy retail in a pinch. If you're the kind of person to understand cables are cheaper online, you probably did enough research on your HDTV to know you should have ordered the cables a few
  • Will an HDMI/HDCP display accept un-encrypted content? That is can I use them as a display for normal PC content? I'd love to connect my HTPC to a big screen display and it would suck if I can't buy a display after this July that will work with my homebrew solution.
  • For the simple fact that audio usually gets routed to a home theater receiver and video gets routed to the display device. So unless they are going to have HDMI on receivers or pre's then I'll run dvi to the tv and optical to the receiver.
  • Useful for computers? No, since like the article says, audio and video input and outputs are usually seperate. How many people use speakers attached to there monitor?

    Useful for Home Entertaintment? For quality setups, its even less useful since the video and audio are going to different outputs (speakers and a TV for example)

    So what good is this connecter?
  • I'm serious. Who come the people accept it ?
    It stupidity to be a new way of life of something ?

    I'm all for capitalism, but watermarking the sound my speaks produce ? Isn't that pushing things a bit too far ? Can't we sue the companies for it ? After all, the sound being produced it not the same sound we payed for.

    And heck. It is MY computer. I can plug anything I want on it, not only "RIAA approved" devices. And I don't even live in USA, so why should I care if RIAA approved my devices or not ?

    I'm still
    • I find it amusing when a technology who's only promise is marginally better audio quality goes and distorts the sound with a watermarking algorithm ... I mean, if you go to the trouble of 192KHz audio (do people actually record that, or just upsample 96KHz stuff?) you shouldn't mess with the signal, like ever.
    • I'm all for capitalism, but watermarking the sound my speaks produce ?

      This isn't really the workings of capitalism. Under capitalism, schemes like this would fail, because they would be rejected by consumers, who hold a certain level of sovereignty in the marketplace, and any company basing its economic future on such foolishness would crumble accordingly. However, under the quasi-socialist state that is America, we have an unconstitutional governing body (the FCC) that can MANDATE the inclusion of DM
  • HDMI does a few things right. Adding audio is very useful for a lot of people (one cable is always easier than than 2 or 3). They also tweaked the signaling to run longer ranges, and added support for YUV (if you thing YUV support is not a big deal then do searches for the whole PC RGB/Studio RGB crush and push issues people have with DVI DVD players).

    There are tradeoffs of course. In order to reduce the connector size they eliminated the analog link and the second digital link. I think the improved signal
    • I'm really not seeing the one cable in any remotely high end set up. If you're using a home theater PC to supply your content, it has discrete audio and video cards. The video goes to the monitor (probably over DVI) and the audio goes to your receiver (TOSLink or something). You're splitting the cable at both ends, so why not just cable tie discrete cables together? Rather than a high-end digital pipe, this would be nice for low-end 640i video with analog stereo so that I only need one cable each for the DV

  • Legailty and workarounds (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CompSci101 ( 706779 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:14PM (#11388371)

    I read this article this morning and it really pissed me off (especially how rabidly positive the author was about the connector) -- now PC users will have to contend with all the DRM nonsense that the people who bought new HDTVs recently will soon be exposed to.

    It brought to mind some questions though:

    1. Is this LEGAL? The only broadcast flag implementation that the providers seem to want to want to endorse is HDCP, an Intel product. Now, the FCC can make all sorts of claims that they have not mandated an encryption/authentication standard, but if the only standard television and broadcasting manufacturers will support is HDCP, they've effectively given Intel a license to print money (just think of all the audio/video equipment manufacturers that must now become HDCP licensees or go out of business). If the FCC has gone so far as to mandate that copy protection must exist, they should mandate that interoperability must also exist.
    2. Following on the legality question: is this creating a consumer electronics cartel that bars entry to the market and fair competition? A license for HDCP costs $15,000 and 1,000,000 keys costs an additional $5,000. This, of course, is a pittance to what consumer electronics manufacturers can come up with, but say you're an Open Source developer that wants to bring a software player to market (or Linux) that can play HDCP protected streams. You're SOL as this is clearly the same problem as DVD/CSS.
    3. I'm sure this has been already asked, but would it be possible to establish a self-funded Open Source community that would become an HDCP licensee on the condition that it would only distribute the software it develops to members (like a small collective that would make the cost of a license small per developer). Naturally, the cost of a license would go down dramatically once more members signed on, but what's to stop Intel from revoking your license once you released the source to the product?

    This is as big a problem as, if not bigger than, CSS.

    C

  • So uh, what's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by spitefulcrow ( 713858 ) <sam@dividezero.net> on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:15PM (#11388374) Journal
    I don't even use DVI yet. My card supports it, but I'm using an old analog LCD and the rest of my family still has CRTs. So is this just a way to force restriction of fair use onto consumers by selling it as an all-in-one cable run simplifier, with the nice side effect of making everyone upgrade to devices with the new standard and putting more money in home theatre companies' pockets?

  • Technical note on 1080P over HDMI (Score:5, Informative)

    by doormat ( 63648 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:16PM (#11388388) Homepage Journal
    While the HDMI interface has the bandwidth to carry 1080P signals (1080P is considered the best HD video standard), the chipsets used in TVs nowadays are not capable of handling the bitrate 1080P would use. This has been discussed on the AVS Forum [avsforum.com], in one thread [avsforum.com] in particular, in the context of the new 1080P Samsung TVs unveiled at CES 2005.
    • Will there be any broadcasters that are prepared to spend the bitrate (and thus bandwith) required for 1080P?

      Here in Europe the battle seems to go between 1080i and 720P.
      • Same here in America, but a lot of people who are interested are outputting their video from a HTPC, and 1920x1080 at 60 frames progressive over DVI (over an DVI to HDMI converter) or VGA. DVD player on the HTPC plus dscaler and a fast processor could make DVDs look simply amazing.
        • With a fixed quality of DVD, why is reading and upscaling it on a PC going to make it look better than sending it to the TV at the recording resolution and then upscaling it on the TV?

          To get 1920x1080 at 60fps you will have to scan it from the film at that resolution. And the film does not provide the 60fps anyway...
          • Coz dscaler can upscale the video better than the TV can. The TV has circuitry that upscales video, and dscaler does the same thing. But I can have a 3GHz processor upscale the video, or I can have some video processor do it. And if you didnt spend $5000+ for the TV, its possible to have dscaler look better.
  • ...a massive drawback. Audio support over the connection in exchange for DRM? No thanks. My TOSlink cables work just fine for digital audio. I can see no compelling reason to switch to a connector that potentially takes rights away from me in exchange for one less cable per component in my home theatre rack. I'm sure the content creators are creaming themselves over it, though.

  • call it: pointless (Score:5, Insightful)

    by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @04:31PM (#11388523)
    I RTFA, and I still don't understand how this is useful to anyone.

    For the DRM to work, the market will need to reach a point where the only input connector that TV's and speakers have will be HDMI ports. I expect this to happen around the year, hmm, let's say 3000. Here we are, a year away from the alleged switch to HDTV, and a huge percentage of the television sets sold still have good old-fashioned analog coaxial antenna jacks on the back of them. Good luck getting Every Electronics Manufacturer In The World to stop offering their customers the feature of analog connections. (We'll have direct-to-brain optical implants running on a descendant of Bluetooth before this happens.)

    Audio connections won't go entirely digital until sometime around AD 4500. There's too many audiophiles with investments in $100/foot speaker cable to EVER accept an all-digital interconnect.

    Another thing -- my video and audio signals don't output to the same device. The video goes to the TV, and the audio goes to the home theater system. Putting both signals on a single cable doesn't do me any good, I'll just have to break them out further down the chain.

    Methinks this standard is just an attempt by Belkin and co. to make a lot of money selling aftermarket HDMI-to-DVI adapters.
  • One nice thing about DVI is that you can secure it to the device with its screws, just like a traditional computer cable. HDMI doesn't have that facility, and it's proving to cause some problems for home theater installers it seems, from what I heard from such folks at CES.
  • I believe that the first step on the road to beating down the sort of restrictions inherent in HDCP and other DRM technologies is a semantic one.

    These new restrictions are being marketed to consumers as "the next generation in protected media access," which makes it sound like the the DRM features are somehow benefitting the purchaser of these fair-use disabled devices.

    These are not "copy protection" technologies. We don't need to be protected from our hardware.

    These are "copy prevention" technologies.
  • regardless of the DRM that will be cracked within a month of release, how could I connect audio and video with one wire? Who has a 8 channel surround sound system built into their television? Stereo/speakers are on a different device than the video...but I do like the idea of not having to have a super thick shielded wire that will not be only like 6 ft long...my monitor wire is stretched to the limit right now.
  • One of my top requests for any of these cable types is that they be splittable, without having to buy a $300 powered splitter to accomplish the task. A receiver with multiple HD inputs switchable to multiple HD outputs would do the trick, but I don't know if any exist... (Anyone?)

    I have an HD television for daytime use and an HD front-projector for nighttime use, and it is a pain to synchronize all the source connections, because most sources (and most receivers) only have one high-quality output.

    For
    • Wal-Mart has a very cheap ($30) switchbox that handles component inputs (meant for game systems). If you think about it it's just switching over the connections from thre RCA jacks!

      I also managed to buy a three-connector Toslink switchbox that takes three inputs, and has one connection for going to a receiver. That was not at Walmart and I can't remember where I bought it. It works rather well though, and even switches network conectinos (no idea yet if it works as a switch, or a switch/hub - that is, i
  • I thought that was a c. 1990 Intel technology.
  • Once ALL-DRM systems in place everywhere, Big Brother (Hollywood or the recording industries) will know how many times you've played your songs/movies/whatever and they'll be able to calculate the royalty payments accurately.

    For artists that receive royalties from playback of their works, the artists will stand to make quite a bit of money, collectively.

    So my question is this - Once all that data can be tallied properly and the evidence trails are secure and available, how will the recording studios cheat
  • What I want for a next video cable standard is the ability to run maybe 30 meters (100'), with KVMs. People are spending stupid amounts of money trying to make a quiet PC, but what I want is to have a loud, ugly PC that lives in the basement.

    Then, one long cable carries the video signal plus USB3, so I could have my monitor, mouse and keyboard somewhere else in the house. Also, there should be a standard so that video signals can be made to be easily "networkable" so that I can switch any display device i

  • The picture of the HDMI interface looks sort of like the port in the back of the playstation 2. Anyone know if they're the same or physically compatible?

  • Useless mandated technology. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ruiner13 ( 527499 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @05:56PM (#11389220) Homepage
    Until they start building professional grade, 200 watt per channel 7.1 recievers directly in the TV set, I don't see how this will ever be the sole connector in use. This only makes you buy a second cable to run to whatever amplifier you are using. Pointless, and a waste of money. I'll stick to components and toslink, thanks.

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