UGH!  FIX HDMI don’t ruin my networking!  Installers will love it, a typical CAT5 run will cost you a fortune with this new improved HDMI.  Add error correction and forget the rest of that garbage.  HDMI sucks period.

Doug, the article says that you will still need a CAT5 run to your equipment stack, but then all the devices in your stack can share the CAT5 pipe via HDMI.

I agree that I’d rather see ethernet run all over my house (cost wise) than hdmi, and I like the idea of only needing one CAT5 per room, rather than a hub,or switch to connect everything.

Paul - I understood what they are saying but I think the idea behind it is have daisy chained devices be able to pass data, video, etc. around.  HDMI stinks as a cable standard, I can’t wait to see what one poorly implemented device does to a setup like this.  My bet, get a bad handshake and any downstream devices won’t connect at all.  I hope I’m wrong.  Why not use ethernet for everything?  It is reliable and cheap.  Oh wait HDCP :(  Otherwise people will be able to steal content.

Doug - I can totally agree with the possibility of loosing a device farther down the stack.  I guess I’ve been fortunate that I haven’t come across any of the multitide of HDMI glitches that I hear about.  My experience with HDMI so far has been wonderful, but perhaps I’ve been really lucky.  I have components from Onkyo, JVC, Panasonic, Pioneer, Sony, Motorola and Samsung, and have never had an HDMI glitch.  I also have everything from expensive Monster HDMI cables to $6.00 generics.

Can they make HDMI do my laundry and dishes next? Ugh… this has BAD IDEA written in hot pink, all over it…

Haven’t we learned anything from UNIX’s success? KISS, people…. KISS.

My only concern with HDMI is i think that they are moving too fast with expansion and not necessarily making all devices backward compatible.  I think this new revision has some great features we could use, but it has a lot of possibilities to trip us up too… especially if we would implement any customer equipment or other manufactures equipment that will be sticking with v. 1.3a (or GOD forbid pre v. 1.3) .  For some reason iPod comes to mind with this.  iPod has been great at standardizing their ipod docks and many other things, until the iPhone, where they created a whole new spec (BTW, i never compliment Apple). Unfortunately, the new Spec is no longer backward compatible with older iPod docks.  So i guess my question is, do the benefits of all these new HDMI features really warrant the Spec change(s) and possible issue above and beyond what we are having with HDMI already?

Anyway, just food for thought, i know it will be a while before we see any of these products with HDMI v. 1.4 but i hope there is a drastic improvement otherwise HDMI=S-Video!