Nice article.  Very informative.

One of the major issues that was not discussed is the repeater issue. This is the inability of some equipment to by daisy chained without problems. The consumer doesn’t know which piece of equipment is responsible but the end result is loss of video, audio or in my case a very loud speaker damaging sound when the connection loses sync. I checked with the local HT store and they told be this is commonplace. They perfer where possible to use analog connections. Never a problem with these.

And one other “problem” is that HDMI has no provision for “sub titles” for use by the hearing impaired people. 

I have a slight hearing problems; and my wife is rather sensitive to the loud commercial volumes.  Previously the solution was simple . . . sub-text worked great for me; and my wife enjoyed the lower volume. 

HDMI has no provision for sub-text or sub titles.  That is an annoyance.

My A/V receiver only supports HDMI 1.2.  So if i get a Blu-ray player, I can’t decode the new upgraded audio in HDMI 1.3.  Is there anyway I can get the new audio without buying a new A/V receiver?  Does it matter?

Charles, so now, in retrospect, I assume that the VERY LOUD “popping” noise that occurs every once in a great while may be “a loud, speaker damaging sound” when the connections loses sync when there is a power fluctuation . . . or something else. 

Hmmm . . . that may be the answer to why that occurs every once in a while.

Thanks

Hey Robert,

The answer is maybe. If your receiver doesn’t have HDMI 1.3, it likely doesn’t decode the newer codecs either.

From there, we look at your player to see if it will decode the new codecs before passing it to your receiver. If it does, it will pass along the audio to your receiver, which will then play the audio in whatever format it can understand. For instance, if the track starts as DTS-HD MA, the player will decode it, send the information to your receiver and if your receiver knows what to do with DTS-HD MA, it will play that. Otherwise your receiver will find what it does know (likely the DTS 5.1 core) and play that.

Hope that helps without confusing things more.

Phil,

Thanks for your response.  if I understand you and I take the HDMI 1.3 output from a Blu-Ray player and connect it to the HDMI 1.2 input on my A/V receiver, it will work.  But if my receiver can only play DTS 5.1 as you mention, will I hear any difference in the sound between playing a Blu-Ray DVD with DTS-HD MA or playing a standard DVD with DTS 5.1?

Your receiver can’t play what it can’t understand, so I’m pretty sure that even if your player decodes the hi-res audio and sends it to your receiver, it will only play the highest available audio that it can.

That said, it’s possible you might be able to realize a bit of increase from the increased data rate of some of the soundtracks, but again that is dependant on your receiver.

DTS, for instance, claims that a DTS-HD track played back on a older system will pull out the DTS Digital 5.1 core and play it back, ignoring the HD portion, but will play it back at a higher data rate.

If you have good ears, you will likely notice a bit of difference.

Phil,

Thanks, that helps a lot to understand what is going on.

Bob

just wanted to give a little praise for a WELL WRITTEN article. it was clear, well organized, informative, pretty complete (to me, a layperson). the writer should get a raise.

Problems that plague analog cables absolutely affect HDMI cables. Noise, interference, and signal loss can cause the cable to ‘not work’ or have transmission errors.

Does this mean you need to spend $200 on an HDMI cable? Not necessarily but there will be differences between cables in their ability to reject noise and interference and differences in signal loss among cables.

In my experience I have had nothing but problems with both HDMI & HDCP. My Oppo DVD player and InFocus projector would only handshake properly if I both plugged them into the wall then powered them up in a certain order. It was fun debugging that one. I now have a HTPC and regularly have HDCP problems with driver updates, and have to physically unplug my always on touchscreen when I want to play protected content on the projector as HDCP can’t handle dual screens.

“First, it was the early days of HDMI and the world of digital in general and there were some growing pains. The second issue had to do with the testing process.” So will HDMI Licensing replace my acknowledged faulty equipment?

I have recommended all my friends to avoid HDMI, HDCP & BluRay. It is nothing but a headache to honest users.

What no one is talking about is that HDMI includes Digital Restrictions Management technology.  Does anyone really have to wonder why it doesn’t work right?  DRM is always a nightmare for users. 

Thank you MPAA and RIAA!  You’ve succeeded in keeping end users from “stealing” your content!  If only the technology worked.

Another problem with HDMI. It only provides transport for audio and video. What about closed captioning ? Why was it omitted from the specs ?

A lot of people who upgrade to HDTV are in for a rude surprise when they find CC* from DVDs is no longer available from their new upscaling DVD/Blu Ray player.

—
* Please note CC is not the same as subtitles.

HDMI is appalling.  Copy protection is fair enough but all of sudden we have lost all flexibility with these systems…  I put it down to two big mistakes:
1.)  The source device must output at a resolution the display device wants.
2.)  The copper output is extremely distance dependant.

These issues could have been avoided by:
1.) Having the source device output native format and let the display device sort it out.  This would make HDMI matrixing to multiple displays far more workable.
2.)  Use a serious fibre optic interface or a coax interface like HD-SDI.  Personally I like the idea of fibre as I am sick of consumer grade devices firing ground noise into each other and fibre will by default act as an opto isolator.  Sure, fibre is going to add to the device cost and the cables are going to be expensive, but the current generation of HDMI cables worth their weight are expensive anyway (particularly if you want a 20m cable that works at 1080p).

To quote Fairings “Nothing like in the old days just 2 wires and cheap price.”

You can buy a high quality hdmi cable for $5 and have 1 wire with a picture and sound quality that blows your socks off verses that 2 wire and the tv that went with it.

It if was any cheaper it would be free. You can give these things away - they’re that cheap.

“It only provides transport for audio and video. What about closed captioning ? Why was it omitted from the specs ? “

Closed captioning is a feature of a device not the cables.

“1.) The source device must output at a resolution the display device wants.
2.) The copper output is extremely distance dependant. “

1) All ‘source devices’ are capable of outputting a res. any display device can use. So what does it matter? You can’t display 720p on a 480i tv just like you can’t display 1080p on a 720p tv. Its called progression.

2)Yeah, just like ALL cables. Course, you can just go with a cheap certified hdmi type 2 cable from monoprice and be all good without any problems. You don’t need fiber.

“DRM is always a nightmare for users. “

Wouldn’t say always. With hdcp you’ve had a bad experience? I’ve and others have not had one.

North, you seem to have missed the point.  By making the source device need to negotiate resolution/rate with the display device it makes the possibility of flexible signal routing tedious.  All devices have to be _carefully_ selected to ensure they can all support the outputted res which is generally negotiated with the first display device attached to the matrix.  It is ugly when the idea of a matrix is a one to many route provider.

Distance is absolutely crap and too hit and miss for the average consumer.  To get over 5 metres is not bullet proof (even some 5 meter cables are crap).  This happened again for me the other day with standard 10m cables (the type one can buy out of the stores).  They worked fine on everything upto 1080p/24, but above that (1080p/50 or 60) the signal would glitch about once every five seconds.

Oh, and the whole intense negotiation thing requires stupid sync-up times (e.g. 5 seconds).

The only real solutions to complex (hi-end) home video distro systems in my opinion will be:
A) A custom matrix/extender solution that uses fibre and provides end to end (source device to display device) hook-up - HDCP maintained throughout.  It will need to have display emulation to trick all source devices into outputing the format required by the displays.
B) Display devices with two HDMI input ports that both have seperate decoding/negotiation subsystems that keep the HDMI stream live so that switching between ports doesn’t cause the source/display connection to drop sync.  It will then need two feeds from the matrix (not one…  so it at least doubles the price).  Then it needs an advanced automation controller that will flip-flop the matrix outputs in a cyclic fashion so that seamless switching between inputs can occur (i.e. no 5 seconds of black resync).

We used to be able to do this with component video switchers but they have removed that option from us with ICT (image constraint tokens - the thing that force downscaling on the analog outputs).

Basically, like I said, HDMI is a f’ing nightmare unless you want to plug your bluray player through a 2 or 3 metre cable into your telly.

Oh, and bluray players…  why does it take 20 seconds for them to eject a disc?  What possible reason do they need?  Just dump the program and eject the tray…  the user obviously wants nothing more from the disc…

All of this stuff is pathetically under engineered and lacking well thought out direction.  Forget all the Java add on Bull Sh*t.  Just give us players that work as fast as DVD players but with 1080p/24…

i am hving a problem with the hdmi setup going from my cable box to the hdtv,when u switch from the anolog channels to the digital channels there is a popping noise,is this caused by hdmi cables only sending digital audio?