HDBaseT Supporters Hope To Kiss HDMI Goodbye

arcticstoat writes "HDMI's short-lived reign over the TV cable racks could soon be over, thanks to a new usurper that combines several connections into a standard Cat5e/6 network cable with an RJ-45 connector. Designed by a coalition of consumer electronics manufacturers called the HDBaseT Alliance, which includes Sony, Samsung, LG and Valens, HDBaseT promises to not only carry video and audio signals, but also provide a network connection, a USB signal and even electricity using a single cable. The Alliance predicts that we'll start seeing the first HDBaseT equipment creeping into the shops later this year, but says the bigger wave of adoption will occur later in 2011."

Re:Wait...

[ZERO1ZERO]

And subsequently route the signal via patch panels / wall plates to various locations around your basement/home/place of work?*

Aaaarrg

[Cylix]

I'm rather divided on this particular bit of news.

I'm invested in the HDMI technology already and I don't really want to replace everything. With the HDMI 1.4 spec they will address most of the current issues with the technology and provide backward compatibility with the existing devices on the market. HDMI 1.3 kinda sucks if you have an AV receiver and 5.1 setup. (Long story short video processor creates delay and without an auto-sync setup there will be issues with video and audio). This is all made possible because of the requirement for a protected path and downgraded audio on analog ports!

In theory HDMI 1.4 provides a built in protected return audio path, networking, power and a kitchen sink. Regardless, it is rather unimportant to me at this juncture because I doubt I will be upgrading my television and receiver in the near future.

The entire HDBaseT looks like they did mostly the same offerings but in an entirely new cable
which has been around for ages. I get the feeling that actually plugging the cable into a switch won't do much good.

I'm going to assume that in the end they really just get around some royalties and introduce even further market fragmentation.

Good jorb!

Re:Kiss HDCP bye too?

[JoelWink]

I once spent an hour trying to figure out why the DVI output from my Time Warner Cable box would appear on my computer monitor for two seconds, then disappear. I finally realized it didn't "trust" my monitor and HDCP was the culprit.

I don't like network connectors

[hkmwbz]

Maybe I've just had bad luck, but the little pin that is supposed to keep the network cable in place always breaks on me. And when it does, the cable never seems to sit as tightly as it should.

Am I doing something wrong, or does everyone else have similar experiences? If it's the latter, using it as the connector for this new thing sounds like a terrible idea.

Re:Wait...

[Walt Dismal]

The short answer is I expect no, but here's the long answer why.

A Cat5/6 cable has multiple twisted pairs. To reduce inter-signal interference, the pairs are made with different twist rates per foot. This results in slight distance differences between pairs resulting in up to 50 foot length difference internally per 1000 feet. Now, since standard video such as VGA or component video is usually separated into RBG and (maybe) sync lines, the cable length differences result in delay of one or more of the analog video signals relative to each other and this shows up as actual and visible color fringing with a normal cable. (I've seen it.) The solution is that conventional video over Cat5/6 requires active electronics (some vendors use delay lines but those are hard to time-adjust and it locks you to a known cable vendor/mfg spec) to support clean video. This raises the cost. My basis for this is that I'm involved in video conferencing systems, some using long-run video cable in a building as well as packet-based video for external destinations. If HDBaseT involves manufacturers shifting to packet-based video, it's going to be a very interesting different world, because this will require devices on each end to use codecs and video to/from packets, raising costs for consumer electronics.

Re:HDCP

[jythie]

This is why I need mod points.

Years ago I worked on jukeboxes that had RJ45 based audio connections.... oh the network cards we blew out when those cables got crossed.. and we were actually TRYING not to mix them up.

Re:I don't like network connectors

[holmstar]

I hate those boots. They inevitably get hard and make depressing the retaining clip difficult. If you have to use one of those in a place with little finger room, good luck getting it out without a flat-head screwdriver or something.

Re:One question

[uglyduckling]

You don't need to be an EE or Comp. Sci. expert to understand that digital audio/video cables can't improve the signal quality beyond 0 data loss, you just need to have managed high school level physics. People don't necessarily 'deserve' to be taken for a ride if they can't figure this out, but bear in mind that we're talking about people with more money than sense - it's not like they're being ripped off for food, healthcare or basic transport - we're talking about luxury goods being sold to people with money to burn.

Re:Wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. for digital signaling, HDMI wasn't really a good idea. It uses 2 level signaling. This is wonderful for cheap, on-pcb and short range transmission. But for anything else it just isn't a good choice. This is why 1000BASE-T won out over 1000BASE-TX. BASE-T used 4 lanes at half the rate and needed some clever circuity compared to BASE-TX's 2-in 2-out scheme that needed special cabling.

as for deskew, for digital systems its trivial. if you have a PCIe video card you have it already. Its simple channel bonding -- each lane is buffered for a few data words. occasionally, a bonding symbol is transmitted on all channels at the same time. the reciever looks for these, and aligns the data.

compared to the requirements for decoding video, its quite cheap. Likewise, once the market moves from a niche market to mainstream, you see the costs drop to the floor.

Re:The reason you can't connect your monitor

[wirehead_rick]

Agreed.

But with control on both sides of the digital cable and with Mafiaa controlling HDCP certificates over time they can slowly reduce what can and can't be seen. They simply will have the control.

Just because that control doesn't exist today (or they are playing nice today) doesn't mean the bait and switch isn't lying in waiting. They could easily let you see word documents and prevent SW from playing non HDCP video (similar to iTunes DRM) in the future.

It's also why blu-ray players have to be internet capable. So they can do the bait and switch there too. It's all in the plans.

Will it happen? Maybe not.

But I believe it is why Mafiaa makes such a big deal about HDCP and why it exists in the first place. They saw the proliferation of high quality audio technology and wanted to get HDCP in with the intent of doing a bait and switch . . . someday.

HDCP doesn't make much sense otherwise.

Re:I don't like network connectors

[lw7av]

It depends on the quality of the connector. I had similar problems a few years back and used a folded piece of paper to act as the pin so that the contacts would touch. After discovering that it was a quality issue, I switched manufacturers and the last time I bought new cables was when CAT6 was introduced - and they are still good.