Since you know him, Julie, ask him what he thinks about the design now. Would he do anything different? Does he realize how screwed up it is and how much time and money people have wasted? For years we have been looking for someone tangible to blame and he may be walking around with a smile, whistling a happy tune. This would be your greatest article...EVER!

And let's not forget that HDMI is just a cable end, like DB9, DB25, BNC and so on.. sure, it has issues (slip connector, bad transmission design, etc...) and there's really nothing it does that SDI or DisplayPort couldn't do... The real issue that we contend with is HDCP, and that's not him. That sits on the chip at both ends.... THAT was Hollywood's input.

I dont care how it is spun, he is evil. :)

Back to the styrofoam cups that forever fill our landfills. Love them. Nothing beats a Chick-fil-A ice tea in one or getting an iced coffee at Wawa in one concealing the contents and paying the fountain soda price. Great invention.

Why do YOU hate HDMI? Have you been called by a customer during a weekend evening when the cable you installed stopped working? Have you driven three hours to a project just to replace one HDMI canle that had worked until it suddenly became obsolete in your absense? Did you need to buy a replacement for cables and have to eat the cost and then need to take the time (unbilled, BTW) to explain why it happened and then continue that you can't guarantee it will never happen again? Did you lose any amount of credibility in the eyes of a client when you couldn't provide instant answers to the simple question "Why isn't it working?"?

What has HDMI done to harm you?

Fair use has never allowed selling copies of copyrighted material. I never wrote that it did.

You seem to be defending the invention and use of styrofoam because it's useful in spite of the bad aspects.

If we all hate HDMI, why has it been allowed to exist when it has been problematic for so long? When a technology stops being useful, it should be discontinued but this is like a virus that has mutated after people stopped taking their meds because "I feel fine", rather than killing it.

You wrote that you're proud to know him and that you respect him. The latter, I can understand, to a point, but I don't know why you would be proud of someone else's achievement.

I also don't understand why you seem pr

Neither of you is evil but lauding him is misguided, in light of the fact that it it doesn't work well. The fact that we're still complaining about it after so long says it should have been replaced a while ago.

What does being liberal have to do with anything?

I think HDMI for the most part works as intended. Up to 6ft and original HD resolutions. Plug a set top box into a tv and done. But it's been taken too far. Pushed to the resolution limits, lengths beyond its capabilities. Who did this? Manufacturers of the chips and equipment connected too each end is who. We are forced to use it. Most of the problem must lie with what is behind the little jack. Too many variations of chips, features and quality of the chips maybe. The cable itself, how hard can it be. Double the cross sectional area and halve the resistance. Bigger, better quality wire should do it right? Might reach a point where plug is too small. But these cable guys are pushing smaller and thinner. The HDMI specs of voltage and current are tiny, so that itself is a problem. Expecting high quality signal and levels from so little over great distance might not be possible even with better cable. So yes HDMI does suck. No respect for the people behind it. Now someone give me a styrofoam cup with Dewars Scotch and ginger ale so. I'll be at the beach concealing it from the beach patrol.

Let's see if I were to design a standard today I would want the following.

1. Enough bandwidth to account for at least 10 years of technology improvements, hopefully longer. I think 1 tbs should be good for that. So when resolutions, bit depth, frame rate, etc. increases you won't have to update your equipment because your cabling or chips to handle the signal won't be obsolete as technology improves. Like not having to upgrade your receiver or sound bar because you want a new TV.

2. Connectors should be able to be field terminated just like previous technologies RCA, BNC, Cat5, F connectors, fibre, etc. Why spoil a good design?!

3. It should have a locking connector like other connectors like BNC,Cat5, fiber, VGA, HDMI's predecessor DVI, etc. Again, don't re-invent the wheel.

4. It should be able to go reasonably long lengths. I don't know what's reasonable 100 feet, 100 meters, 1000 meters? Definitely no less than 100 feet at full bandwidth.

Hmmm, easily done 20 years ago with all these specs. It is called fiber. HDMI was a poor standard and not well thought out. The guy must have been a computer guy and used to having monitors 3 feet from his computer and the only thing he ever snaked was putting his VGA cable through the 2" hole in his desk to reach the monitor. HDMI was never designed for how it would be used in many homes.

From a business standpoint with the creator of HDMI, it is a grand slam. Whole industries have appeared because of it. Extenders, signal restorers/fixers, distribution, etc. Along with the ever revolving door of required equipment upgrades means the royalty checks keep rolling in.

I'm glad your friend is good to you but I hope HDMI dies and we move onto something a lot more reliable with less headaches.

This man has robbed all of us in the field of our time and money. We’ve all lost time that could not be billed for trying to solve HDMI issues. Last Friday I did replaced an old Pioneer rear projection with a 75” 4K Samsung. The B&K had to be upgraded and the component cable had to be replaced with a 30’ hdmi cable. After retroing everything, the cable that came from the Russian mafia instead of my preferred hdmi manufacturer didn’t work. The client got a new tv that didn’t work for the weekend and I got to bump customers on Monday to run a new cable for free that had to be red labeled from California because We missed shipping from Daytona.

When we went back on Monday we also swapped out a 42” Pioneer plasma in the den for a new 48” Samsung. So at least there was a little time to bill for on Monday. But, then the client called on Tuesday. The den is right next to the kitchen. In the kitchen is a 13” TV mounted under the cabinet. It’s connected via composite to the same directv receiver as the den tv. The problem is now there is an audio delay between the two TVs. I say, whoops, I should have thought about that, I’ll switch the den back to component. I get to the house and find that a 48” 8000 series Samsung now only has HDMI inputs. The client has no alternatives to using HDMI. So, I explain the only fix is to upgrade the kitchen tv, use an hdmi splitter, and a mini SDI Balun to get both tvs to have the same audio timing. I can’t bill for any of this time on Tuesday, and the client was forced to spend more money than they initially planned. All in all, just this week, we are probably out $1000 due to HDMI caused problems.

Another nice feature of HDMI is all the audio sync issues. For goddsakes, after all these years, the audio and video running through an A/V receiver is STILL out of sync with Xfinity cable boxes. Is that really so hard to fix after X number of years? Sure you can d#@k around with the delay settings but WHY??? Why is it so hard for the makers of HDMI to make audio simply match video consistently???

I'd like to know when we'll reach the point where the resolution is high enough. 4K looks great, but it still doesn't look real. Stereo and all of the surround modes are just an illusion- when will we have enough channels and speakers? Has anyone here actually installed a full-blown Atmos system with the complete speaker array? I think not, but it's possible. Did it sound real? Hard to say, because it' still simulated.

I would settle for 4K if they could get it to work reliably. I have yet to hear any brand of electronics and speakers present a realistic sounding experience, but a lot of that has to do with the room and setup, but even when manufacturers are showing what they can do, it's still a weak example. Sometimes impressive-sounding from the sound quality/sonic impact, but the sound isn't able to make me forget that it's a reproduction.

If hey come up with a way to do this at a somewhat reasonable price and I think they'll have something to hang their hat on. By 'reasonable', I don't mean DIY, I mean something we can install without having that nagging question of "When will this f&ck up and how much will it cost me?".

I carry an hdmi to component converter on my truck for those...