I'm interviewing the CEO Wed. Submit your questions before then. Not the really techy questions, but more big-picture issues.

Which CEO would that be Julie??

sorry! Silicon Image.

Well since Silicone Image is the inventor of DVI and are one of the original HDMI consortium, you may want to share the custom installation community's incredible disgust and frustration with the HDMI group's forcing this undesirable and underperforming standard on the marketplace...

Why does the consumer connection have to be some flimsy POS when the broadcast guys use HD-SDI which is an easily-terminatable SINGLE piece of coaxial cable??

I think this is a clear case of a group of companies identifying a Dolby style scenaio where they can make money from licensing rather than actually producing anything.

I went to www.hdmi.org and read the standards... not the standards for integrating a source component to a display, but the standards for using the HDMI trademark.

Here is my favorite.... "The mark may not appear on any materials that disparage any HDMI Founder or Founder products."

OK, here is my response to that...
is a standard that is overly complicated and anti-custom installation.

The professional broadcast standard for digital high sefinition is the HD-SDI connection, and it can pass 1080P AND digital audio on a single piece of coaxial cable well over 300 METERS long and which can be easily terminated with inexpensive locking BNC connectors in the field.

By comparison, we are forced to deal with tiny conductors and fragile connectors which cannot be terminated in the field, have no positive locking mechanism, and cannot be used in applications over 25 meters without a repeater.

I understand that Hollywood needs protection against piracy, but couldn't something have been imbedded in the source and display devices to encrypt/decrypt a signal the arrived via an HD-SDI connection??

I would like to thank the members of the group for making our lives miserable to create and market this new standard when there was a perfectly good standard that was already there all along.

GO 2ND RICK!!!!

I'm so tired of seeing companies reinvent the wheel. I wouldn't be quite so unhappy, if they would only get the second version as good as the first.

So the question is... Why did they reinvent the wheel?

By the way, if the answer is so that you can sell new cables... I hear a lynch mob assembling....

Dear Mr. Silicon Image CEO,

We in the installation community would LOVE to abide by the declaration that "The [HDMI] mark may not appear on any materials that disparage any HDMI Founder or Founder products." We expect you to abide by it as well, and put real teeth into enforcement of the concept.

However, when we actually use the products labeled HDMI, we find apparently random or at least unexplained instances of partial or total malfunction which can be traced solely to the use of the HDMI connection.

Since this does, in fact, occur with equipment labeled "HDMI," every one of these pieces of equipment, in every one of these instances, disparages some "...HDMI Founder or Founder products" by creating live demonstrations showing that the technology does not work. Since the "HDMI Founder" is likely to claim that the technology can be used to transfer video and audio signals in systems that work, such actual demonstrations prove HDMI to be a lie. This is a disparagement.

Are you prepared to force the manufacturers to recall any and all such equipment that does not simply connect and work, until such time as said manufacturers have remedied the situation, or at least provided full documentation explaining, in detail, what to do to make the equipment work?

First of all, thanks for the support...
Secondly, the intent was to sell LICENSING!!

Why go to the trouble to actually make the cables, if you are lucky you might get into 1 in 10 systems??

Brent and the other importers from China can fight over that market.

The HDMI group have begun to tread the path started by Dolby labs, Lucasfilm THX, and DTS... Create an anafram that every component MUST include to be a competitive seller, then CHARGE EVERYONE to include it!!

See, this way you can pull down decent cash for every source component, display, AND cable that use this nearly mandatory standard without raising a finger!!

Instead of being in 1 or 10 systems, your "product" can be represented multiple times in EVERY system!!

And since Hollywood and their collective swarm of Johnny Cochrane wannabees are involved, they threaten anyone who does NOT comply, and therefore HDMI corners the market...

This message was edited by 2nd rick on 10/25/05 00:22 ET.

although i am not a new member i have not been to remote central for over 2 years....been busy......

hdmi is not good for us custom guys...we cannot make our own cables and to run premade cables is retarded........not to mention the premade stuff never works.....

component video is the better choice for now and into the near future. to many choices and to many formats make our job way to tough.....tough to explain to customer why he cant have the latest greatest due to reliability issues

Good stuff guys, this HD*& BS gives me a headache and in many side by side comarisons (assuming the HDMI works ..I don't see a difference and neither does my customer. 2nd Rick is absoulutely right also about the HD-SDI in the pro market it has been out for awhile and is very reliable as well as easy to terminate. As usual this all marketing crap and has no basis in function except in therory!

So my question to the CEO is: When are you clowns going to shut up and go away?

You guys are wasting your breath. The fact is HDMI is the consumer standard so get used to it. Better to try to get to the heart of the issue which are:

1. Poor manufactuer implementation
2. standard that needs to have the length of cable runs increased.

The standard needs to be changed so that 200 feet runs are possible.
Manufacturers cannot place the HDMI logo on their equipment unless they can demonstrate that they can communicate at the 200 ft distances.

The driver voltages need to be increased big time. This was a standard invented for local, decentralized devices while most people actually using them will be using centralized equipment designs.

The standard cannot leave to the manufacturer the choice of how to implement EDID and HDCP hand shaking. It must be codified and regulated as part of the standard. This gentleman ought to be embarassed at the foolishness he has unleashed on the market. The problem is not the standard, per se. Nor is it impossible to terminate in the field cables. If we could buy 200 ft cables and they worked we would use them and deal with the extra 30 feet of unused cable. I just found out that one of the leading digital video engineers believes that crimping connectors on to cables for HD wrong headed because of termination anomolies.

Questions:
Why is the EDID/HDCP hand shake implementation not codified in the standard to force manufacturers to use a method that works all of the time.

Why are driver distances limited to 16 feet?

A question I have never seen asked or answered is if HD video signals require just over 20MHz and analog or digital audio an other 5 or6 MHz of bandwidth why is the HDMI transmission speed 1.66 gigabits/sec? What is this speed used for, why is it so fast? What are they expecting to see it connected to that rquires this kind of speed?

Why was this standard adopted before real world testing was accomplished.

Why are anaolog inputs turned off when HDMI is enabled BY STANDARD!!!!!!!!!!!!

Might we not want to send HDMI to one set and analog component video to an other?

Why are no CI pros on this committee? Think we might have some useful information that goes beyond the technical engineering and monitary issues of content providers and equipment manufacturers? Maybe someone would have informed the committee that 16 ft is rediculously too short for a video transmission standard

Inforced standard to permit user selection of 480P OR 480i. This is supposed to be part of the standard but is often left out. 480i is the preferred method if a scaler is installed on the job. Chances are the third party scaler will not a better job deinterlacing than the one built into the unit. This is part of the anti consumer part ofthe standard. It forces inferior electronics and software on to the small part of the public that does care. A flag that can be set in the equipment provides no added cost to anyone--other than no one on that committee cares or seems to conceive of real world implementation of the digital standard. SDI is 480i but as there is no HDCP its not coming into consumer electronics.

One might wish to ask, as it is so easy to adapt digital chip sets to output SDI why are there such fears of rapant consumer violation of digital copywrite as the main violators are in the east and will invest in modified equipment to add SDI

Since the source of most pirated content is the same source of most electronics equipment manufacturers what is the fear?

Copy protection is all well and good. Why is the standard anti-consumer. Anti consumer in so far as if we use HDMI we cannot also use analog component video at the same time.

By the way, Rick, the last HDMI standard change altered the connector so that it now locks. The problem is that equipment manufacturers have equipment in transit and need to alter their products to meet the new connector standard.

Alan

This message was edited by Audible Solutionns on 10/25/05 10:53 ET.

This is the most definitive satatement we could hope for the group to see.


A recall would place these companies, not to mentions the sellers (us), into the throes of a potentially massive liability issue.

Perhaps after these issues are resolved, some of these manufacturers could provide a firmware update for the devices that can accept one??

Alan, do you honestly think that the molds, tooling, and assembly are going to change for all of those Chinese produced cables that are already tooled??

More information from the very smart folks at KDS.

One of the biggest issues has been HDMI was an off shoot of DVI. It worked and most of the engineering issues had been solved, especially with respect to EDID and NDCP. However, when it moved from the computer divisions to the consumer electronics divisions of the consumer electronics manufacturing giants engineers unfamiliar with DVI now had to relearn what had already been known. Egos and ignorance in the corporate world. Supposedly this ignorance is being overcome. The Pioneer Elite DVD machines are supposed to have a very good record with respect to HDMI.

I like these guys. They are a small mom and pop outfit and believe it or not they have changed their firmware so that it is actually possible to control their devices. They listen and occasional come up with product solutions to meet the CI needs. They also seem to understand digital video and HDMI is particular. Like it or not HDMI is what we have. It is not long before it may be the only thing we have. I would not be surprised if the new HD-DVD only come with HDCP HDMI outputs

Alan



Alan

That's good information at least...
Pio Elite DVDs will accurately ID themselves through the connection, now we need to find a display that properly IDs itself back so that the image from the Pio Elite players can be the best image possible.

Alan, have you tried the Pio Elite to the Commercial Pio PDP / KDS card combo via HDMI??

I guess the other steps involve finding HD cable and sat boxes that play right, and then switching solutions that route the correct info to the correct place to ensure that the parameters are being adjusted to the proper EDID info.

Julie,
How was that interview??
Did you present to him any of our frustrations, or just stick to the safer road??

I understand you can't get a rep of being too harsh on these types, or you will not be granted these interviews at all.

BUT, I am personally hoping that you asked some of the tough ones for us...

I have the 810HD in my truck but I have not A/B'ed it to the 504 or 503. Care to fly east and take on this project? I have the 810 for about 8-10 days before it's being installed.

Alan