HDMI – Love it or Leave it?

I don’t think too many people will disagree with me when I say HDMI has been a mixed bag of feelings, both amongst those in the Consumer Electronics and Professional AV industries and end users alike.  The concept is great – a single cable capable of passing extremely high bandwidths taking care of high-definition video and multi-channel audio signals.  The execution is not so great.

What makes the execution not so great?  Well, there are several issues with HDMI:

1. Poor HDMI connector – The HDMI connector has a reputation of being fragile and being a weak point of connectivity.  HDMI Cables are known to have issues with intermittent signal dropouts because of a loose connection.  They are also know to come completely disconnected easily, and the weight of a heavier HDMI Cable can cause internal damage to the fragile HDMI Input.  That’s why we see so many products coming out to address this issue, such as hd EZ lock Universal Locking HDMI Adapter, or locking HDMI Cables.
2. HDCP – High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) was developed by Intel Corporation as a way to prevent copying digital audio and video content traveling across the HDMI cable (as well as some other types of connectivity methods).   Paranoid studios (rightfully so or not) demanded HDCP to prevent unscrupulous characters from copying their high-definition content and distributing perfect quality pirated reproductions.   In order to work properly, HDCP-compliant components must constantly talk to each other through an elaborate “handshake.”  There are many devices that are not HDCP-compliant, and this has been a great source of frustration for manufacturers, installers, and consumers alike as it results in a down-converted (not high-definition) signal or no picture at all (sometimes a blue screen, or picture flickers on and off).

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3. HDMI was not designed to transmit long runs.  It seems like that would have been an obvious consideration, since long run wires are required to get a signal around a house or building, but somehow that was missed.  While we won’t get into the argument about whether or not you can tell a quality difference (better picture, better sound), it’s safe to say that most people agree that the quality of the cable is important in longer runs (say 15 feet or longer).  Not specifically talking about picture quality, but whether or not the signal makes it in tact.  With such a high bandwidth traveling a long distance, lower quality cables may not be able to fully pass the signal, resulting in intermittent signal dropouts, “sparklies” or no signal at all.  There are also many devices available to help in this area, including HDMI repeaters (passive and active), HDMI over cat5 or cat6, HDMI over fiber-optic and more.
4. HDMI marketing has been confusing, to say the least.  Terms such as high-speed, category 1, category 2, 120hz, 240hz, versions 1.2a, 1.2b, 1.3a, 1.3b, 1.4, 1.4a, Gbps, Bandwidth, etc have been poorly explained and used by many companies to confuse customers with deceptive marketing practices.  Add to that constantly changing versions and rules, and things have been very confusing for everyone involved.

There are other issues, but these are the ones most often discussed.  We’ve already talked about some of these issues, and we’ll be talking about the other ones in future articles, so make sure to check back often.

There are lots of great things about HDMI, and whether or not you feel the industry should have gone with a different (better) solution, the reality is that HDMI is now widely accepted and will most likely be the main audio/video connection for years to come, with an estimated installed base of over 1.5 billion HDMI-enabled devices projected by 2010, according to market research firm In-Stat.

When all is said and done, the bottom line? Love it or hate it, it looks like HDMI is here to stay.