AVR #179: It’s an Engineer Thing
May 6th, 2010
Dina had couple of Mac problems this week so no video and I had to cut a bit out in the middle. Hopefully it still makes sense. Tom gets a comment via Ara. What exactly is HDMI 1.4a and what does it mean for you? Tom tries to explain but the engineers thwart him at every turn. Jeremy is angry, Tom sorta agrees. Esoteric cables – what they really are. An esoteric product that… really makes no sense at all. Thanks for listening and don’t forget to vote for us at Podcast Alley. To see our (mostly) complete collection of show videos, click here. To get our iPhone app, visit the iTunes store.
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Hi Tom
Re esoteric cables and esoteric hardware, I fully agree with your analysis.
Most of the high end of hi-end audio is just a waste and while many people fail for the marketing, some simply need the joy of tinkering with their equipment. Cables especially.
I remember one occassion where I was told I was silly to be using a Walmart DVD player as my source audio device. I agreed to take home an esoteric $20K CD “deck” for a trial and connected both via digital connections to my AV receiver. I then took a genuine music CD and made 2 copies and put them into each of the players. I then kicked off the same track on both units and got the audiophine salesperson to tell me which was which (which I connected but not indicated to anyone but myself). It was a long 15 minutes before the “expensve” unit was selected (purely by chance – methinks) as the “good” deck.
$20K vs $20. You choice.
I buy hi-fi so I can enjoy my music. Not so to line the pockets of marketing gurus. Nuff said.
$3,200 for a power board?! And $1,600 for each extension cable?!! Hahahaha. More people who are holding back human evolution, but not me – hopefully!
People. Please just send some cash to the starving in Africa?? For a start try http://www.chookraffle.org If I get enough interested comments and/or donations I will turn On the raffle system.
Cheers,
skris88
Sydney, Australia
In regards to HDMI, it’s not really as complex as it seems. As long as the connector and cable don’t change, you can most likely flash a device’s firmware to support all the new features.
The only difference between 1.4a and 1.4 are the additional 3D formats. As long as the reciever can recognize them as video and pass them along, you will have no problem.
I don’t even see much of an issue with flashing something from 1.3a to 1.4a. The audio return channel will only work at 1080i resolution (but that’s not a big deal) and you won’t get Ethernet over HDMI (but no one is using this yet). As long as you can flash the firmware to be aware of the new video formats and resolutions, and you have enough bandwidth to send them, you can do it.
The real reason no one is, is that it’s just easier to sell new gear.