Worth having a discussion about. I like the potential.

HDMI is Dead. Introducing HDBaseT Networking (Audioholics)

I haven't had any major gripes with HDMI, except maybe how long the handshaking can take, but this certainly seems more elegant and convenient. I'm rooting for it already, so I hope it's implemented well.

I think I can wait for that... sweet.

Now that is cool.

I love this idea. Hope it comes to fruition. HDMI had good intentions but CAT5 is more prevalent and cheaper.

Well, we can all see it now.....Monster Cable Cat5 at $450 for 2M!!!

It would be awesome to see HDBaseT be the norm! It just makes sense!

Yeah, I would definitely love the terminating in the field aspect. I've already run Cat-6 throughout the house. It would just be much more convenient than HDMI is.

This would be perfect.. stream netfix, or itunes strait to your reciever, and then send it to any room in the house. just one more reason that the people who got their entire house wired for networking will come out ahead yet again.... and you won't need an electrician to come out and put power outlets where you want to hang your display.....


I hope this does work they way they say... CV your right, you only need a 10$ tool to terminate a Cat5 cable.... nice and easy....even though Monster will try to tell everyone that their cables are better because (fill in reason here)

Damn, can't wait to see how awesome HDBaseT 1.2 is going to be!!!

J/K, actually CV, you had me at, "HDMI is dead"!

Mainly because it seems they're having to upgrade the damn thing to incorporate whatever new technology is coming out at the time. This looks to be fairly future proof (of course with all the extra capacity, naturally companies will soon be rushing their 2160p resolution tv's to market along with their brand new Extreme Quadrouple High Definition surround sound modes), and altogether easier.... yes it looks like a grand slam by all means. I'm half tempted to pull my nest egg out of the bank and invest it in stock for this technology. But not everything that looks like it's about to take over the world does (however they do have Sony on board.... which means their deep pockets will deep six HDMI faster than you can say HD DVD!!! ).

I'm rooting for this thing to take off as well. Mostly because it looks to be altogether better than HDMI... but I also have to admit that I have a rather selfish reason for cheering for it as well... as one of the last people to have not upgraded my reciever to an HDMI capable model yet, I could sigh a huge breath of relief for not pulling the trigger on one just yet if they are about to become obsolete in the near future.

Had I'd suffered the last 4 - 5 years in misery because I had rolled the dice at exactly the worst time when I bought my Denon 4802, then I would have thrown in the towel forsure if I would have recently invested in an HDMI module just as they were being phased out!

micah, i dont have HDMI either.... almost all analog, with the acceptation of the digital audio from the cable box...

the HDMI idea was pretty good, audio/video in one cable...... but I'm still a fan of analog all the way....

I'm going to be a nay saying on this one. I see so many of these technologies pop up, all to fail. HDMI is too entrenched to be replaced at this point. Maybe with the next round of 4K equipment, but not with what we have now. Consumers are going to be pissed off enough at the 3D upgrade.

Yeah cat-6 would be nice, as I can terminate it myself. Although we should start seeing the field terminated HDMI soon.

Also keep in mind, this isn't HD over Ethernet, it is just using cat-6 cable as a point-to-point bus, you can't plug this HDbaseT into an Ethernet switch and expect it to work. The Ethernet frames are wrapped inside the rest of the protocol. HDMI 1.4 can already do the same thing. So all the stuff they said about devices talking to each other is already possible. Just about everything has an Ethernet jack already, and equipment interconnected by HDMI 1.4 only needs one Ethernet connection, if implemented they can all talk to each other, and share the connection via the HDMI cable.

Oh, and Denon has already done the $500 Ethernet cable. And it's only 1.5M.

Even though it doesn't work with existing networking products, the fact that the Cat-6 runs are there in my house would come in handy.

Also, what other technologies like this have already failed? Maybe we can compare and see if any of the differences are, in fact, worthwhile.

While I agree we're stuck with HDMI for now, it'll reach its limitations sooner or later, and if something like HDBaseT is around to step in, I'm all for it.

$102 per ft for Cat5? Denon makes it sound like a typical snake oil add.

I was trying to think of some good examples as I was writing that post. I just see so many announcement which proclaim the death of some other technology, but are only incremental improvements. But because they've all failed to grab the market I forget about them. I've even started shrugging off the announcements because of all the previous failures. When I saw this announcement in the same places I did the same. But since it was brought up here, I figured I'd give my two cents.

One such technology, which I do remember, because I got excited about it, is very, very similar to this one. It was a replacement for coax/XLR for carrying digital audio. It added support for multiple channels, was backed heavily by Sony (which actually should be taken as a touch of death, not a justification), and used cat-6. Where is SuperMAC (that was the link I bookmarked) today? Oh, I did find a working link: http://www.supermac-hypermac.com/

You have a good point there, but then people were saying that that's why Blu-ray was going to lose to HD DVD.

I suppose we'll see if products using the technology amount to more than just a trickle. It will definitely need a lot more backers.

Interconnect technologies need mass, universal adoption. Pioneer used i.Link (Firewire) for jitter-free audio transmission. It only worked with Pioneer gear, and it has been dropped. Denon used Ethernet for their spec, and it's been dropped too.

There's also the issue of real estate; the back panel of equipment is crowded. HDMI can't be dropped at this point. So there'd be duplication of ports between the HDbaseT, and HDMI. Plus if a receiver can't convert between the two (which means new chips need to be designed) it'll be worthless.

It's nice that it uses RJ45 connectors. But it had better be designed in such a way, that if someone plugs Ethernet into it, or it into an Ethernet switch nothing bad happens at all. End users, for the most part, are stupid. Similar plugs for dissimilar uses are a bad idea. The PS/2 keyboard and mouse thing is a great example. (Did you know that with just a slight push USB fits into Ethernet? I didn't either, until I had to tell a company that their 48-port managed, power-over-Ethernet switch, had to be replaced because the secretary blew it up.)

Couldn't they drop the HDMI ports if they came up with an adapter from HDMI to the HDbaseT port? I fitted my computer with a DVI video card. Then I ran an HDMI cable from my TV into an HDMI to DVI adapter and everything works great.

3 questions....

why was she even touching that thing?
did it cost more than her annual salary?

bet thats not what they wanted to hear!!!!!

honestly, i would have NEVER though about usb->ethernet, the ports don't even look that much alike!

Where's Mark to say something about BigJohn?

DVI and HDMI were electrically compatible, all you needed to do was use a passive converter to reassign pins. HDMI to-from HDbaseT would require an active converter, and it probably wouldn't be all that cheap to build. I'm sure if the interface takes off someone will build one, but it won't be included in the box of every HDbaseT device.

She didn't touch it directly, just one of ports punched down to a outlet at her desk.

It was probably pretty close, the equipment cost, plus all the lost phone calls during that day (it was running their internal VoiP phone system) probably hit it. This is a small town, no one with-in 100 miles had anything like this switch in stock.

Had it been a gigabit switch, it may have survived, as they have magnetic isolators on the data pins. Also newer PoE gear* only puts out a little bit of power until the connected device requests more. In this case the metal ground around the outside of the USB plug shorted across all the data and power pins. It seemed the switch would still send data to all ports, except the source of the damage, but the PoE was dead at all locations (and they didn't know where the AC adapters were for the desk phones).


*Newer PoE gear has lots of safe guards for these type of things, but this was first generation stuff (and thus even more expensive).

Am I the only one still waiting to hear the 3rd question?

You just asked it.

Whhooooaa... How did he know I would ask the third question?



Pretty freaky!

He manipulated the manipulator!

Did you get permission to use the Monster name in this post? You'd better watch out, I bet the lawyers over at Monster are going to be coming after you.