HDMI

Long overdue but won't change anything as the new nomenclature doesn't really help users.
It would be easiest to just have one cable. No real use having so many to chose from as the "best" wouldn't really cost more to make than the "cheapest". It's just a way to make as much money and charge as much as possible.

Just gives manufacturers a reason to charge a premium for the ethernet capable cables.

Just to add to your post GreenAlex it also makes it rather difficult to develop an AV3. I guess the days of high end processors are over. Unless I can start saving for an 11k Krell job.

Does this mean that nomenclature printed on blu-ray players will need to change, too? How will the lambda consumer figure that their "hdmi 1.4 compliant blu-ray player" needs a "highspeed hdmi cable"?

well, it doesn't really, does it

being compliant and really using the features is not the same. plus a 1.2 cable might well be able to work as a 1.4 cable. just not as an ethernet cable.

i just googled hdmi cable and first thing that popped up was a hdmi ethernet cable (the top hdmi version now) reduced from $90 to $3

quote:

Originally posted by GreenAlex:
plus a 1.2 cable might well be able to work as a 1.4 cable. just not as an ethernet cable

you might have a point here

quote:

Originally posted by Neill Ferguson:
Just to add to your post GreenAlex it also makes it rather difficult to develop an AV3. I guess the days of high end processors are over. Unless I can start saving for an 11k Krell job.

Or an Arcam AV888.
Or an Anthem D2v.
Or a Denon summat.
Or a Marantz thing.
Or a Pioneer, or...

Frank

The problem is none of them imo are a lot better than the AV2. It seems when you only move up to some heavy hitters in the AV scene to get big improvements.

Plus, when does the hdmi-av-receiver start to sound better than the internal decoder of a good player coupled with the 7.1 analogue input of an av2 setup.

I doubt HDMI is why Naim isn't making a AV3 (at least not to our knowledge ), but simply that R&D to make a really superior product would be so expensive that selling it would be difficult.

And of course, if the image of the original is mediocre, good hardware can make a big difference. But the better the source the less perfect the hardware needs to be.

DVDs are OK, but on a big screen or projector you can see the difference between a cheap and an expensive DVDP.
BluRay is so good compared to DVD (5xthe resolution) that even a cheap BluRayPlayer looks really good.
The bootleneck will most likely not be the source-player but the display.

Sound of course is still a different story, but it seems that even the new HD sound formats offer a significant improvement on semi-decent hardware over well designed SD hardware.

Sorry for running off topic

HDMI is nice. HDMI is convenient. HDMI uses sucky plugs. HDMI has too many different cable-versions that basically nobody needs. Make the one that supports everything and be done with it. Why waste time and money on making the "nothing but video" version