Featured Articles

Anyone who has read any of my articles long enough here at Audioholics knows the love-hate relationship I have with HDMI. Mostly hate, since I believe HDMI should have been more focused on protocol, and less on form-factor. Regardless, one of the most frustrating aspects of HDMI is the tendency for lower gauge (thicker) cables to weight down the connector and pull out of their sockets. With the complexity of the signal coursing through an HDMI cable, even a little tension can result in signal loss, especially over longer distances. So what's a custom installer to do? Well, for starters there are several solutions that provide a locking HDMI connection for HDMI - something the format surely lacks.

Considering that an HDMI cable is, at bottom, nothing more than an arrangement of wire, foil and plastic, the purchase of HDMI cable has become awfully confusing. Everywhere one turns, there are all sorts of specification version numbers being tossed around, claims about HDMI cable "speed," and representations about support for 3D, 2K by 4K video, 1080p, Deep Color, and a host of other features. What does it all mean? Read this article to separate the fact from fiction.

Key Digital had an interesting newsletter that got sent out this week. In it they had a table which went through the various iterations of HDMI, from version 1.0 through the newest 1.4. We thought it was a good chart, though we disagreed (slightly) with some of their assessments on the importance of each of the versions. As I hinted at in my article on The Twelve Biggest Industry Mistakes of the Digital Age I believe that HDMI is really more of a stop-gap interface whereas it could have been a new standard. Instead, we have a largely "stupid" new cable system that merely carries data. HDMI 1.4 does little to change this reality.

The ongoing convergence of AV and computing is inevitable, rooted in the dawn of digital media with the advent of the CD, and nurtured by the Internet. Media servers, multimedia gaming consoles, HTPC, networked AV receivers, mp3 player docks, IPTV; digital entertainment is becoming as at home on computers as it is on traditional AV gear. However, all of this crosspollination between the two often leaves entertainment stored in disparate locations so a reliable connection is required to transfer the entertainment files between devices. For those who find the shortcomings of Wi-Fi make it less than an ideal solution, there are other methods available that are not as onerous as pulling Ethernet cable through walls and attics by making use of existing home wiring systems. These methods also provide connections that are more secure with better data throughput and reliability. There is a reason that mission critical business systems and servers are primarily hardwired and not connected by Wi-Fi.

Audio and Video Cables are not just dependent on the wire or cable used, or the connectors used. The quality of the connection between the wire or cable and connector is just as important, if not more so. The biggest problem with the audio/video cable market is that marketing departments choose fads and fallacies, non-applicable specifications and pseudo science over real world objective measurements and tried and true methods of creating wire and cable assemblies that will last for many years with high quality results. Today we're going to look at those unsung heroes of our A/V world, the ones that hold it all together - the crimp and the solder joints.

Many people are worried, when buying HDMI cable, about the spec version of the cable in question. Is it the latest spec version? Will it support all the features of the devices it's hooked to? Most of the fears and doubts associated with this question are unfounded, but there are some interesting issues with regard to HDMI spec version, and we'll sort those out in this article.

One of the most common sorts of questions from our customers these days is some variant on this: "Do I really need a 120Hz HDMI Cable?" In consumer electronics stores across the country, consumers are being told that their new 120 Hertz displays will not work properly, or will not work optimally, without a cable designed for 120 Hertz. We'll address this question two different ways, beginning with the short answer and following with the long answer/explanation.

Sending audio, video and control signals over twisted pair cables have become common practice in the contemporary marketplace. There is a good reason for this. Twisted pair cables are cheap, ubiquitous and comfortably familiar to anyone with any level of installation exposure to data networking and telephony. UTP-based A/V installations are appealing for their perceived low cost and performance advantages. Widely accepted as a panacea that banished the need for task-specific cables to the equipment closet of history, those who universally advocate the use of balun-based infrastructure would do well to remember the words of Plutarch; “To find a fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.”

Wireless HDMI seems to be coming to a living room near you. While everyone pretty much agrees that HDMI is the most bitter-sweet invention to hit the consumer AV electronics industry in some time, there's no denying that most are trying to make end runs around the format. In some cases that is through the use of cable conversion, while others are looking to send HDMI through the ether.