| Posted: Thursday May 29th, 2008 08:47 am |
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1st Post |
Muttley
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Not Comfort related but of general interest to most of us
Sky have withdrawn their component high definition (YPbPr) outputs from all new HD boxes supplied in the UK even going as far as to remove stock of these older boxes from their suppliers warehouses and replacing their stock with the newer boxes. Leaving HDMI as the only HD output availible  (though I have heard a rumour that there is a component HD output availible from one of the SCART sockets but whether this is a true HD component output i.e. YPbPr or simply SD RGB (576i) is unkown - maybe someone can enlighten me)
We witnessed this at first hand on an installation we were on this week. We had planned for component HD distribution from the rack to the main TV via MediaX (aka CAT8) using a single cable (we can get the HD signal and the optical digital audio signals down 4 pairs of CAT8). A distance of about 30M. The Sky installation agent turned up with one of these new boxes just a WEEK after they had been informed that component HD was being withdrawn after a bit of "negotiating" on behalf of the client a single HD box with component video output was found lurking in their stock room and installed instead.
They had called their distributor/wholesaler to order a buffer stock of the older (& better) boxes in only to find that the wholesalers stock had been replaced lock, stock and barrel with the new boxes 3 days before (apparently over 300 units!) and the old style boxes removed from sale.
One wonders what sort of gun the HDMI association/industry has held to Sky's head to explain this sort of response.
For those of you who aren't aware there are two main issues with HDMI
1) it has a very limited transmission distance, if you want to go beyond 15M then you have to start looking at utilising some form of balun/extender which are expensive. Component HD isn't realy limited to the distance it can be transmitted in practical terms (we nominally say 100M on CAT8 but this could apply to RGB co-ax as well) and in my humble opinion Component HD gave a better quality picture that was noticable of large screens (50"+) and projectors.
2)HDMI extenders require x2 twisted pair cables (CAT5e, 6, 7, 8) hence it is very resource hungry.
Not an issue for those who still prefer the set top box next to the display but on rack mount distributed installations its a pain in the @rse 
Cheers
Gavin
Intelligent Buildings Ltd.
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| Posted: Saturday Jun 7th, 2008 09:44 am |
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2nd Post |
garym999
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Hmm, I tend to aggree my experiences using HDMI also have me wondering about the quality. With my personal system I run an external scaler and I get a better picture using VGA or DVI as I can get 1 for 1 pixel matching where HDMI requires the TV to scale.
A quick google found this http://www2.dvigear.com/codvitohd.html. Not cheap but might do the job, does not support HDCP though. Why does the industry keep shooting themselves in the foot? I'm sure there is other kit out there. Ebay?
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