The Press

Saving money when connecting Hi-Fi, Hi-End technique over interface HDMI

Magazine “Sustainable Building Technologies” (Winter 2013)

Authors:
A.S. Vinogradov, Perao technical director
A.V. Mikhailik, Perao general director, member of NP “ABOK” committee “Intellectual buildings and information and control systems”

High quality and high-definition materials and equipment were always in high demand on the digital tech market. There are plenty of formats like (HD-DVD TM, Blue-Ray Disk TM, AUDIO-DVD TM, HDTV,3DTV(Video) etc.). There were numerous devices on the market, which supplied people’s needs in players, monitors, home and big theaters, all these devices were able to play, read or record any media content. The narrow point of these advanced devices was connections and connectors, different kind of cables and connectors of different manufacturers and types. Signals transmitted were subject to heavy aberrations which significantly affected quality from time to time. Situations changed dramatically when HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) was developed and widely introduced on the market, opening up the new functionality features and production quality. Also the new standard significantly simplified the connection procedure and went long time ahead.

When constructing new or renovating existing properties (apartment or large building), the procedure will inevitably raise the needs of the design problems solution, regarding the organization of high quality video (including 3D) communication signal transmission via HDMI.

Nowadays anyone solves such questions, one need to connect his television set, another connects projectors (pc. Changer, theater, game console or anything else.) When the distance between the source and the receiver is 1 or 2 meters, this is completely not a big deal, usually cables included in accessories set, are more than enough for such task. When the distance is bigger, when it goes till tens of meters, there are requirements which are necessary to sustain in order to maintain the high quality of passing signal.
These days overwhelming majority of manufacturers equips their audio and video, multimedia devices with the HDMI interface. This standard of video-audio transmission allows you to transmit video-audio data with the maximum quality, beside this; standard allows device interconnection with the network (LAN), device administration and inverse retraction. Over the time, potential of HDMI is increasingly used.
Beside the explicit pros of HDMI technology, user’s qualities limit the choice and ability to choose the right way of device connections. Thus are: poor technical knowledge, underestimation of communication importance, and as a result, the desire to save money buying the cable. These qualities are skillfully used by the retailers of poor quality equipment and cables; they promise high quality signal transmission selling relatively cheap cable and connectors.
Such sellers usually offer cheap cable analogues (generic cables), or set which include 2 devices, gateway for the HDMI signal transfer through the medium which is much cheaper than original one (coaxial, fiber optic, twisted pair cable). For example, TV set or game console is connected by the HDMI with the gateway; coherently gateways are connected by one or two cables based on a twisted pair category 5e or 6.

There are several reasons why it is prohibited to use such HDMI systems, gateways and cables:
• No one could guarantee work of the system. While viewing single content in a period of time everything is going to work fine, but in case of parallel content watching the signal losses would be too high, or it is going to pass intermittently, which could stop all system or make system unpredictable.
• Manufactures of the audio-video devices usually do not recommend the usage of such cables or devices. Audio-Video devices are pricey and usage of such kind of devices could lead to their breakage.
• For the connection with output devices (TV, monitors, and projectors) with the sources of multimedia data, manufactures usually include the usage of certified HDMI interface. Cheap cable analogues could not be certified at all.
• The interconnection speed of data transmission of the last HDMI revision is very high (till 10.2 Gbit/sec), such load could not be handled by poor quality HDMI cable, nor cable based on the twisted pair 5e or 6 (till 1 Gbit/sec)
• Fake and poor quality gateways could not handle at all, or could provide quality of connection which is much lower than desired for the additional HDMI services like Ethernet (internet and local network intercommunication), connection of systems in the set of devices, feedback and other.
• By their types gateways are additional devices in HI-FI and HI-END systems, which even theoretically increase the probability of failures and crashes.

Stating on above, in order to save money on HDMI cables we recommend you:
• Reduce the distance between HDMI devices as much as possible.
• Use only certified qualitative HDMI cable products.
• Ensure compliance of cables, temperature, strain, pressure, bending radius.
• If the cable immured in the wall (when there would not be a possibility to change or service the cables), use the advanced cable series in order to provide additional reliability.
• Provide unused reserve in case of damage or loss, major cable damage or changes of their characteristics.