[OT] HDTV recommendations?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 02:36:56PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> I have both those problems with my Sony LCD TV.
> 
> I have only the second problem with my Toshiba.
> 
> Another generic problem: these controls are open loop.  In other
> words, the controller has no way of knowing if the commands were heard
> or obeyed.  Or what the current state of the device really is.

Yeah, although it doesn't seem like that is going to change.  It would
mean adding a transmitter to a lot of devices and a receiver to a lot
of remotes, so solve what most people think is a rare problem.

> It is long past time for a two-way control protocol to be universally
> adopted across all brands and functions of home entertainment
> equipment.

Well perhaps while at it, switch to RF rather than IR.  Some systems have.

> Another oddity:
> 
> The easiest organization of home entertainment
> equipment is hub-and-spoke.  Where all signals go into a hub and it
> distributes the signal as needed.
> 
> So what should the hub be?  Candidates are:
> 
> - the "TV Set" (perhaps only the monitor)
> 
>   + usually the monitor is big and singular (few systems have 0
>     monitors, few systems have 2 or more monitors)
> 
>   + it's where you "look the system in the eye" so its where you
>     intuitively think its brain is
> 
>   - often Monitors only pass stereo sound out, not surround sound.
>     Crazy but true.

I believe HDMI actually supports such distribution of commands.

> - the AV Receiver (like a HiFi receiver)
> 
>   - many people don't want or need AV Receivers.  One fewer box is
>     good.
> 
>   + the people building these focus on sound and probably get a better
>     result than the TV set builders.
> 
>   + can be relatively cheaply retrofitted into a system that is
>     inaddequate (too few inputs)
> 
> - the surround sound system (!)
> 
>   + perhaps this is just a degenerate AV Receiver.
> 
>   I bought mine expecting it to be a slave to the TV.  It actually
>   wants to be the master.  Not convenient when I only want to turn the
>   TV on and not bother with the fancy sound.

Yeah AV receivers really do want to be in charge most of the time.
The one my parents have now have an exception where when off the blueray
input is directly passed through to the TV, so you could have just the
TV on along with whatever is on that input without turning everything on.

> Better would be a true network, with routing, like we do with
> ethernet.  That wasn't done because different cables carry different
> specialized signals (10 different kinds of audio, 10 different kinds
> of video, 100 different kinds of control).  This no longer makes
> sense: ethernet bandwidth is high enough to carry all those signals in
> one trunk.  Ethernet ports are dirt cheap.  The wiring would be so
> much simpler, cheaper, and effective.  We could have an expectation of
> a single remote control for the whole shebang.

No ethernet isn't that fast.  1920x1080 @ 120 frames per second (3D
uses that) at 16 bite per colour (they are at 10bits per colour on HDMI
already, so 16 might happen some day is 6 bytes per pixel) = 1423MB/sec.
Add audio to that.  This is quite a bit in excess of what 10Gbit Ethernet
can do.  And some people are starting to talk 4k video resolution (A
number of movie theatres already project 4k which is 4096x2160 (so a
bit more than 4 times what full HD is now).  That would hit 6GB/sec for
video alone.  HDMI 1.4 can do that.  Ethernet can't.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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