Dealer: HDMI over IP is ‘Game Changing’

nded, the self proclaimed “Rocket Surgeon” brought this to my attention a couple months ago @ AVS when someone asked about 30 HDTV’s and 10 sources in a sports bar. Budget did not allow for Crestron.

My response was “steer completely clear of HDMI switching” and “DO NOT hire anyone who tells you otherwise”.

Then.. out of nowhere my mind gets blown with this “game changing” product. If it does what they say it will… WOW!

The link to the AVS thread for anyone interested :

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=17105182

How’s the latency?

How did they manage to squeeze 2.5GB/s streams into Ethernet? Cat 2960 has only 1GB ports at best. I do not believe this setup is good to anything more than still pictures.

Detto AP2.

Using 50-60 Mbps of bandwith to transport 2.5 Gbps of HDMI content?? Ok, so you forget about 98% of the content and transport only 2% and still get the whole picture in its sense? Gimme a break, this is not even funny….

It only uses about 30Mbps and it multicasts on the switch.  So each “stream” requires only 30MB on the backplane of the switch.  Any receiver just grabs that multicast stream on the associated VLAN.

There is 0 latency and it works perfectly.  We put it through the paces and it passed every test. 

It’s a pretty remarkable product, something we’ve been waiting for a while.  When we found it, we were really excited about it and obviously skeptical.  But if it wasn’t as awesome as it is Andrew wouldn’t have written this article about it.  We definitely tested it, and will have some devices in our office next week to really put it through the paces.

The person who created it, comes out of the IP world previously from IBM.  He knows his stuff and there is no doubt you will start to see some manufacturers OEM his product.

What does multicasting have to do with it? That doesn’t explain how one goes from 2.5Gbps to <100Mbps.

The spec sheet says “Internal JPEG video compression adapts to available network bandwidth if needed.”

If needed?!

There are 10GB Ethernet switches on the market. If they would use them, then I’ll believe in this technology. But those switches are priced at about $1000 per port. So it would be expensive solution for home installations.

Excellent- some day, we can all have inexpensive vE-SATA NASs @ 2.5 Gbps performance to replace our std 1GB devices on many existing infrastructures!

Guys, it’s extremely important to note that these devices are encoders/decoders with compression algorithms enabled ... not baluns, nor extenders. 

They encode and compress the hdmi stream on one end and decode & de-compress on the other side.  Hence, why only 50-60Mbps is necessary.

If you were extending (and not encoding/decoding/compressing) full HDMI, then higher bandwidth requirements would be required…

This is where all the confusion lies…

So what about compression losses/artifacts/degradation?

Are you saying there’s NO sign of any in the decompressed signal?

I’d find that hard to believe. Phenomenal if true, but still hard to believe.

To say that they’re would be NO loss, artifacts, and/or degradation would be absolute lunacy unless you specify that you are functioning under the correct conditions…

These are network based devices, and your success will depend on network conditions as well as the correct provisioning of the network settings (i.e. is the switch IGMP enabled and can duplicate IPs across VLAN domains? - as specified by manufacturer).

These capabilities presume that the end-user is *only* provided with an enterprise-grade network switch that can support the amount of devices you are about to hook up to it (read: high bandwidth backplane - which is pretty much any current enterprise-grade switch these days)...

Additionally, RS-232-based drivers will have to be programmed at the network switch level to experience the power of matrix switching.  Also, you cannot (not sure if this is a limitation of the manufacturer hardware or not) stack more than 3 network switches.

With the aforementioned conditions correctly accounted for, you *will* achieve H.264-quality or better.  I know… amazing!

In other words, if you are happy with the HD-quality movies that Apple streams to you (which I am at least), than you will be *more* than happy with this solution.  We’re not presuming any of this… we’ve seen it!

Additionally, we’ve had extensive dialogue with manufacturer regarding the technical design of the product offering… It’s definitely impressive!

Again, if you fail to set this network environment up correctly, you *will* experience degradation and/or problems… If a quality installer sets it up correctly, the results are more than impressive and the system will be highly expandable.

It would be nice if they were more transparent about what the device is doing, instead of a line hidden in the spec sheet that talks about compression “if needed.”

Decompress from the source -> HDMI -> compression in this box -> IP transit -> decompress at the viewer box -> HDMI. Is it so hard to make up a diagram which explains this? I’m sure most people considering shelling out the money on this solution and the managed switch to support it would want to understand the basic nuts and bolts about what it’s doing.

Like several other posters, I origianlly said “how the heck is it doing HDMI over the network.” And I realized its NOT transmitting HDMI,its transmitting a recompressed signal.

The thing to point out that is that even blurays are only 30-40mbits per second typically. If the recompressed signal was 60 mbits, you wouldn’t be losing a whole lot in the process.

Of course I still have no use for this product and its pretty stupid that its like “just add enterprise quality managed network switch!”

“Just.”

Right.

I’m sorry, but I’m skeptical about this. This is not a good solution for a home theater set-up.  The HT enthuasist that would be interested in doing something like this is the same individual that would be immediately turned off by this product due to its compression.  Seriously, compression, you’re kidding right?  People that spend thousands on all kinds of HT gadgets to get the best video and audio are not interested in compression.  There’s good reason why they were in a tiny corner.  Everyone there except for this short-sighted writer knew that no real enthuasist would be interested.

This is not for a Home Theater which is *one* room and does no switching.  This is for Matrix Switchable HDMI - which is for *many* rooms - all sourcing from *one location*.  Clearly you have missed the point. 

Also, have you listened to anything digital coming out of your speakers these days such as an AAC-encoded music track?  Or watched an H.264 (or other high fidelity) video-encoded movie?  I’d bet you couldn’t tell the difference between a digitally encoded “compressed” version vs. your current one on a “blind taste test”.  Perhaps, if you broke out computer-gear with digital sensors you could technically “note” the differences… but even then, I’m pretty sure you still wouldn’t care because the differences wouldn’t be perceptible…

In the end, it’s clear this product is not for you.  You only want to have 1 room (your Home Theater) to have access to your DVD, Apple TV, Xbox 360, Digital Media Library, and sundry other sources.  This product is for the guy who has many rooms, each with Displays & Speakers, and who wants every single one of them to access ALL the sources - in any combination…

Judging by your self-righteous attitude & comments, you are the one being short-sighted…  Please be more aware in the future…