HDMI over IP Gigabit Solution Is ‘Virtually Lossless’

Trent, aren’t you an AA guy???
I thought component video was good for years to come?  Bet Hedger! Lol

Jokes aside, smart move.  This is what we need going forward.  Lossless HDMI over IP in a matrix capable format to get away from Magenta and their Mondo Matrix at $100k plus.

Now everyone needs to brush up on their VLAN and QOS skills and learn how to write some trick XML code for control.

At least if we are stuck with HDMI there are some good companies figuring out how to distribute it cost effectively.

I just realized that “Davis” in this article is Trent Davis, I assume the same as AACTrent. 

Again, good job on this one my friend.

What about the lossless audio codecs?  Will it send MA and TrueHD?

@ brandonpro

Good call.

I may be missing something, but in this type of scenario your audio “subsystem”(processor/amp combo or receiver) will be in a rack above or below the HDMI Transmitters and the “subsystem” will be outputting the power at speaker level to the speakers.

Wouldn’t an HDMI loop-out on the transmitter solve this?

The transmitter would pass untouched HDMI signal out the loop-out to the “subsystem” in the rack for audio processing, and send the lossless video out the RJ45 ethernet style jack to the switch for distribution to the proper displays.

Am I missing something on that?

@Mark & branden

On the Audio Authority website it says it only supports PCM 2-channel audio even though they claim it supports HDMI 1.3 at 225MHz.

“Audio Formats supported: 2-channel PCM”

“Multi-channel Digital: Converts multi-channel signals to 2-channel PCM for maximum compatibility”

But it appears they got the data rate wrong in their specs because 225Mhz is actually 2.25Gbps, not Mbps.

http://www.audioauthority.com/product_details/2800/New/5/1

As long as your Blu-ray went to your A/V receiver first, it could extract the audio, then you just send the monitor out of the A/V receiver to the IP extender. Of course this pretty much sucks if you wanted to share it with more than one display because as soon as you turned off the A/V receiver or switched to a different source, every TV it was shared with would also be affected. So in the case of multiple displays where you also wanted hi-res audio from a Blu-ray, (or surround sound from any source) you would also need a 2-way HDMI distribution amp to feed the receiver as long as it was accessible from the Blu-ray location.

Jason B Brown
http://www.asktheadvisors.com

@Jason

I agree an alternate would be a 1x2 HDMI distribution amp put in line between the device and the HDMI over IP transmitter.  I am just thinking about rack space and power management.

A loop out ion the transmitter itself would be ideal IMO. (Crestron DM does that for HDMI and on some cards for 2 Channel analog downmix for pushing audio to 2 channel legacy amps.)

Spendy though. . .

Hello everyone, thanks for the comments and feedback.

@Mark Coxon:

Yes, AACTrent and Trent Davis are one and the same.  We love component video, but we’re just giving you what you want

@brandenpro:

The 2800 series is designed to be cost effective for digital signage (one to many) and retail HDTV demonstration (again, one to many), so it only supports 2.0 PCM.  We hope to improve on that with 3800 series, but I don’t want to over-promise.

@jbrown:

You’re right, thanks for pointing out that typo.  I’ll take personal responsibility for that one.

HDMI 1.3 is a “buffet line” spec.  Not every feature has to be supported, as long as you’re clear about what is supported.  Since we use version 1.3 chipsets in this product, we specified it as 1.3.

@everyone:

You’re right about the need for head-end bitstream/lossless audio support.  We’ve already identified that need and we’re working on a way to support that without the need to wire up a bunch of 1x2 HDMI distribution amps.

There’s a thread at IP about this product too, if you’re interested in more detailed discussions.

Trent Davis
Product Manager
Audio Authority Corp.

Just Add Power beat you to the market.

We’re fully aware of the competition. 

Our Gigabit product provides significantly improved picture quality over existing Megabit solutions, and we have other innovations in the pipeline that will leapfrog the existing competition in exciting ways.

Audio Authority has spent the last 34 years providing relevant, unique products that help integrators and dealers in the CE category increase their profits.  2800 series will be no different in this regard.

@cinematech ... Let me guess, you’ve never used the “Just Add Power” piece, have you? If you had, you certainly wouldn’t have claimed that is has any benefits over this, or any other HDMI extender, for that matter.

Will the 3800 be a matrix switch before sending it out over the IP switch? Why do this as provide single trasmitters that can be switched by the IP switch to any reciever?

I love the modular design as it can allow for future system growth. Is there some cost savings? Are you really going to put a matrix switch before the IP switch?

Sorry for not including this in the first post but another question. Will the 3800 be fully lossless?

Just Add Powers G2 solution is going to be fully loseless and that is the IP solution I am waiting on before using HDMI over IP.

I also have concerns about how audio is handled by these solutions. I could work around the problem but hope 7.1 surround is supported along with the choice of just sending 2 speaker sound to selected recievers.

@ Kirk ... if you read the J.A.P. G2 spec sheet, notice they keep saying “visually lossless”. That means they are in fact re-compressing the signal, which will induce loss, they are just claiming that it will be almost unnoticeable. They were honest with the G1 product and said there was a noticeable degradation (very noticeable, in my opinion), so hopefully they are being honest here as well. Obviously you wouldn’t use this as a first choice for any serious viewing environment, but it may be a pretty good solution for whole-house distribution.

Keep in mind that a good (not great) Gigabit managed 24-port switch is going to cost about $700-1,000.00. This will be required for either of these solutions to have reliable performance. Also, those managed switches are not as easy to set up as just “RTFM”. Some reasonable networking experience will surely be required to understand the setup and achieve best performance.

I don’t want to comment on a product product without seeing it, but based on our experience with “visually lossless” compression, I’d recommend seeing it first before trusting a claim that any HDMI over IP technology is truly lossless.  We claim ours is virtually lossless, and I expect you will see similar results from competing Gigabit Ethernet technologies.

@Kirk

I can’t say too much about 3800 series yet (don’t want to overpromise, you know), but if all goes to plan, the 3800 series will be dramatically easier for the average CI to install and control than any current managed switch implementation of matrixing.

@jbrown,

You’re absolutely correct.  Managed switches vary wildly in their ease of use and price, and simple, cheap switches will rarely match the higher end units for user-friendliness.