You’ve got a beautiful, big flat screen television. It’s so thin that you’ve put it on a wall mount and it just seems to float in space. Maybe it will just float away! Wait a minute; no, that can’t happen because it’s tied solidly to the ground by a mass of cables that should be [...]
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HDTV Almanac - Look, Ma! No Wires!
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alfredpoor
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videograbber
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Re: HDTV Almanac - Look, Ma! No Wires!
Alfred,
> ...it’s tied solidly to the ground by a mass of cables that should be enough to connect the Space Shuttle to its launch gantry. <
I was getting ready to rake you over the coals on this bit of hyperbole. LOL. After all, what do I have tied to either of my living room HD displays, besides an HDMI cable and a power cord? Nada. This is NASA-level cable bundling?
But then after a bit of rambling about the straw-man you'd set up (smile), you ended with...
> So with just a power plug and a single HDMI port (or built-in WHDI support), a dumb TV would be ready to do just about everything that the average U.S. viewer would want from it. Let the intelligence and source switching be handled by some other box in the room. What do you think? <
I think that's the way I've been doing it for, oh, the last decade or so. Well, not necessarily HDMI all that time, but a single HD video cable (component or RGB) to the display, later supplanted by HDMI. With the audio not even going to the TV, but instead to the amp and speakers. And when using the tuner in the TV, sending the audio through the back-channel over HDMI to the receiver.
So, yeah, awesome new concept dude!
> Fortunately, there’s one industry group working to solve this problem. The Wireless Home Digital Interface Group (WHDI) has developed standards that allow high-definition signals to be sent wirelessly to display devices. This means that all you need is a power outlet and a small receiver at your television set; all the other devices in your home entertainment system can use WHDI to send the picture (and sound if necessary) to your television. <
Urg. What a crock. Yet another unreliable wireless connection, polluting the RF-atmosphere in our homes. Yuck. Sounds to me more like a solution in search of a problem.
> We’ve had this level of convenience for a while now with wireless surround sound speakers, but it’s great that this technology is becoming practical for the more-demanding video part of the equation. <
Well, I disagree. I think something like many convenient Cat6 drops, with HDMI over Cat6 eliminating more expensive cabling (once the price of transceiver chips comes down), would make more sense. But that's just me, and I'll admit that wireless will have some attraction to many folks... until interference issues raise their ugly heads.
> Solutions like HDMI could help lead to two important developments in our living rooms. <
Did you mean to say WHDI here? You may have spilled your alphabet soup.
> First, it makes it more practical to put the entertainment components next to the seating area where they are easy to reach, instead of across the room next to the television. If you want to watch a DVD, doesn’t it make more sense to have it in an end table next to the sofa, or built into the coffee table? <
This is cool, but doesn't require wireless at all.
> The other idea is a bit more radical; maybe the time has come for “dumb” TVs. <
A "radical" idea?
> All most people need these days is a big display. They don’t need tuners because they don’t connect their sets to an antenna. <
Even with an antenna, the tuner can be in another component in your separate electronics stack, or just come thru the back-channel via HDMI from your TV.
> They don’t need their televisions to have Internet support because so many other devices already provide that function (or it’s inexpensive to add using a network media player). And the TVs don’t even need to have complex scalers or video processing built in; other devices such as Blu-ray players already have those features, and can take care of the task of converting other signals into a simple 1080p stream that a dumb TV can understand. <
This is something I've been thinking about for quite a while, as manufacturers have sought to bundle more and more redundant functionality inside their TVs, in an effort to differentiate them, or give users a new reason to buy one. But if you've already got all that functionality elsewhere (and in components less of a compromise than what's built in to the TVs), they're of no value (just extra expense).
But they do seem hell-bent on that, and I see no evidence of that trend stopping any time soon. So yeah, in that sense, your "dumb TV" suggestion IS quite radical. I suspect that as things evolve, both approaches will succeed. Dumb TV displays for the primary viewing space, and integrated smart-TVs distributed throughout the house.
> Look, Ma! No Wires! the Emperor's servants trumpet <
"Ah, sonny, what are those?" Um, well, they're "...a power outlet and a small receiver at your television set". Please, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, or those 2 small electrical cables running in our so-called "No wire" system. I think you're missing an asterisk and some fine-print disclaimer there.
> ...it’s tied solidly to the ground by a mass of cables that should be enough to connect the Space Shuttle to its launch gantry. <
I was getting ready to rake you over the coals on this bit of hyperbole. LOL. After all, what do I have tied to either of my living room HD displays, besides an HDMI cable and a power cord? Nada. This is NASA-level cable bundling?
But then after a bit of rambling about the straw-man you'd set up (smile), you ended with...
> So with just a power plug and a single HDMI port (or built-in WHDI support), a dumb TV would be ready to do just about everything that the average U.S. viewer would want from it. Let the intelligence and source switching be handled by some other box in the room. What do you think? <
I think that's the way I've been doing it for, oh, the last decade or so. Well, not necessarily HDMI all that time, but a single HD video cable (component or RGB) to the display, later supplanted by HDMI. With the audio not even going to the TV, but instead to the amp and speakers. And when using the tuner in the TV, sending the audio through the back-channel over HDMI to the receiver.
So, yeah, awesome new concept dude!
> Fortunately, there’s one industry group working to solve this problem. The Wireless Home Digital Interface Group (WHDI) has developed standards that allow high-definition signals to be sent wirelessly to display devices. This means that all you need is a power outlet and a small receiver at your television set; all the other devices in your home entertainment system can use WHDI to send the picture (and sound if necessary) to your television. <
Urg. What a crock. Yet another unreliable wireless connection, polluting the RF-atmosphere in our homes. Yuck. Sounds to me more like a solution in search of a problem.
> We’ve had this level of convenience for a while now with wireless surround sound speakers, but it’s great that this technology is becoming practical for the more-demanding video part of the equation. <
Well, I disagree. I think something like many convenient Cat6 drops, with HDMI over Cat6 eliminating more expensive cabling (once the price of transceiver chips comes down), would make more sense. But that's just me, and I'll admit that wireless will have some attraction to many folks... until interference issues raise their ugly heads.
> Solutions like HDMI could help lead to two important developments in our living rooms. <
Did you mean to say WHDI here? You may have spilled your alphabet soup.
> First, it makes it more practical to put the entertainment components next to the seating area where they are easy to reach, instead of across the room next to the television. If you want to watch a DVD, doesn’t it make more sense to have it in an end table next to the sofa, or built into the coffee table? <
This is cool, but doesn't require wireless at all.
> The other idea is a bit more radical; maybe the time has come for “dumb” TVs. <
A "radical" idea?
> All most people need these days is a big display. They don’t need tuners because they don’t connect their sets to an antenna. <
Even with an antenna, the tuner can be in another component in your separate electronics stack, or just come thru the back-channel via HDMI from your TV.
> They don’t need their televisions to have Internet support because so many other devices already provide that function (or it’s inexpensive to add using a network media player). And the TVs don’t even need to have complex scalers or video processing built in; other devices such as Blu-ray players already have those features, and can take care of the task of converting other signals into a simple 1080p stream that a dumb TV can understand. <
This is something I've been thinking about for quite a while, as manufacturers have sought to bundle more and more redundant functionality inside their TVs, in an effort to differentiate them, or give users a new reason to buy one. But if you've already got all that functionality elsewhere (and in components less of a compromise than what's built in to the TVs), they're of no value (just extra expense).
But they do seem hell-bent on that, and I see no evidence of that trend stopping any time soon. So yeah, in that sense, your "dumb TV" suggestion IS quite radical. I suspect that as things evolve, both approaches will succeed. Dumb TV displays for the primary viewing space, and integrated smart-TVs distributed throughout the house.
> Look, Ma! No Wires! the Emperor's servants trumpet <
"Ah, sonny, what are those?" Um, well, they're "...a power outlet and a small receiver at your television set". Please, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, or those 2 small electrical cables running in our so-called "No wire" system. I think you're missing an asterisk and some fine-print disclaimer there.
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alfredpoor
- Major Contributor
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- Joined: Wed May 13, 2009 9:27 am
Re: HDTV Almanac - Look, Ma! No Wires!
Videograbber, I can't argue with a single point. (Excuse me while I mop of that soup spill from the front of my shirt.) I'll accept that I overstated the case in some spots, but if I hadn't, what would you have had to write about?
One problem with the "dumb" TV idea is that a lot of the parts don't cost much. I think I heard somewhere that the tuner costs less than a buck. You'd have to take a lot of stuff out of the TV in order to have much impact on the bill of materials cost, but I still think it's a concept worth exploring and I bet you'll see something along those lines before long.
As for the RF pollution, I am in agreement. I prefer a wired connection over wireless if at all possible. But I'm not writing about what I'd do; I'm talking about what the market as a whole might do, because the decisions of the masses do have an impact on what's available to those of us who know better. (Would you like to discuss "reality TV" programming?)
Thanks for taking the time to provide such a thorough and thoughtful response to the piece.
Alfred Poor
HDTV Almanac
One problem with the "dumb" TV idea is that a lot of the parts don't cost much. I think I heard somewhere that the tuner costs less than a buck. You'd have to take a lot of stuff out of the TV in order to have much impact on the bill of materials cost, but I still think it's a concept worth exploring and I bet you'll see something along those lines before long.
As for the RF pollution, I am in agreement. I prefer a wired connection over wireless if at all possible. But I'm not writing about what I'd do; I'm talking about what the market as a whole might do, because the decisions of the masses do have an impact on what's available to those of us who know better. (Would you like to discuss "reality TV" programming?)
Thanks for taking the time to provide such a thorough and thoughtful response to the piece.
Alfred Poor
HDTV Almanac