The big story this week seems to be a new cable standard for high definition TV’s. “Valens, LG, Samsung and Sony teamed up to work on an entirely new cabling system named HDBaseT.Valens, LG, Samsung and Sony teamed up to work on an entirely new cabling system named HDBaseT.” (Tech.Blorge).
This is an ‘about time’ thing. The new standard uses existing and well proven Cat 5 network wiring. The interesting parts will be how they can run 100 watts over 24 gauge wires while still supporting extremely high data rates. EE Times indicates this may be a result of some DSP magic by Valens. A comment at Tech Reports illustrates the power feed problem, though.
Appliance Magazine says “The cornerstone of the technology is 5Play, a feature-set that converges uncompressed HD video, audio, 100BaseT Ethernet, high power over cable, and various control signals through a single 100-m/328-ft CAT5e/6 LAN cable.”
The comparison chart (PDF) indicates a data rate of nearly twice that of HDMI 1.4, cable lengths an order of magnitude longer, standard cable and connectors, power delivery sufficient for medium sized TV’s, and daisy chain, USB, and networking capabilities.
Engadget says this was introduced at CES 2009 so it’s taken a while to settle to the 1.0 specification.
The telephone company designed the twisted pair cable and the RJ connectors for low cost and reliability. Ethernet has used that technology successfully and enhanced data rates by improving cable quality. The key to this HDBaseT standard is in the interface chips that Valens is producing. If those chips can be provided at low cost and if clones can be developed, also at low cost, this new standard could indeed match its hype.
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