HDMI chief grilled on interoperability

Awkward questions about compatibility issues that have left some viewers watching blank screens instead of HD pictures were ducked when a roadshow promoting a new version of the HDMI digital interface hit London.

The HDMI Licensing representatives, who had flown from New York to extol the new version 1.3, were visibly shaken by the blunt comments made by a small group of analysts, press and manufacturers who had gathered at Dolby Labs’ HQ near Piccadilly.

In the UK, HDMI problems have led Pioneer to offer free repairs to get its plasmas working with Sky HD boxes – and to recommend that viewers meanwhile use analogue links to avoid the digital HDCP copy protection that unintentionally prevents legitimate viewing.

But HDMI Licensing president Les Chard claimed that the vast majority of users had no interoperability issues.

"The few issues that have arisen are the result of HDCP. There have been problems with some set-top boxes not hand-shaking. And there have been issues with repeaters," he said.

The US Best Buy is reported to have refused to stock HDMI products that have not passed interoperability tests. Chard said that within 60 days all would have to pass testing by Simplay HD, an entity set up by HDMI Licensing, itself a subsidiary of HDMI co-developer Silicon Image.

When pushed on exactly how products are tested, by whom and for what, and whether the testers could cope with the growing workload, Chard assured there were HDMI test sites round the world. But he could not give an exact number.

Asked whether manufacturers would have to submit and pay for separate HDMI and HDCP tests, Chard said: “You will need to talk to Simplay.”

After an impressive demonstration by the Dolby hosts of True HD surround sound, from the Batman Begins movie on HD-DVD, there was a demonstration of the new xvYCC (Extended YCC Colorimetry for Video Applications) colour technology, which was adopted as an IEEE standard last January

It allows HDTV to display nearly all the colours in nature, compared with the 60 per cent supported by the current HDTV spec.

The Deep Colour demonstration was seriously flawed, though. Two monitors compared 8-bit colour with the 10-bit possible with HDMI 1.3. But the two displays had wildly different grayscale settings, which made the 8-bit screen look brighter and swamped the 10-bit subtleties.

John Dawson, managing director of high-end manufacturer Arcam, said security should be invisible and accused HDMI Licensing of over-egging the cake.

He said: “You are drowning us in Deep Colour and talk about colour space that doesn’t exist in the consumer’s mind. It only exists in the minds of Sony and a few others. As manufacturers we cannot even buy the Deep Colour chips. I say forget it. Forget it. You need to keep things simple.”

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