Goodbye HDMI, Hello HDBaseT

Founded by Samsung, Sony, LG and others, HDBaseT looks to replace the HDMI standard while offering more bandwidth.

LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Valens Semiconductor have been secretly conspiring to kill HDMI. And today they set their plans into motion, introducing a brand new audiovisual standard, HDBaseT. While that name may sound confusing, before you slap your head, this will not likely introduce a new kind of cable to your house.

Past A/V standards from industry groups have introduced a plethora of connectors (S-Video, HDMI, DisplayPort for example), so that makes this release all the more unusual. Instead of a new connector, it is based on the Cat 5e/6 network cables, commonly referred to as “ethernet cables”.

It supports cable lengths up to 328 feet. The cable can pass HD and 3-D video signals, as well as data through an integrated 100MBit Ethernet connection. That data feed should allow for new internet-connected TV services, such as Google TV which delivers advertising-funded services to TV sets.

The standard also has many other advantages. For one, it will help declutter the growing mess of cables in the average household. By repurposing ethernet cables, it should also dramatically lower costs, both for the manufacturer and the consumer.

About the only loser in the situation may be “premium” cable makers like Monster Cable Products. However, it’ll only be a matter of time before Monster finds a way to throw gold or other precious metals into a Cat 6 cable and release it as a “premium” HDBaseT cable.

About the only loose end is what mini-connectors will arise out of this new standard. Currently many smart phones, such as the HTC EVO 4G offer mini-HDMI connections. Perhaps more advanced mini-USB connections will answer that dilemma, though.

The standard will begin its rollout later this year. The majority of its volume will hit in 2011. Check out the comparison table below:

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Showing 29 comments

Rioux at 6:15am 16th July 2010 I've been in the custom AV business for 12 years. I started just as DVD and component video were comming out. The change to HDMI has not been a plesent one and I will be glad to see it go away. Try to explain to your client that the house you wired for them 3 years ago is not going to work for distrobuting HDMI because you used RGB, Component or cat5 for baluns. Now go back and explain to them that you can remove the $5000 video matrix and put in a $200 Network switch (can't you just see the smile on their face) and get 1080p. The great thing about this is, we have cat5 everywhere in the house now. Bring on the network TV!!!
MLB at 12:53am 14th July 2010 I have to say I am falling over myself as to how logical and cool this is. Category wire can do virtually anything these days. As someone who installs custom A/V products every day of the week, having a field terminatable HD wire, that's thin and not bulky is a godsend. Not only that, we're pulling CAT wire as backup between all devices; that means we've got HDBaseT already run! I suppose as the article says, the losers will be guys like Monster and those who make a major profit on wire. Reliability will definitely improve in terms of connectors not falling out...RJ45's have a built in locking mechanism, unlike HDMI. Also, no bulky HDMI head to deal with on increasing slimmer display devices (think having ultra thin LED TV's and having to hide them behind). Big thumbs up!
Craig at 5:11pm 8th July 2010 I have been using HDMI over ethernet for my home distribution of all home theatre for quite some time now and it works great. I would imagine this would be something similar.
Sun Microsystems at 9:44am 5th July 2010 I was using HDMI enabled system from last couple of years, again i have to upgrade it..it sounds good.
Paul L'Orange at 12:48pm 4th July 2010 Uh... Since I can get HD on my laptop through the Internet isn't this de facto?
1. ioman at 4:11pm 4th July 2010 Not if you want to connect your laptop to a home theater receiver etc. That's what this cable standard would let you do.
gfresh at 12:31am 4th July 2010 Why don't they act smart and call it Ethernet so the dumbasses at Monster Cable won't try to scam fools out of spending 5x more on a product that is already typically priced 30x more than it costs?
adam at 12:08am 4th July 2010 100W over ethernet? Last I checked you need shielding (or walls) for that kind of power, otherwise it's just too much of an electrocution hazard. Maybe there's built-in GFCI?
1. Marc at 3:14am 4th July 2010 Don't just look at Watts, they're only one part of the equation.
Chaz at 10:51pm 3rd July 2010 Could you please find out about their plans for DRM, this was one of the major reasons for HDMI and its inclusion of HDCP in the first place. Obviously these cables aren't going to have any protection on a hardware level, will studios even allow content to be displayed over them?
1. Aaron at 3:02am 4th July 2010 Obviously? Nothing about using an ethernet cable for non-standard signaling has anything to do with the regular use in networking. The DRM protection over this new spec could be stronger than ever. No cable has protection on a hardware level.
2. ori at 9:21pm 5th July 2010 HDCP is transferred, and the content remains protected. You should look at HDBaseT as an extention of HDMI - only for long distance and better SNR. All this in conjunction with PoE, Controls, USB and Ethernet.
Guest9922 at 5:51pm 3rd July 2010 Perhaps now I can justify the $500 Denon ethernet cables to my wife. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9967991-1.htm...
Jo Minor at 1:27pm 3rd July 2010 Why do they have to go mess with a good thing. www.anon-surfing.at.tc
Jo Woods at 1:22pm 3rd July 2010 Oh wow, what do they want to go and mess with a good thing for?? www.anon-surfing.at.tc
tiggymow at 1:22pm 3rd July 2010 Wow
tiggymow at 1:22pm 3rd July 2010 Oh wow, what do they want to go and mess with a good thing for?? Lou www.anon-surfing.at.tc
Anon at 10:27am 3rd July 2010 Am I the only one concerned by the fact that this will make it easier for Big Brother to watch you watching TV? Hmmmm......sounds like a conspiracy! LOL! I like it!
1. Anon at 12:51am 4th July 2010 How do you get that from this article?
fred at 9:12am 3rd July 2010 Hooray for logic winning the day - albeit late. Differential pairs and packet based distribution are the ultimate in digital-electrical transmission. We can see evidence of this logic finally winning the day in many things over the past few years. USB for example. Differential pairs and packets. Sata as well. PCI-Express. Up to 16 differential pairs combined. Packets are sent over any pair and reassembled at each end. None of this analogue or parallel crap. What this is likely to mean though, is that Power over Ethernet goes mainstream. Which could lead to a few dead devices when people accidentally connect the wrong thing to an otherwise normal looking ethernet cable. There's no easy way to prevent this, so what's likely to happen is the creation of a standard that senses whether the device at the other end would like power before applying it. This should be reasonably easy to do if some slightly more advanced electronics were added to the PoE switches. Similar to how a POTS circuit can identify attached CPE, it should be possible to create a unique signature on a PoE compatible device. One short 'ping' to detect the signature, and then the switch sends the required voltage - or doesn't and treats it as standard Ethernet. Eventually, I expect we will see an end to all the interface standards we have down to say 4-5 that work well.
1. cabdriverjim at 1:50pm 3rd July 2010 PoE isn't mainstream? I guess not for home use... Either way, PoE switches already sense whether a device needs power using the 802.3af power distribution standard. I use PoE rather extensively and I've never seen a device damaged from a switch mistakenly feeding a non-PoE device power. Usually the PoE pins are shorted on non-PoE devices so the switch will sense a short and not even bother trying to feed it.. Honestly, the biggest danger is PoE switches providing the wrong voltage to really old or proprietary PoE devices. I've seen more than a few old PoE devices that expect 12V while the standard specifies 48V in order to be able to provide as much power as possible over such a small wire gauge.
2. Guest at 3:20pm 3rd July 2010 guy, you know nothing about POE. read some wiki pages before you post next time.
3. Chris at 3:47pm 3rd July 2010 PoE is already mainstream albeit not by consumers. There are lots of commercial sites that already use this technology for running devices that don't have any other means of getting power. Dead devices is a non issue as this problem has already been solved by the 802.3af/802.3at standard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet). You can plug non-PoE devices into a PoE source with no ill affects.
ioman at 4:38pm 2nd July 2010 I am surprised to hear about this, but I guess we should have expected it. HDMI is pretty limiting and they have a new standard like every 2 years making current equipment obsolete.
1. mohi at 10:56am 5th July 2010 i think Display port is better, no body wants a 100m cable
  1. Deadite at 12:30am 6th July 2010 i want one my neighbor has tv that i want
  2. moim at 9:06am 6th July 2010 are you dumb or what ? Well I guess if you don't see the value I should not even ask the question....
  3. Chris J at 10:32pm 24th July 2010 Maybe not at home but in other places 100m cables are used very often!
  4. Tim at 7:00pm 1st August 2010 Seriously? A 5m ethernet cable probably costs 1/4 as much as a 6ft HDMI cable, especially if you make it yourself. Just because the max is 100m doesn't mean all cables are going to be 100m.... About time someone thought of using cat5/6 cables for everything :D