[geeks] Whee! Lightning strikes, AGAIN!

[Joshua Boyd]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 06:08:34PM -0400, nate at portents.com wrote:
> >> We do use USB 2.0 and Firewire to connect things like HD-DVD and Blu-Ray
> >> drives to devices that decode and convert their bitstreams.
> >>
> >> A solution you might even be familiar with is the HD-DVD drive for the
> >> XBox 360, which hooks up via USB 2.0.
> >
> > Yes, but neither are displays, and adding USB and/or FW inputs to a
> > display
> > only makes things more complicated, not less, since it can't carry the
> > bandwidth needed for many display tasks.
> 
> Absolutely.
> 
> However, I'm saying I'd like to buy integrated receivers which have more
> capabilities and displays which have less.

Sure, that would be fine.  I don't know why recievers (in the home
theater sense of do everything boxes) don't already support USB (FW
would be preferable, but USB is more likely at this point), Gig-E, and
801.11n. 
 
> Sure, and those standards should be handled by a display card which comes
> with the receiver and can be upgraded.  People should *not* have to get
> rid of an HDMI 1.2 receiver just because they want an HDMI 1.3 receiver.
 
> Also, nobody should end up paying for a Faroudja scaler in their DVD
> player, a Faroudja scaler in their receiver, and a Faroudja scaler in
> their TV.  That's the type of idiocy I'm saying should never happen
> (though I'm sure Meridian loves it!)

If someone doesn't want Faroudja scalers everywhere, then buy a DVD
player with no scaler but HDCP output, buy a component to HDMI converter
for your Wii, and use a stupid HDMI switcher to connect everything else
to the TV with Faroudja scaler.

> > Also, a single standard will be required to be affordable and be able to
> > drive cable lengths of 1 kilometer, with a simple durable, optionally
> > locking connector.
> 
> Let that be an optional card in my fictional open receiver standard, and
> don't make everyone subsidize it with their purchases of new receivers
> with HDMI 2.0 or DisplayPort 2.0 or whatever.
> 
> Ha.

You have some good points, but it sounds terribly complicated.

If there is an open standard for optional cards in open recievers, what
protocol will that card speak and how much bandwidth will it have?  If
it is a very high bandwidth standard, then that drives up the cost per
card.  If it is a low bandwidth standard, you've capped your quality, or
you need more than one standard.

On the output side of the reciever, I think a standard for output could
hamper future display technologies.  For instance, it could rule out
scalers that do sub-pixel scaling (like sub-pixel anti-aliasing
presumably), or use new native color spaces (perhaps e-ink with a fast
enough refresh rate to make CMYK or 6 color displays feasible).  I
suppose you could say that you would buy a CMYK card for the reciever
though...  That would make a CMYK display a hard sell then since buyers
would have to worry about immediately updating rheir reciever as well,
instead of using it via a built in converter until they were ready to
upgrade the reciever as well.

Crap, now I want a big screen CMYK e-Ink TV.