HDMI Case Studies
Anytime/Anywhere Digital Content During the Convergence Revolution
By Bryan Gonzalez
The Entertainment Technology Center's Anytime/Anywhere Content Lab enables the testing of next generation consumer-level digital equipment for entertainment. The lab's media exploration center is at the forefront of this mission. In this one-of-a-kind facility, ETC not only gauges consumers' response to these cutting edge technologies, but also is in the process of testing how consumers will connect digital content to the advanced televisions that are just now coming on the market. The experience of the lab's matrix of high-definition products yields insight into how residential and commercial consumers of the equipment will approach the convergence of audio and video from disc- and Internet-based sources.
The Job
The Anytime/Anywhere Content Lab (AACL) is part of a non-profit organization known as the Entertainment Technology Center -an industry-funded organization affiliated with USC's School for Cinematic Arts -- that is dedicated to understanding how consumers prefer to use multi-media content and gauge its ease of use. As its name implies, the lab tests a variety of equipment in the context of consumer use. The equipment tested includes both source devices and display devices (televisions, portable devices etc.), which are necessary to deliver audio and video wherever and whenever a consumer would normally want to view or hear this content.
With a focus on bringing the top entertainment, technology and consumer electronic companies to evaluate what consumers really want and how they want it, the AACL is a forum to test products and improve the consumer experience. The AACL sets out to explore the future of digital distribution of content. Consumers offer invaluable insight that the industry can evaluate and use to develop the best possible solutions. ETC uses high-end experiences to explore questions like, “Do consumers care about how music and video arrive at in their homes?” “Do they desire to enjoy their favorite content conveniently while sacrificing fidelity, or is fidelity of the original content king?” Creating a range of experiences, from the high-end on down is paramount to answering these types of questions.
With that in mind, ETC set out to enable a matrix of source and display devices in the AACL. The concept was to encourage the pairing of any source of video with any number of available displays. Besides demonstrating the power of this flexibility in content distribution, the AACL would also be able to provide qualitative information on consumer preferences for the next generation content and equipment. With the Blu-ray established over HD-DVD, the next question to explore is whether consumers continue to rent and purchase physical media (e.g. Standard Def and Blu-ray discs), or will they migrate quickly to digital media? Physical media is required today due to the slowness of downloading full-length films in high definition over the average Internet link. The alternative question is whether new high-bandwidth Internet connections to the home enable consumers to forgo having a physical inventory of content in favor of viewing HD content on-demand or as part of a virtual storage system of downloaded content within the home.
The devices that enable either of these options are beginning to appear on store shelves and at service providers. One task of the AACL is to present the viewer with several of these options to understand which one will be preferred in the coming years. The reason for the Lab's co-location at the University of Southern California, and its place within the organizational umbrella of USC's School of Cinematic Arts, is to tap a vast resource of young viewers and listeners that have already been reared on a variety of media and content distribution methods.
An important technical goal, therefore, of the AACL is to remove as many variables as possible, such as the tendencies toward a certain display, when gauging consumer preferences to different sources. This can be achieved by distributing the same source to many displays or by switching sources between displays.
To achieve this flexibility, we established a matrix of displays and sources so that we not only could switch between displays easily but that would also switch seamlessly between sources. The expected result was that any source could be displayed on any of the televisions, either simultaneously or one after another in rapid succession.
The Problem
While this is not the normal way consumers view content, the typical consumer might want this level of flexibility if it could be set up without much inconvenience. Since we are considering households of the future, we believe that a burgeoning number of devices will be the norm. We are already seeing this phenomenon begin to ramp up. Our lab currently uses a plethora of available source devices, such as:
- AppleTV
- Sony Blu-Ray player
- TivoHD DVR
- Xbox360
- PS3
- Wii
- Sony Vaio desktop computer, and
- Many portable devices, including the Nokia N810, the LG Voyager Mobile Phone, several models of Microsoft Zune(s) and Apple iPods, iPhones, a PSP gaming device, Archos video players, among others.
We have found it preferable to keep as many video sources as possible on one transmission technology: the HDMI standard. Our choice for standardizing around HDMI connectivity is due to the following:
1) The sheer number of HDMI devices currently on the market, and
2) HDMI's all-digital signal transmission
HDMI connectivity enables the Lab to take the choice between analog and digital out of the equation when gauging consumer preferences of video sources. Because the shift from analog and to digital is already occurring, consumers have already begun to insist on a digital connection to achieve the best picture quality. We also find HDMI's one-cable simplicity to be extremely important for our consumer focus and the elegance of our Lab's cabling system.
Since HDMI was determined to be the connection choice of the foreseeable future, and because 1080p would be the large-screen resolution choice for some time, we decided to pair HDMI sources to their most natural counterparts - 1080p televisions. We limited our choice of displays to flat panels between 47 and 50 inches with resolutions of 1080p. While there will still be 480p and 720p televisions, especially at smaller screen sizes, falling prices between 720p and 1080p as well as consumer desire are beginning to insist on the latest in gear, will inevitably decrease demand for these types of TVs.
The issue with HDMI connectivity for this installation was with longer distance and the lack of matrix routing products.
The HDMI cable run issue was not an academic one. It is our experience that typical consumers 1) require a much longer cable run than they anticipate, and 2) often find that the lengths required will be longer than the room measurements may lead them to believe. Thus, consumers often discover that their long-length cable is simply not long enough to reach their equipment rack. Moreover, after swapping the original cable for a longer one, they may find that signals needs to be boosted.
In this case, distance became an issue when using HDMI cables of approximately 50 feet and longer. The issue manifested itself as small specks of noise, known as sparkles.
The other issue in implementing the AACL involved the dearth of HDMI matrix routers and experiences/feedback. As the schematic included above shows, our goal of providing a broad array of source and displays required that eight or more source devices be displayed on any number of eight or more different televisions. As we mentioned, the ultimate in flexibility was to allow any source to be displayed on any of the televisions simultaneously, but we also wanted to be able to swap a source for displayed on any of the televisions at the touch of a button.
The Solution
Before we began to explore the idea of creating a matrix of source and display devices, we tested all of our equipment at the lengths that corresponded to the runs that would be required to install the equipment in their locations in the lab.
As the picture of the prototypical lab here shows, our initial design was more like a plug-and-play setup than a professional installation. This setup allowed us to connect the equipment and make everything work, but the lab was anything but visually appealing and comfortable for consumers to look at and interact with. One unappealing aspect was the over-abundance of cables. The crisscross of wires was major reason for our choosing and staying with HDMI as the connector of choice for the foreseeable future.
To make the lab as functional as possible with an ever-changing array of equipment, we worked with a cutting-edge architect for walls and shelves that would hide all wires extending from each device. Though the wiring would be hidden, it would also require easy access to the devices and cables from removable panels. The result was a structure/design that was incredibly clean and simple, but easy for us to modify at any time.
The physical adjustment of cables and devices kept the installation as flexible as possible. This flexibility was important because of the goal and nature of the lab - modularity. We needed to be able to swap equipment in and out quickly and often. The lab constantly receives new devices to add to the mix of equipment. Recently, the lab added a movies-over-IP set-top box, which downloads content from the Internet and stores it on its own internal hard drive. Devices such as these are continually becoming available as the race among manufacturers to become the gold standard of multimedia convergence begins to heat up.
While the modular design eliminated the wiring rat-nests, it also necessitated much longer cable runs. What could originally be connected in 15 feet now took 50 feet. Where the distribution equipment did not boost the signal, we used the equipment from one of AACL's affiliate sponsors. Gefen was able to provide signal boosters that essentially eliminated signal attenuation that resulted in the sparkle artifact.
The initial goal for the Lab was one-button swapping of any source to any screen or any number of screens. To accomplish this, we based our solution on Gefen's current 4 x 4 Matrix router.
Four Gefen source devices were connected to four displays, with the ability to choose any number of the sources for presentation on the connected televisions. Switching times between sources was just between two and four seconds, and the Matrix routers acted as boosters for signals that had to travel more than approximately 30 feet. The routers generally obviated the need for boosters for signals traveling through the routers.
However, the switching times became an issue when we “daisy-chained” several of the matrix routers together to create a matrix of more than four sources and displays. Our chain of matrices, shown in our schematic diagram, enabled the system to display one source on up to ten displays at a time. A device could be shown on three of one Matrix's outputs directly to their corresponding televisions. The fourth output would be used to pipe the video the next router down the chain.
Despite the success of distributing the video signals to four or more televisions, the promise of a fully functional matrix of eight sources and displays was somewhat diminished when the signal was required to be piped onto the downstream router. When the signal travelled to the next router, we lost the ability to choose the signal of another source on the first router to travel down the same path simultaneously.
However, with modularity built into the AACL, we choose our demonstration carefully to pre-determine which sources will need to be switched onto which devices. Where necessary, we rearrange the physical cabling structure so as to optimize our ability to pick which devices are used and in which sequence. We also put as many of the devices that will be swapped on the same matrix. Keeping swapping between routers to a minimum ensures that when a device re-synchronizes (which includes the entire HDCP handshake) between routers, it remains 2-4 second switch time.
Despite the slight inconvenience of having to put forethought into a demonstration, we still appreciate HDMI due to its ability to transmit at a native 1080p signal digitally and to keep the number of cables to a minimum.
For maximum flexibility, we are looking forward to widespread availability of 8x8 HDMI matrix routers from a variety of manufacturers. As HDMI routing and distribution becomes more flexible, we expect many consumers will become increasingly interested in these back-end solutions, especially if their devices become nearly plug-and-play.
The Takeaway
The major lesson of the AACL's experience with our converging sources and televisions is that the landscape is in constant flux. While the fluidity of this situation can be a source of some frustration today, given how far digital convergence has come in the last year, it should also serve as a source of optimism concerning the future of these solutions for the consumer and the professional alike.
The reality is that today, one can put together a solution, with a modicum of reconfiguring, enables us to demonstrate the latest in hardware for advanced digital video. We expect that the industry will continue to move toward more ease and rapidity of use when more than one source is being connected to a multitude of displays.
Given the progress the industry has made thus far, it is only a matter of time before digital transmission, and the HDMI standard in particular, becomes as ubiquitous as the analog standards to which consumers have grown accustomed today. We will continue to be on the forefront of the testing of the new wave of digital equipment, and we look forward to the ability of consumers in every segment of the AV market to take advantage of anytime/anywhere digital content.
Bryan Gonzalez is the Technical Project Specialist at the Entertainment Technology Center @ USC. Bryan is charged with the technical aspects of the digital-convergence test bed known as the Anytime/Anywhere Content Lab. Bryan's experience in retail merchandising has contributed to his knowledge of the state-of-the-art of digital video convergence as well as the know-how necessary to gauge the consumer market of next generation devices contributing to these trends. Bryan can be reached at 213-743-1651 or by email at bgonzalez@etcenter.org.
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do
not necessarily represent the views and opinions of HDMI Licensing, LLC,
the HDMI Founders or any of their respective parent organizations or
affiliates.