Wednesday, January 14, 2009

HDMI - a useful feature it lacks

When you connect a device to your computer through USB, you may have noticed how the computer “recognizes” the USB device and displays the name of the device in the directory. USB standard must have a provision which allows for easy identification of devices connected to the computer through USB. 

Let’s move over to HDMI. A High Definition television (Plasma or LCD) contains usually a few of those (1-4 ports). Now, usually multiple HDMI ports are in use simultaneously e.g.,

HDMI port 1    connected to   Cable box

HDMI port 2    connected to   DVD/Blue-Ray disc player

HDMI port 3    connected to   Game console (Playstation/X-Box)

....

The trouble comes when you have to switch the input to the TV from one HDMI port to another. Since HDMI standard very likely does not have provision of device identification, my TV just displays “HDMI port 1, HDMI port 2,....” leaving me to guess which port is connected to which device.

I wish HDMI had device identification built-in in which case the TV could have displayed “HDMI-1: Cable,  HDMI-2: DVD,...” or something like that making it really convenient to change the inputs.

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