- There's no question. HDMI has been a great
convenience for the consumer. Aside from being a high
bandwidth connection that enables high resolution
video and lossless audio, it's a lot simpler to
use than the old days where you needed three
chords for an HD picture and then up to six more
for surround sound. But, that doesn't mean that
it doesn't have its issues. Some of which are a result
of its digital design. Unlike old school, analog AV connections, digital protocols, like HDMI
require a lot more processing, introducing complexity and more
potential points of failure. One such issue that's been
making headlines recently has to do with new HDMI 2.1 connections. You can learn more about HDMI 2.1 up here, but in a nutshell, it's an
incredibly fast revision that allows 8K 60 or
4k 120 Hertz pictures, dynamic HDR and even
variable refresh rate support for gamers to help cut down
on ugly screen tearing. Sounds pretty good, right? Well, it turns out that a
widespread HDMI 2.1 chip set is causing lots of headaches
for early adopters. You see, although tons of
companies make HDMI components, many of them source the
actual chip sets that run them from the same places. In this case, AV receivers
from Denon, Yamaha, and Marantz have all been
using a faulty HDMI 2.1 chip from Panasonic. The problem is that when a
device is set to 4k 120 Hertz mode and connected to an HDMI 2.1 port on one of these receivers,
the video signal won't be passed through to your display and no sound will come out of the speakers connected to the receiver. So congratulations, your
festival of high resolution video and immersive sound just amounted
to a whole lot of nothing. This has been especially
disappointing for folks who bought an Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5 or Nvidia RTX 3000 Series graphics card as all of these devices
boasted 4k 120 Hertz support as big selling points. The only workarounds right now then are either to connect your gadget directly to your display and use
HDMI audio return channel to send the audio signal
back to your receiver, or just settle for 4k 60
mode until a patch is issued. That is assuming that the
problem can even be fixed through software. Although the companies involved
are working on a solution, it appears that they
don't even know exactly what the problem is as of
the time we shot this video. But hold on a second, HDMI is a standard meaning all the manufacturers have to do is build a product according
to the spec, right? How has this broken? Well, one potential trouble spot is the way that HDMI handles
sending and receiving non-video information. This includes identifiers
that are exchanged between two connected
devices, so that one device knows what's connected
it and what it can do. It also includes plug and
play features and HDCP, which is HDMI's content
protection system designed to counter copyright infringement. All of these features are handled by part of the connection that is vulnerable to electrical interference
from other parts of the system making it a common source of problems. And of course, if you've ever seen a blank or snowy display over
HDMI, there's a good chance that's because of the HDCP
handshaking procedure, that's used to ensure
that connected devices are compliant with copy protection. It ain't perfect and often
necessitates a power cycle. Additionally, packing so
many features into one cable not only means that it
can be a little hard to switch between inputs, which
is part of what a receiver has to do, but it also means
that it is basically impossible to test every configuration
of different HDMI compatible hardware that's out there. It's similar to how
sometimes PC components just don't play nicely with each other, even though they're all
supposed to be compliant with certain standards. The nuances and idiosyncrasies
of each individual component can affect a standard
protocol in unforeseen ways, which is possibly part of what's going on with the current HDMI 2.1 fiasco. Now we're not saying
that any specific issue we just discussed is the actual culprit we're gonna have to wait possibly into next year to find out. In the meantime, hopefully
we can all settle for 4k 60 or 1080p 120, or go outside
and like play with a stick. It's basically that's just
as entertaining, right? Stick play. No? Well, if you go outside,
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their solar generator 1000 and 240. Thanks for watching guys,
check out our other videos. Leave a comment if you
have a video suggestion and don't forget to subscribe and follow. Or it's possible that, oh man, I wanted to come up with a threat that was something to do
with the topic of this video, but I've already forgotten what it was. What were talking about? - I don't know.
- Yeah, me either. I wasn't listening. HDMI that's right. Or all your HDMI
connections will fall off. (Linus laughs ironically)
Me watching the video and feeling better after my Hdmi cable broke