I sort of belong to the school that says no modern digital interface
will become very popular with consumers until it is conveniently hacked
and you can connect to it without monopolistic proprietary ware. But at
that point it is also no longer trusted by the IP vendors and it will be
pretty much guaranteed the next generation copy protection standard will
not allow interoperability.
The net result is that complex new interfaces have to be purposely
crippled for legacy compatibility.
- Tom
John Golitsis wrote:
Having been in A/V retail for a number of years and having done countless A/V system installs, I can tell you that something like HANA is very dearly needed. Unfortunately, HANA will likely go the way of it's predecessor HAVi (www.havi.org) and never make any meaningful impact on the market. Why HAVi failed so miserably is something I'd love to know.
Wow, I had completely forgotten about HAVi. That's another example.
People often say, "I want the set with DVI (or whatever) interface to make this purchase more future-proof." Retailers often spread this bit of wisdom too (not casting stones at you, John; just stating a fact). The simple truth is, in order to be future proof, you need the analog interfaces. The more fancy the interface becomes, the more limiting it will ultimately be. I think that's a general fact of life.
This certainly happened with LANs. The first one, Ethernet, was supposedly superseded by many others. But since Ethernet was and is the simplest, it was the one that was easiest to upgrade, time and time again. As speeds went up, as networks grew in size, the various token-passing or demand-priority schemes either became irrelevant or they impeded progress. Ethernet instead went to full duplex and switched mesh topology, and off it went into the future. And all the older Ethernet links are still compatible.
This same thing happened with the DIN standards for stereos, back in the 1960s and 1970s. They were very convenient, if you wanted to just wire up your component stereo. One cable to connect the tape deck. One cable to connect the turntable. One standard connector for speakers. No wires to strip, no fussy binding posts to deal with. It took seconds to set up a component stereo system.
But the problem is, if you deviate from the prescribed formula, then it becomes far more cumbersome to use than the more basic US stereo standards. Just for example, if you want to use really fat speaker cables, those DIN connectors became worthless. Or for multichannel sound, those convenient single audio cables became obsolete. Or if, heaven forbid, you wanted to fabricate your own cable for whatever special installation, what a hassle. Ever tried to do a clean job with the multipin DIN audio connectors?
Same happened to the MCA bus introduced by IBM PS/2s. It was supposed to be a common bus for peripherals and memory. Pretty soon, memory buses had to be far faster than anything MCA could offer, and we were back to the separate memory buses.
The fancier standards are, the more limiting they become.
HANA seems to have all the same vulnerabilities, much like HDMI and much like MCA. They are probably great as long as they are used in the original context for which they were designed. As soon as you migrate beyond that original formula, you're back to using individual cables or individual protocols for the new stuff, and the supposedly common digital standard is relegated to legacy boxes. The simple and direct analog interfaces, for video and audio, are what you need when push comes to shove.
Bert
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