I never thought I’d be blogging about a cable, but here I am doing it, and it’s a doozy. Honeywell has introduced what I’m coining as a Smart-Cable, a standard HDMI cable with error-correcting built-in. That is so cool.
The cable’s “brain” looks for corrupted HDCP and EDID data and fixes it on the fly, meaning your picture’s sharper and less-artiafacty, and your audio clearer. You’ll notice aspect ratios will be more accurate, as will colors, not to mention less clipping on your surround sound.
No pricing yet, but expect to pay a premium. If you’re up-rezing or don’t have a high-end home-theater system, it’s not for you. But if you’re a hardcore audio- or videophile, you’re probably already drooling on your keyboard. Look for them at your electronics store for Xmas this year.
I’ll look into this more when I get home from work…but i can’t help to be skeptical about it…i mean…it seems to be that high quality hardware would be more capable than a cable…if this does what you say it does… uh…interesting! ;P
Johnal, Yeah I’d have to agree. Sounds like BS
So are they saying that players are ouputing bad data? Not likely.
Sat boxes are outputing bad data? Not likely
Whats making the data bad? Is the cable correcting it own bad?
I not real familiar with this data protocol but usually to correct data you need to have some redundency to correct with. If the player could not correct an issue with the disk then that data is likely GONE. If the SAT receiver looses lock and can’t correct, then there is no way for the cable to fix that. If the cable introduces the errors then they just need to make a better cable
Sounds fishy
The correcting this cable does is only on the communication part of the interface – it leaves the audio and video alone.
The problems on this part of the interface (like incorrect loading) can be cured with a line driver that can easily fit in a cable. Without it, audio and video artifacts can be present.
The LEDs also provide important feedback information about whether the source device is outputting adequate voltage, successfully making that hot plug detection and verifiying proper use of HDCP and EDID.