Hi all, I've just cabled up my room with some good component and HDMI cable with a view to acquiring a home theatre projector when the house is complete.
I have been looking at the Infocus SP 4805, and it appears that with almost all the infocus projectors, they only have the DVI connection, but can be hooked up to my HDMI cable using an adaptor.
Does anyone know if a cable using an HDMI - DVI adaptor will be any worse than a direct HDMI - HDMI cable when you're just interested in the video signal? Would they result in the same quality or should I seriously consider forking out the major $$$ for a projector with HDMI?
Thanks,
Jack
Latrosicarius
Unregistered guest
Posted on
An HDMI is simply a DVI bundled with 8 or 9 digital audio channels in a different form factor, so if you prefer to use TOSLINK digital fiber optic cables or normal analog RCA cables for autio, then you can put an adapter from HDMI to DVD b/c they're the same thing.
But there's a catch: It is most likely that all future HDDVD / BlueRay / "High Definition" players / HDTV boxes will use HDMI outputs instead of DVI.
You're thinking "so what, I'll just use the adapter and be fine". Well WRONG! The damn MPAA strikes again! Generally, digital signals such as those in the HDMI / DVD cable can be interconverted without any fidelity problems (that is the nature of digital vs analog). The HDMI interface, however will detect that a switch has been made, and either reduce the video quality from 1080i to 480p, or just render a blank screen.
It's a huge pain in the butt, but it's all in the name of copyright protection (they are afraid of you recording their broadcasts / disks with a TIVO or DVR).
So, yes, you WILL have a very reduced quality if you use any other interface than the HDMI cable on a High Definition source that supports this HDCP "High Definition Copy Protection" method. Unfortunately it looks like 99% of all High def content providors will be abiding with the HDCP crap. It's an artificial reduction in quality, meaning you *could* find some company that doesn't care about HDCP and simply lets you convert the signal, but since no HD players exist yet, we will have to wait and see if any companies take up the stand against HDCP and let us do what we want.