The Challenges of Interfacing HDMI In the World of Professional Audio/Video

The High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), ubiquitous on everything from consumer televisions and Blu-ray and DVD players to set-top boxes, game consoles, and digital cameras and camcorders, has become just as commonplace in the world of professional video production and display equipment.

You’ll find this display interface on digital cameras, camcorders, and media players; videoconferencing equipment, projectors,and display monitors. HDMI distribution amplifiers and matrix switchers are widely available to support all of these connections, as are HDMI presentation switchers and signal format conversion products.

At first glance, using HDMI as a professional AV display interface would appear to be ill-advised, as its copy protection overlay was never designed with multi-point video and audio signal distribution in mind. Yet, these are different times: the world of consumer electronics drives most of the new product innovation and demand for the pro AV channel, so customers routinely expect to use HDMI-equipped products in commercial installations and applications.

HDMI can create major problems when switched among multiple displays, particularly if the displays have different native pixel resolutions. Several approaches have been engineered to overcome these issues while preserving the essential characteristics of HDMI – secure copy protection and automatic display clock detection and optimization – and allow it to be ported reliably to more than one monitor, TV or projector.