Just Add Power introduces Projector Connector HDMI-over-IP solution
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Sep 14th 2009 5:53PM
posted Sep 14th 2009 5:53PM
It looks like the gang over at Just Add Power have cooked up a device that will let you manage multiple HDMI sources without the limits of traditional HDMI switches (and no, it isn't an HDMI Balun). The Projector Connector consists of an encoder unit that converts your HDMI source signal to IP packets and a networked receiver that decodes the signal at the display end. Add a managed switch and you can keep adding sources and display devices to your heart's content (up to 200 displays). Controlled by a PC over HTTP, this is definitely a product that will see more use in large organizations than it will in home theater setups. But still, what HD aficionado wouldn't love to get his hands on something this powerful and (relatively) inexpensive? The encoder (VBS-HDMI-308A) sells for $299, while the decoder (VBS-HDMI0108A) will run $250 -- you'll have to buy your own switch. Supports 1080p, HDCP, and up to 5.1 digital audio. Hit the read link to pick one up for yourself.
[Via CE Pro]
[Via CE Pro]
First
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How unfortunate that I don't have enough gadgets to fill all those ports...
This is pretty reasonably priced, so If I ever do end up with 200 displays, I'll order one.
@Adapada: You don't have to use that switch. you can get just any switch and it would work. A 5-port switch would work as well.
1080x1920x3x60*8 = 2.99 Gbits/second. Video won't even fit on Gigabit ethernet.
To make it worse, their specs are:
'LAN Bandwidth: Maximum 50Mbps ~ 60Mbps for 1080p'
This is a non-starter. They're going to completely screw up your signal while compressing the heck out of it. This is just a ridiculous USB video adapter grafted to a Gigabit transceiver. And the results will be just as poor.
It should work fine, with a good compression codec. Data on blu-ray discs maxes out at 40Mbps or so, easily handled by ethernet.
They say it uses JPEG compression.
It'll also add delay to the signal, so that's why they don't show any video games attached.
Still, for certain applications, it's probably a nice solution. It's just not the ultimate solution for everything.
Where did the "3" come from? I'm assuming the "60" is for fps, and the 8 is for #of bits in a byte.
The 3 is 3 channels, R, G & B.
You can have your computer graphics with JPEG artifacts, I'm not interested in that.
This device isn't being fed the Blu-ray source material, it's being fed uncompressed video. And it has to compress it on the fly. It's not going to look as good as a Blu-ray, because Blu-ray isn't compressed in real-time. And Blu-ray is typically 24fps, computer source material is 60fps.
Huh, yeah you've a good point. And we're not even including the 5.1
This looks heavenly. No quote on the switch? Can any switch that supports VLAN/IGMP support the encoder/decoders? I saw no mention of that in the article.
Exactly! That switch ain't cheap and have you ever heard the cooling fan in one of those Ciscos? Sounds like a dentist drill! That thing belongs in a high db data center and not an HT setup...
Without testing, it's hard to say, but I would venture a guess that any gigabit switch regardless of supporting tagging or igmp snooping would suffice to support one or two streams of this at the rated 50-60mbit. You'd probably want a dedicated switch for it though. Switches that do not support these features will simply switch the vlan tagged packets in the global L2 domain and the multicast packets will likely be treated as broadcast. So basically, all the data will go to every port on the switch.
Regarding the noise thing, why do you want to put the actual switch in the HT rack anyway? You'd be using it for other things most likely anyway.
Why are everyone on engadget windows fanboys? I love my iPhone!
OOps is there a way to delete a post? that was a family member not me
another apple fanboy
OOps, is there a way to delete a post? that was a family member, not me!
I thought your pedo dad was barred from using the family PC.
Just keep posting 'til it disappears.
Good technical analysis of Just Add Power by a company that actually does HDMI over IP:
http://dr-db.com/blog/?p=4838
The above linked article is a bunch of trash talk by a competitor, imagine that.
I spent quite a bit of time talking to Ed about his product.
It's not perfect, but it is innovative and will be useful for multiple installations.
It's recompressing the HDMI stream, that's not a problem as ALL HD programming outside of a production booth is already compressed. The question is how well does the compression work, and we won't really know until we can test it. They had multiple sources running in the demo booth and cisco switch was running around 4-5% utilization.
It requires a managed VLAN switch to connect multiple transmitters and receivers together on the network. Each transmitter has it's own VLAN on the switch and the receivers are moved to the appropriate VLAN by a 3rd party control.
It complies to the HDMI license spec, so you are limited to the number of display keys that your source can handle.
Most Blu-ray players support at least 16, some cable boxes only support 1.
I think the most innovative part is how it handles EDID's and resolution. The transmitter always accepts the highest resolution provided by the source. The receiver itself includes a scalar, so if the source resolution is higher than the display, it's automatically down converted for display. The majority of HDMI matrix devices limit the source resolution to that of the lowest connected display, so Ed's approach has a real advantage in multi-display application if not all the panels have identical capabilities. The booth had multiple displays by different manufacturers and different resolutions and it worked.
It was one of the coolest things I saw at Expo and it has a lot of potential, looking forward to trying it out on the bench and seeing how well it performs.
Thanks for that perspective jberger, I am getting interested in this for my new HT setup.
I don't see any real benefit except doing extended runs, and even then, I'm not so sure. HDMI itself is good for up to about 15m, and you can extend that to 250m using dual-Cat 5 based extenders (not IP or ethernet, just uses the cable).
It's true that all HD programming outside the booth is compressed, but there are uncompressed sources (games, computer display, etc). There are also high-bitrate sources that are perceptually lossless (BluRay can be).
They're claiming to use ~50mbit/s, so CityZen's comment about using JPEG is nonsensical; that'd be 107KB per frame, which won't work for 1080p (I tried on a test image, there was barely any detail below the macroblock level). They must be using some sort of actual video compression. 50mbit/s is more than enough for high quality 1080p, even using MPEG-2.
That's my impression as well. But, he has a point. They say that it is an HDMI over IP solution, so if that's the case I should be able to run it over any layer 3 device that can handle the sustained throughput. But their example just has layer 2 switches, leading me to think they should be selling it as a HDMI over Ethernet device.
And I'll bet the reason they need to control the switch is because they're setting up a bunch of vlans and broadcast the feed to the entire vlan. Dynamically applying vlans to manage traffic isn't as nice an idea as it sounds. For one thing, there's going to be a lot of screwing around with configurations, and the first time you kill the network the IT guys will be ripping the stuff out, or you'll have to run a parallel network.
Much better to come up with a streaming solution that will really run over an IP network, be route-able, and really be able to send anywhere. It'll just take a GigE network.
Why not just build this in a projector?
or just into each of these devices? considering it would be useful?
It'd be great for a large shop/store/factory/whatever with status/advertising/statistic displays.
IT could have a video source for each type of display (slide shows for advertising, dynamic data displays for manufacturing rates and call center times) and send the video out to displays all over the place (a manufacturing display in each of 25 manufacturing areas, two call center displays in each of five cube farms). And you could have one dual-output Dish Network/cable feed in IT and feed one to all the break areas with a news channel and switch the other between whatever conference room needs it at the time. And if the president of the company want to give a pep talk, you can switch them all over to the same channel. The only distance limits are those for regular 100Mb Ethernet, 100m per leg, which most large facilities get past with fiber. They already use VLANS and VLAN-capable switches.
It would be a real time and cost saver. Even small 720p TVs/monitors have HDMI nowadays.
For those of you that missed the demonstration at CEDIA, you can now watch the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux3vQBhVSCQ
The system uses the new JPEG2000 for the CODEC, and we were demonstrating it with games on an Xbox and a PS3 -- there is no detectible lag (tested by some serious gamers).
Here is an overview of the dataflow:
A - At the Transmitter the HDMI source is converted to TCP/IP packets with a realtime JPEG2000 CODEC. We encode the video, 5.1 audio, and PCM audio. We do NOT support the lossless audio for the whole house distribution (i.e. keep the HT room connected directly to the Blu-Ray sources and live with 5.1 in the kitchen and bathroom).
B - Each encoded source is broadcast on the network by an imbedded HTTP server using multicast (i.e. the bandwidth requirements are the same whether you are sending to 2, 20, or 200 screens).
C - The Receivers use realtime JPEG2000 to convert the TCP/IP stream back to HDMI and the integrated scaler downscales/upscales the image to match the native resolution of the attached display as reported in the EDID.
Thank you for the information. Based on your description it sounds like each "transmitter" (device converting HDMI to IP) must be on its own VLAN segment as it is using multicast. Two active transmitters on one VLAN will not work right? But you can have multiple receivers on each VLAN segment to capture the multicast simultaneously.
Do the receivers support switching between VLAN segments through say, a web interface? (Set the web interface to be active on each VLAN segment... then set the receiver to receive video from one VLAN segment.) This would be ideal as end users could be given the power to "change the channel" so to speak.
Or will I have to go to the switch admin and switch the VLAN segment for the receiver there? That then becomes an admin headache for IT.
Seems like a neat and very inexpensive solution that given the right admin tools would be useful for businesses. (And maybe enthusiastic home users that are slightly insane...)
this is exactly what i need, but not at that price.
So if I forward multicast on my network then technically I could get it anywhere?
Zounder - you have pretty well figured out our HDMI over IP solution. Many Managed switches, if not all these days, have web interfaces you can browse to.to "change channels". Most of them also have RS232 interfaces that can send the command to change VLAN's. The Crestron driver example we commissioned is IP based. We have programmers working on Family Friendly interfaces for several platforms including Control4, Crestron, AMX, Pakedge, and Savant.