A new AV standard – HDBaseT – has been jointly developed by the surreptitiously formed industry group that comprises: LG Electronics, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Samsung Electronics, and Valens Semiconductor.
Set to replace HDMI, HDBaseT uses a regular Ethernet cable, called Cat 5e/6 network cable, which with the new technology will be able to provide HD & 3D video signals apart from data on the Ethernet connection, which still has a remarkable 100Mbit bandwidth.
A major advantage of the HDBaseT sort of cable over previous industry standards is the length of wire through which it can function, more than four times the previous best (DiiVA), at 328 feet. This advantage is made even more extraordinary by the fact that HDBaseT cables will support 8 multi hops, effectively multiplying it to up to 2624 feet. The biggest advantage however, will be much lowered cost of the HD-capable cables – the easy affordability of normal Ethernet cables.
In case you are wondering, this will also be ideal for Google TV type internet connected services. You might also have wondered what solutions mobile devices will get, after considering the fact that many new smartphones/tablets support mini-HDMI output. The odds are, some new sort of mini-USB interfaces will be developed to work with it. Check out the comparison chart below.
