Denon HDMI Diagnostics mode...

[M Code]

The percentage of users who use the Hex code to customize their remotes is far lower than you think- in fact, unless someone is just a geek or into computing, it's unlikely that they know what Hex is, never mind knowing what it's used for, how to convert to binary or octal. In fact, if you were to ask 100 people if they use any of the advanced features of their AVR, most would start their answer with "What's an AVR?". In the past, a lot of people who owned a stereo would bring their receiver in for service, thinking that the amplifier was toast but the most common reason it stopped making sound was due to the Tape Monitor switch being engaged. What does that tell you? Even now, if buttons can be pressed, they will be and that includes the ones that kill the sound. I have to talk people through that all the time, even if they have a universal remote.

WRT "certified cables", the problem with this is the fact that some manufacturers send their shortest cable, receive a 'Pass' grade and then their marketing department advertises their whole line as 'Certified'. If you want to know what works, ask a Custom AV installer- preferably one who doesn't work for a store that sells a lot of one brand that is expensive, uses batteries or sues people. The two companies I'm referring to have cost a lot of people far too much money for BS reasons.

I usually use Vanco HDMI cables. Why? Because they work, the price is reasonable, the short ones (10' and less) are very flexible and because they have small clips on the shell, they stay in place better than just about any others. They also come with lifetime warranty and unless they have physical damage, they'll cover it of it ever fails to transmit the signal. That's in contrast with Key Digital, who won't cover the cable I used in an installation that's three hours from where I normally work, had a three year warranty (which is supposed to begin as soon as I install & sell it) but had been in stock at a local branch of a national distributor for over a year after that part had been discontinued, instead of being blown out as a sale item. The guy in tech support told me that since it has four shielded wires, I could use an RJ45 end to terminate it and then purchase one of their HDMI extenders, as I would if I were using Cat5e/Cat6 cable. Now THAT's some good tech support! The fact that the center wire is stranded must have been forgotten.

I just googled 'HDMI problems'- came up with 26 Million results.

HDMI should never have been allowed to remain for as long as it has, IMO. It has been problematic for 16 years (it was designed in 2002) and that has only worsened because the demands on the system have been increased. These were never intended to be longer than 6 feet and they were supposed to be left alone after being connected. The plug is a terrible design, they should have been round, used a retaining screw/clip and they shouldn't be as stiff.

My point, and my personal experiences caused me to come to it as soon as I saw the problems, is that HDMI should have been abandoned before it ever went to market.

This subject about HDMI needs some clarification..

1. Since the cinema & music content are digitally encoded/mastered the studios required some type of copy protection, or else it was easily bootlegged as the previous, analog cinema & music world demonstrated
2. Keep in mind unlike analog recording, a digital recording will be an exact copy of the original so there is no quality degradation
3. The crucial part of HDMI is the HDCP part which was written by Intel, within an AVR the HDMI circuit needs a repeater IC when the HDMI signal is sent back(HDMI in from the source and then outputted to the display) out needs to have the same timing/protocol as the HDMI input stream
4. The reason HDMI sources such as PS4, Direct TV works well when plugged directly in to an HD display, is that there is no requirement to export out the encoded digital audio/video stream
5. The majority of audio and video brands do not undergo the external HDMI/HDCP certification process due to high $ expense and extended, schedule delivery time, instead they choose to self-certify unfortunately they do a poor job here
6. The mass market pressed the brands for the very, lowest pricing, so the costly HDMI certification process was bypassed

Conclusions
In our AV install business we sell/install and stay with trusted brands that do complete HDMI certification so that we try to avoid these significant HDMI issues. But I will say now the audio and video brands do a better job about HDMI compliance but still many, major brand audio and video products fail to meet the defined HDMI/HDCP electrical standards.

Just my $0.02...

 

[Verdinut]

Highfigh said:
HDMI should never have been allowed to remain for as long as it has, IMO. It has been problematic for 16 years (it was designed in 2002) and that has only worsened because the demands on the system have been increased. These were never intended to be longer than 6 feet and they were supposed to be left alone after being connected. The plug is a terrible design, they should have been round, used a retaining screw/clip and they shouldn't be as stiff.

My point, and my personal experiences caused me to come to it as soon as I saw the problems, is that HDMI should have been abandoned before it ever went to market.[/QUOTE]

I agree with you. The plug should have been similar to an XLR type with a locking feature.

I am surprised that the manufacturers and the people behind HDMI have not as yet thought about an eventual transition to a better more secure type of plug. The manufacturers are always ready to come up with new features on their products, but I understand that the actual problem resides mostly in the outrageous costs of getting the proper certification.
No sole manufacturer is interested in venturing into a new product such as a cable connection gadget, because of extensive expenses that would result from such decision and risks of being isolated from the rest of the industry. The decision would have to be the result of a common agreement among the majority of manufacturers and the HDMI people. The rest of the manufacturers would then have to follow as usual, if they want to survive.

 

[highfigh]

This subject about HDMI needs some clarification..

1. Since the cinema & music content are digitally encoded/mastered the studios required some type of copy protection, or else it was easily bootlegged as the previous, analog cinema & music world demonstrated
2. Keep in mind unlike analog recording, a digital recording will be an exact copy of the original so there is no quality degradation
3. The crucial part of HDMI is the HDCP part which was written by Intel, within an AVR the HDMI circuit needs a repeater IC when the HDMI signal is sent back(HDMI in from the source and then outputted to the display) out needs to have the same timing/protocol as the HDMI input stream
4. The reason HDMI sources such as PS4, Direct TV works well when plugged directly in to an HD display, is that there is no requirement to export out the encoded digital audio/video stream
5. The majority of audio and video brands do not undergo the external HDMI/HDCP certification process due to high $ expense and extended, schedule delivery time, instead they choose to self-certify unfortunately they do a poor job here
6. The mass market pressed the brands for the very, lowest pricing, so the costly HDMI certification process was bypassed

Conclusions
In our AV install business we sell/install and stay with trusted brands that do complete HDMI certification so that we try to avoid these significant HDMI issues. But I will say now the audio and video brands do a better job about HDMI compliance but still many, major brand audio and video products fail to meet the defined HDMI/HDCP electrical standards.

Just my $0.02...

The comments about Hex, Binary and Octal were in response to the previous poster's comment about remotes, not the signal carried on HDMI cables.

However, if someone is making a one to one copy of a DVD or BD, how many can they make if they're doing this at normal speed? That would result in a large number of copies, but only if a large number of people set up a large number of machines to do this. If the "powers that be' who decided that copy protection was necessary had thought about how copies are made, I'm not sure this method would have been implemented since it's a lot more efficient to burn the disc to a computer's hard drive and rip copies to a huge number of DVD/BD recording devices that can do it at high speed.

 

[highfigh]

Thanks for your very insightful answer, I really do appreciate it! A forum where people can have a discussion, not feeling attacked or attacking! Man, I can see myself spending more time here... there is hope for humanity!

I do hear you and yes, you are right, I am more than likely "over-estimating the knowledge and ability of the average consumer". I hangout with some very smart people (I'm not boasting) whom are very get it done yourself, figure it out and make it work. Regardless if it's programming or welding, we are hands on. So knowledge isn't something you treat lightly, you share, learn, grow.

As a side note, what would be nice to see is companies that after, X years make all the information on electronic open and available to everyone in hopes that it would extend the life of that product downstream. Ie. I used a BENQ projector up until this year, it's over 10 years old. It was 1080i but it look great and worked fine, now I'm letting it go in hopes that someone whom can't afford a 1080 projector use it for, I hope, another 10 years. The reason it has lived this long was someone posted internal tech info that allowed me to fix it when it broke last year.

Again thanks and I hope that this HDMI diagnostic manual helps someone else who likes to figure things out.

Who is John Galt!? (Google the phase if you don't know what it means... read the book or listen to the audio!)

The reason AVRs don't have a long life is due to the fact that they process the signal and at some point, not only do the processors become obsolete, the feature sets become more advanced and incompatible with the processors and other hardware. It's not stereo- multi-channel changes too fast to use something for a long time. Since that projector was made, we have had 3D, 2K and 4K, with 8K resolution looming on the horizon.

I know who John Galt is- that's why I made the comment.

 

[snakeeyes]

So basically when HDCP 2.2 is replaced such as for 8k, it won’t matter if we have HDMI 2.1 if the device won’t support the latest HDCP replacement. No reason to wait for that mess. HDMI2.0a is pretty stable actually (yes except ARC is a POS).

 

[Verdinut]

I just googled 'HDMI problems'- came up with 26 Million results.

HDMI should never have been allowed to remain for as long as it has, IMO. It has been problematic for 16 years (it was designed in 2002) and that has only worsened because the demands on the system have been increased. These were never intended to be longer than 6 feet and they were supposed to be left alone after being connected. The plug is a terrible design, they should have been round, used a retaining screw/clip and they shouldn't be as stiff.

My point, and my personal experiences caused me to come to it as soon as I saw the problems, is that HDMI should have been abandoned before it ever went to market.

Coming back to an eventual transition to a better more secure type of plug, why don't the manufacturers start by getting rid of those obsolete video component jacks? The space saved at the back of AVRs and pre-pros would then allow them to install appropriate replacement jacks, under a joint agreement with the HDMI people, which could eventually once and for all end the use of this stupid HDMI connection system.

 

[everettT]

Coming back to an eventual transition to a better more secure type of plug, why don't the manufacturers start by getting rid of those obsolete video component jacks. The space saved at the back of AVRs and pre-pros would then allow them to install appropriate replacement jacks, under a joint agreement with the HDMI people, which could eventually once and for all end the use of this stupid HDMI connection system.

You need a couple of those analog connections in the CI world fwiw. 4 legacy connections would work for me.

 

[Verdinut]

You need a couple of those analog connections in the CI world fwiw. 4 legacy connections would work for me.

I don't understand. Would you care to explain what you mean by CI world?

 

[everettT]

I don't understand. Would you care to explain what you mean by CI world?

Custom Installation. There are still cases where they are needed.

 

[Verdinut]

Custom Installation. There are still cases where they are needed.

I see but why shouldn't a custom installation be adaptable to a new type of connectors. Adapters would be available, no?

 

[everettT]

I see but why shouldn't a custom installation be adaptable to a new type of connectors. Adapters would be available, notno?

On some some small control display screens where no HD is required, typically over cat5 with a video ballum. Its getting less and less but still needed. It wasnt all that long ago that some AVRs wouldnt do OSD over hdmi.

 

[highfigh]

Coming back to an eventual transition to a better more secure type of plug, why don't the manufacturers start by getting rid of those obsolete video component jacks? The space saved at the back of AVRs and pre-pros would then allow them to install appropriate replacement jacks, under a joint agreement with the HDMI people, which could eventually once and for all end the use of this stupid HDMI connection system.

Because they ALWAYS work!

I have been saying that the video section should be a slide-in module that can be removed when defective or obsolete. That would be great for us, bad for them- they need to sell things. Media over IP or fiber is coming. Well, it's here, but still pricey and requires space that won't be handed over by the HDMI cartel until there's no choice.