Is it me, or does HDMI suck? - TechRadar UK

When HDMI connections were first introduced, they were loudly proclaimed to be the answer to all our next-gen connectivity prayers.

With HDMI, we were told, you finally get an all-digital connection capable of delivering high definition digital pictures and sound without any loss of quality.

Here, they claimed, is a connection system ‘clever’ enough to know what signal formats it’s carrying, and pass on that information automatically to a screen.

Here’s a connection system able to carry remote control instructions from one device so you can control two devices via one remote.

Here’s a connection system, in short, that will be all you’ll ever need to get the best from the brave new digital and HD world...

Why HDMI isn’t a next-gen Scart

My experience, as someone who has to fanny about with cables and sockets on a daily basis, is that far from being the Holy Grail of connectivity, HDMI connections are a royal pain in the backside.

For starters, HDMI has got to be one of the most poorly designed connections there’s ever been. Seriously, did it never occur to the format's designers that making the main plug only a millimetre or so thick (and only a centimetre or so deep) might cause a few problems with HDMI cables actually staying put in their sockets?

Take, for instance, Sony’s VPL-VW200 projector that I’d been looking at on behalf of Home Cinema Choice magazine.

Even though this is a seriously high-spec projector, I’ve still found myself having to spend ages and ages repeatedly trying to get my heavy-duty HDMI cable to sit properly in the Sony’s flabby HDMI sockets.

One minute the picture will appear perfectly, the next it will unceremoniously disappear without me touching a thing. In fact, unless I actually wrap the HDMI cable over the top of the projector and fasten it in place with a bit of sellotape(!),I can’t get the projector and the HDMI cable to talk to each other at all. Madness.

HDMI connectivity problems

Not that this phenomenon is restricted to the Sony projector. I’ve lost count now of how many times my ‘Sunday Best’ HDMI cable, an excellent-quality 5m XHT458-500 from IXOS, has repeatedly just dropped or popped out of the socket of a TV or projector.

I’ve also ‘broken’ two high quality (read expensive) HDMI cables. I’ve done this just by leaving them hanging down out the back of, say, an upscaling DVD player, until the sheer weight of the cable pulling on the pathetically flimsy plug has caused the connection point to crack or even rip away completely from the rest of the cable.

Worst of all, I’ve actually wrecked a Denon DVD player, as the constant strain of trying to hold onto the pathetic little ‘business end’ of my HDMI cable has eventually jiggered the HD socket on the DVD player.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, there’s also the fact that some long HDMI cables you can buy don’t seem capable of carrying 1080p signals over a long run from, say, a Blu-ray player to a projector.

Then there are the problems with HDMI ‘handshaking’. Many of you may remember in the early days of HDMI that the Sky HD box’s HDMI output had a nasty habit of ‘frying’ Pioneer plasma TVs. (if not, check out the comments from 2006).

And I lost count of the times I had to switch HDMI-connected sources off and on again to get particular TVs to recognise their presence.