HDBaseT Alliance Builds Out Pro AV Projector Strategy at Infocomm

Panasonic showed at its booth new single-chip DLP projectors with HDBaseT connectivity -- the hybrid PT-RZ470 and PT-RZ370 series projectors, which Panasonic said are the first 1080p lamp-free projectors to incorporate HDBaseT. The Panasonic PT-RZ470 and PT-RZ370 series projectors use hybrid LED/laser diodes as the light source, which the company said reduces maintenance costs for lights and filters. Panasonic calls its HDBaseT connectivity solution Digital Link, based on unspecified engineering add-ons from Panasonic, said Scott Wellington, senior product marketing manager.

HDBaseT connectivity is appealing to AV integrators due to its Cat 5/Cat 6 infrastructure. Cat 5/6 is cheaper to install than long runs of HDMI, which suffers signal degradation in long runs, Wellington told us. Because additional wiring isn’t required with HDBaseT, labor costs are reduced as well, he said. Having multiple video sources going into one switcher, then running one line to a projector with HDBaseT -- and tossing in Panasonic’s lampless design -- results in a “a total cost-of-ownership story that the market has been waiting for,” Wellington said. The hybrid projectors will ship in Q3 or Q4, he said. Panasonic’s PT-VW431D LCD display, also with Digital Link, was demonstrated at the HDBaseT booth.

Projectiondesign showed an HDBaseT-enabled projector at its booth. HDBaseT was only one of five connectivity options offered through add-on modules that also included DisplayPort and HDMI 1.4., among others. Projectiondesign added HDBaseT connectivity in response to requests from customers, David Aleksandersen, academy manager, told us. The HDBaseT option is likely to be available in projectors for the home theater market, following the traditional product evolution cycle from commercial to home, he said. The company will make modifications for the consumer market in color space and add Imaging Science Foundation specifications for day and night modes, he said.

Valens Semiconductor is still the only supplier of HDBaseT chipsets, Micha Risling, Valens vice president-marketing and business development, told us. Although the HDBaseT Alliance markets the technology as 5Play for its ability to send five different signal types in one wire -- high-quality video, uncompressed audio, 100BaseT Ethernet, control signals and power -- power over HDBaseT is limited to 100 watts, far less power than projectors today consume. The Panasonic LCD projector with HDBaseT is rated at 365 watts, according to company literature. “Hopefully someday we'll be able to do power as well,” Risling said.

Risling said demand for HDBaseT on the commercial side has come from partners experiencing problems with HDMI cables. With functionality embedded into projectors, remote boxes are no longer needed to accommodate various types of connectors, he said. A Panasonic projector can connect directly to a switcher without going through a remote box, bypassing HDMI and “potential problems” in the process, he said.

Launching in the pro AV market was the alliance’s strategy early on for growing the HDBaseT market, Risling said, saying the CE market is “very, very tough.” He noted that most, if not all, TV makers are losing money in CE but can make more margin in the pro AV market. By going through the pro market, “eventually we're dealing with the same companies” that are in CE, he said, and the alliance expects a slow expansion to the consumer side. There will be a cost premium for HDBaseT at the beginning, he said. The pro AV market is growing, and more orders will translate to higher volume, lower cost manufacturing and a move “eventually to the consumer market,” he said.

Regarding the HDBaseT certification program, Risling said Crestron has certified its pro line and is in the process of putting the HDBaseT certification logo on its products. Other companies in the process of certifying products include Gefen, Kramer and Atlona. Now that projectors are coming to market, certification is more important, because until now companies weren’t using their HDBaseT products with those from other companies, he said. “What did you need certification for?” Projectors with HDBaseT connectivity “is a very important stage in the success of HDBaseT, he said.

The biggest challenge in developing a certification program, Risling said, was dealing with the multiplicity of infrared codes in the market. “We needed to define a specific infrared implementation” to make it work, he said. Manufacturers were surprisingly supportive and “were looking for someone” to systematize infrared codes, he maintained. If a company implements infrared codes its own way in products, they will still work through HDBaseT “as long as it’s a closed environment,” he said. As products connect with those from other manufacturers, proprietary features will be blocked when the product goes through certification, he said. He said the Consumer Electronics Control portion of HDMI should have enabled interoperability between devices, but too much of the spec was voluntary, leading to compatibility for only the most basic control functions. Ultimately, Panasonic’s VieraLink technology didn’t work with Samsung’s Anynet+, for example. By contrast, regarding HDBaseT’s work with infrared codes, “I was amazed with the cooperation we got from the industry,” he said.