CEDIA 2010

HDMI has an up-and-coming competitor in HDBaseT, as one of us will undoubtedly report later in the show. In the meantime, here's a harbinger of the future at the Tributaries booth, where Joe Perfito showed us his various HDMI extenders, all of which convert HDMI to something more suitable for a long cable run. The HX1C6-PRO converts to HDBaseT, extending range to 328 feet with either 8- or 12-bit color. For companies like Tributaries this is a bittersweet moment. Once they sold cables for three-connection component video and various digital and analog audio formats. Then all that got replaced by do-it-all HDMI. Now HDMI, which can still fetch a fair price for cables, may be about to give way to HDBaseT, which uses commodity-priced Cat5e or Cat6 cable. Fortunately Tributaries also has a line of surge suppressors. Onward into the future.