A US manufacturer has been issued a patent for a CEC processor that makes the technology available to custom installers. Paul Skelton reports.

North American provider of high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) processing for automation systems HydraConnect, distributed in Australia by Avation and in New Zealand by Control4 NZ, has been issued a patent for a Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) processor that makes the technology integrator-friendly.

The patented processor “causes an HDMI switch to appear as an HDMI source to HDMI sink devices and as an HDMI sink to HDMI source devices for the purposes of assigning physical addresses. While CEC is designed to handle AV systems having only one sink (display), the novel HDMI switch provides for CEC-controlled AV systems with multiple displays, e.g., in different rooms.”

CEC was created as an add-on to the HDMI Standard, HydraConnect co-founder David Schanin explains.

“The designers of HDMI implemented a control protocol within the Standard, with the intention of automating the traditional single TV installation – i.e. a TV, a Blu-ray player, pay TV and maybe an AV receiver.

“The intent behind CEC was to have a technology whereby those devices would be able to talk to each other – the TV would know when the Blu-ray player was turned on and the AV receiver would know when the Blu-ray player was switched on, and to which input it was connected.

“This would allow end users to have one remote to control everything; it could turn on the Blu-ray player, for example, and then everything else would turn on and switch to the right interconnect.”

But, as most integrators can attest, there were some problems.

“The first issue is that even though CEC is a Standard, like HDMI, all of the manufacturers went off in their own direction and made their own implementation of CEC, which led to incompatibility between various devices.

“This, of course, isn’t all accidental. The idea is that if you buy a ‘Brand X’ TV then you’ll have to buy a ‘Brand X’ Blu-ray player.

“The second problem arises in typical custom installation projects. If have more than one TV, which CEC isn’t designed to support, the devices will talk to each other, which you can’t have in a CI project.

“In a custom installation the control system needs to be in charge and if devices talk to each other all hell will break loose and nothing will work.”

As a result, most installers will turn CEC off before they do anything else.

But, David says, this has now changed.

“HydraConnect has developed a methodology for actually using CEC, reliably, in a custom installation, which has some real benefits,” he says.

“This is because of two key features. First, we have isolated all of the CEC buses. For example, in our 8×8 HDMI switch, all 16 buses are isolated so nothing in the system can talk to each other.

“Second, the switch is a very intelligent device that self-configures when commissioned.

“As part of the commissioning process, the switch queries all of the HDMI devices in the system and is able to determine what’s connected, the manufacturer and the level of CEC support it provides. As a result, the control system now no longer has the burden of trying to determine how to control things – it just has to determine what it wants to control.”

Most recently, the patented CEC processor appeared in HydraConnect’s HSS-3 switching system.

The HSS-3 offers 8X8 HDMI switching with eight HDBaseT outputs, two of which can be re-configured for HDMI to support local AV receivers; eight HDBaseT outputs with Power over Ethernet, so no power supply is required at the receiver; independent audio and video switching to support AV remix; fully automatic extended display identification data (EDID) generation and high-bandwidth digital content protection (HDCP) key management for seamless operation; and, HydraConnect’s FlashConnect HDCP pre-authentication, which ensures no loss of video when adding or subtracting video displays.