Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems CES Questions!

A reminder that cutoff is 11:59pm EST tonight for questions for Meridian for CES...

Best Regards,

Hi John,

Forget 421 or 422 - How about 424 or even 425 - better to have too many than too few!

It seems a little crazy to me that M, as with many high end manufacturers, have persisted with a single HDMI output on their players and newly introduced HDMAX. Ignoring the issue covered above regarding the output of music and video seperately how about addressing the needs of people with more than one screen to feed.

I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting both a projector and a flatscreen on the wall for more casual use. Then there's the smaller LCD screen to display the video feed from DVDA's to aid navigation without the need to fire up the main screen/s. Finally, how about the HiDef LCD in the toilet so I can quickly switch from the main screen when dying for the loo in the last 5 minutes of the FA cup final!

I may have taken this a bit far but you can see my point. M gear is expensive and I imagine a high proportion of their customers could and would exploit this and I cannot see this being an awfully expensive addition to the HDMAX. It would also be nice to see M introduce something that appears to be unique - although the new Chord Media engine has 2 outputs....

Presumably this would also aid the custom install market too?

Cheers

Simon

Cutoff time has come and gone

Topic is closed for additional questions for CES..

Regards,

BTW, HDMI is said to be superceded by UDI (though UDI is backwards compatible with HDMI)...

It seems to be as usual - before a standard is stable and complete, another promising one takes over. Unstable and incomplete...

And UDI will be superceded by.... which will be superceded by...

I'm not trying to bust your chops Tommy...

But to be honest, it's the PC industry (I believe led by Intel) pushing UDI, which doesn't mean it will be adopted by the CE industry.

Best,

UDIB is not from the PC indistury, it is from Silicon Image, National Semiconductor and Intel and is intended to counter Display Port.

Stacey...

Even I can't keep track of all the changes. This is (frankly) insane.

BTW Stacey, have they even started shipping HDMI 1.2 chipsets out for test?

With UDI on the horizon, will HDMI 1.3 see the light of day, or will they transition to UDI?

Another thing we don't need to confuse the marketplace.

Cheers,

Dare I say it, but with all of this uncertainty, there has to be an opportunity for a high-end manufacturer to support whatever comes about, even if it is transient.

Meridian, with its (I hope not fading) history of hardware and software upgrades could really re-charge its brand equity here by supporting (for a charge, of course) what ever comes around, even if it's not around for long. Though my heart tells me that M is struggling a bit at the moment...

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Is it really in the customer's best interests to release constant upgrades that cost big $$$, not to mention the R&D costs or is it better to deliver fewer hardware based upgrades?

There are those who would say this strategy is all about the money involved in upgrade fees.

This really isn't relevant to the thread, but M has always done upgrades that were prudent and worthwhile. They haven't done upgrades at the top of a drop of a hat.

For argument's sake, let's say that M did release an upgrade for 861 that cost US$3K to handle HDMI. This would be limited to a 2 or 3x1 solution due to space constraints on the 861 cards that would handle the audio plus output video only. You can't assume the customer has a switcher on the front end that handles this task.

Another 12-15 months later, the HDMI 1.3 solution comes in with another upgrade, and this time for argument's sake it's another US$6K. This time, you have to pay for the HDMI input card, the additional DSP processing power and the licensing fees for:
Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS 24/96, DTS:Neo, DTS TrueHD all in that one bundle.

With the history of this forum, you don't think that M isn't going to be hammered for this here and elsewhere?

Be realistic.

Regards,

JK, I take your point. However, it doesn't alter the fact that there are a lot of frustrated [insert high-end brand here] customers and there is probably a business opportunity in there somewhere.

I would prefer not to pay for DTS:neo
Btter said, i would not like to have that algoritm in my 861.