[antt]

Option B would seem to be more reasonable - multiple AV sources connecting to the switcher which forwards only one audio signal to the processor, and the corresponding video signal to the display.
Or, alternatively, the switcher could forward audio and video to the processor, with the processor acquiring video pass-through ability, but that sounds nastier.

Could someone please clear something up for me?

Why would you want to separate the audio from the video on an HDMI signal?  Isn't this just a data stream?  It's not really an "audio" or "Video" signal in the classic sense is it?  If so, I don't see any reason why it could not be passed in it's entirety thru the SP.  In fact, why not offer an onscreen OSD for the SP in the HDMI signal?  This way you could have the onscreen menu without the switcher (on HDMI only of course).

Thanks.

[Adz523]

Could someone please clear something up for me?

Why would you want to separate the audio from the video on an HDMI signal?  Isn't this just a data stream?  It's not really an "audio" or "Video" signal in the classic sense is it?  If so, I don't see any reason why it could not be passed in it's entirety thru the SP.  In fact, why not offer an onscreen OSD for the SP in the HDMI signal?  This way you could have the onscreen menu without the switcher (on HDMI only of course).

Thanks.

Antt:

Maybe I am not following your question, but every receiver or processor with built-in HDMI switching will have to take the HMDI hi-def video stream back "Out" and then send it HDMI "IN" to the TV, so won't there be a separation at that point?

[nicolasb]

Could someone please clear something up for me?

Why would you want to separate the audio from the video on an HDMI signal?  Isn't this just a data stream?  It's not really an "audio" or "Video" signal in the classic sense is it?  If so, I don't see any reason why it could not be passed in it's entirety thru the SP.  In fact, why not offer an onscreen OSD for the SP in the HDMI signal?  This way you could have the onscreen menu without the switcher (on HDMI only of course).

Well, the SP1.7 (and now SP2) have always been pure audio devices with no built-in video capabilities at all. This is a deliberate design decision - video circuitry has a tendency to introduce high-frequency noise into the system. So Bryston decided that it would be better to give the SP1/1.7/2 no video capabilities at all - if you want an on-screen display then you have to buy the SPV1 (or forthcoming SPV2) switcher device - it plugs into the processor and provides an on-screen display for it, as well as doing video switching. Keeping all of the video processing in a separate box makes it easier to get good audio performance out of the processor.

Assuming that you want the processor to be able to cope with digital audio coming in over HDMI, you've only got two choices: either the processor has to be able to take audio and video on its input and pass through the video (which would probably require additional digital video circuitry to be added, although I'm not sure - adding an OSD certainly would!) or you separate the audio and video and pass only the audio to the processor.

Or, of course, you resign yourself to not having an HDMI input on the processor at all, but that's not a good option either.

[antt]

Assuming that you want the processor to be able to cope with digital audio coming in over HDMI, you've only got two choices: either the processor has to be able to take audio and video on its input and pass through the video (which would probably require additional digital video circuitry to be added, although I'm not sure - adding an OSD certainly would!)

Thanks Nicolasb.  And so we come to the heart of my question:  Isn't the HDMI signal just a data transmission protocol?  Purely digital in nature?  If this is so then it isn't a video signal and passing it through the processor would offer none of the  risks of degradation (an "analog" video signal would have) to audio quality.

And if this is so it really doesn't matter if the signal is passed through the SP.  The digital video signal would be converted into analog at the TV end, or possible the Video switcher, depending on what it does to the signal.

This is what I always assumed anyways, so I don't see the need to enforce the "audio only" criteria for the SP on the HDMI signal.   I just assumed they would pass the signal through the SP, process it and pass the signal containing the video out again.

Please feel free to correct me if any of my assumptions are wrong.

[nicolasb]

I must admit I'm not sure if audio and video are transmitted on different wires with HDMI. You certainly can't just pass through the entire signal, because the whole point of having an HDMI input on the processor is to allow you to feed it digital audio data via HDMI (e.g. when watching a movie on BluRay) - the processor has to access the audio component.

Also an uncompressed digital video stream is very high-bandwidth compared to a compressed digital audio stream: dozens of megabits per second compared with hundreds of kilobits per second. Passing through a signal like that may well be very difficult to do without causing noise/interference in the rest of the system.

[MOZ]

Hi guys,

The good point would be to have an audio I-LINK-in (FIREWIRE) for the HD sound directly on the SP2 and a HDMI-in on the SPV2...
This way, the SP2 would deal only with audio (better with I-LINK, the jitter thing...) !

You would just have to wait and buy a Blu-ray and/or HD-DVD player with I-LINK and HDMI outputs... and that will certainly come out !

Oliver

[alpsy]

has there been any progress with the release of the spv2?

when it is realeased will it be hdmi 1.3 ready or will this be a future upgrade?

cheers,

julie