Re: HDMI vs USB

[email protected] wrote:

>   Thanks for the detailed reply  Paul.
> 
>  <  but you lost me in the weeds  !    not your fault >
> 
> I've done some more reading  and discovered that
>   USB  or   HDMI    are more than just a cable conduit
> for digital info  ....     which was the basis for my query.
> 
>  So  -   
>  -  given  -  a laptop source for  audio-video content - 
>           -  and - a -
>  -  given   smart TV  receiving  that content  -
> 
> Q.   will the use of a HDMI cable  improve the results  -
>    compared to  using  a   USB  cable  ?
> 
> No long distances are involved  -  12 feet  or so.  
> 
>    John T.

Pick good quality content for the USB stick file collection.

For example, I have a very short clip (150 frames) shot
with a RED camcorder. The content is 8K pixel content.
It's very sharp and would look good on an 85" TV set.

But, that's the only sample I have. I have various
samples of 1280x720, and that's going to be upscaled
if placed on the USB stick and played from the TV
set interface.

The computer output (assuming the computer can do
4Kp30 on HDMI or DP), the cabling isn't the issue.
If the content originated on a DVD, it's going to be
upscaled a lot. For Hollywood content, most people
do not mind the results. Just as we used to watch
movies on B&W TV at the time, and could still follow
what happened to the Maltese Falcon. But some people
are sticklers for resolution effects, and if you
invite them over to the house, they will be
laughing and pointing at the screen (unnecessarily).
If the media content is good, must people are willing
to suspend disbelief and just watch it.

It's all going to work. But with practice, you can
do the best you can to improve the quality of
what is played back.

A DVD player (settop box) might have 1920x1080 (HD)
output. A BD player, probably has 4K output, and uses
an HDMI standards version to match. You can get BD
settop players, as well as a BD drive that fits
inside the computer. And for "least risk", the BD
settop player might be the way to do it. There is
very little knowledge out there, on setting up
movie playback using BD drives inside computers.
I don't own one, and am not aware of any of the
regulars being familiar with the details.

There don't seem to be very many choices for these,
so maybe they're dying out in favor of the Netflix
streaming approach. I was hoping for one of these,
with the intention there would not be endless
fiddling with computer software to see a movie.
There should still be media available, and the
results (with the right title) should be as good
as laserdisc.

https://www.amazon.com/BDP-S6700-Upscaling-Streaming-Blu-Ray-Ethernet/dp/B08171ZGF8

They can't even make a decent web page for it.

https://www.sony.ca/en/electronics/blu-ray-disc-players/bdp-s6700/specifications

The review is a joke. It gives some idea what class this
thing is in. You *expect* 4K content to play flawlessly,
as the machine has no impact whatsoever on native 4K
content. It's just a mechanism for reading the packets
off the disc, and does not modify the content.
Only the comments about the upscaler (changes
720x480 DVD output to the picture is 4K), the comments
about that would still be appropriate. And since the
quality of the media on a DVD is "meh", you cannot expect
a mechanical transformation to "add content". It cannot
replace missing pixels. The picture should never be a lot
better than the source, as that implies being able to
replace missing pixels.

https://www.whathifi.com/us/sony/bdp-s6700/review

But I only wanted to show you "what we had in the past".
BD was a source of 4K content. Today, you subscribe to a
4K network service, and then you can use your computer for that,
or use the Roku App inside the TV set. Then, you need to
know a lot about Apps & TV sets, to have strong streaming
capabilities. And I know zero about that topic :-) I'm
just not a TV monkey, and I can't stand Apps. Since the
industry has decided to follow the "greedy streamer" model,
you pay Disney X dollars a month, pay Netflix X dollars a
month, to be able to play their fleet of media. That's
what streaming is all about, it's about milking the cows.
If just one streamer had become dominant, with decent
monthly fees, it might have been different.

    Paul