As long as people say "it isn't all that bad" or "an HDMI connection is a complex bit of technology, so we should be grateful it ever works" then we will be stuck with this half-baked, ill-conceived way of not very successfully(!) enforcing DRM.
I appreciate what you're saying, but is it fair to necessarily blame Humax (or whoever) when (a) the HDMI spec is not properly pinned down, and (b) we do not have the means at our disposal to confirm which end (if any) does not meet what specifications there are?
In theory, the manufacturer of a source device designs to the specification for a source device - ie one which would operate perfectly in all modes with a perfect "black box" destination device, and the manufacturer of a destination device designs likewise. Each manufacturer submits their complete product to the HDMI certification body to verify that the device works to specification.
In theory, connecting two such devices should then be a doddle. But in practice, it's not. Each manufacturer would prefer that their HDMI devices all work very well with each other, but not so good with devices from other manufacturers (talking about the likes of Samsung, Panasonic, Sony...). Their HDMI interfaces probably conform to the detail of the specification sufficiently that it complies with HDMI and achieves certification, but there may be wrinkles that the certification body doesn't test for - and the manufacturers may well know exactly what tests the certification body will be conducting. Equally, there may be an innocent effect in that the manufacturer does not deliberately intend to circumvent the HDMI standard but interprets it in one way (uniformly throughout their own range, and ensures compatibility throughout their own range) when other manufacturers interpret it another way. If we take Humax to be a third party HDMI source, obviously they want their output to be compatible with as many HDMI destinations as possible, but now we have a situation where it may not be possible to satisfy one manufacturer's interpretation while also satisfying another manufacturer's interpretation.
If anything, the blame lies squarely with the standards body, but they are funded by the fees they charge the manufacturers for the compliance testing and certification (apart from the fact the major players will also have seats on the committee!). It's market driven: to become a consumer technology, a draft specification has to be raised quickly and then ratified, and products got out of the door. Then oversights are discovered in the specification so the specification is revised, but products are already on the market so whatever revisions are made are ham-strung by having to be backwards-compatible. Frequently the only way to really solve a standards problem is to rip it up and start again - thereby rendering kit that is already in the hands of consumers incompatible.
If we had the equipment, products, and access to specifications, we could do some independent testing and really see what's what - fund me a few hundred thousand pounds and I'll set up a test lab. Short of that, all we can say is "wouldn't it be nice if" and "be grateful that it works at all"... or source everything from the one manufacturer so there is a fair chance they have all been designed (and tested) to inter-operate -
because we have no other way to influence the outcome.
