HDMI connections

[Wodrick]

As some may realise much of Southern Spain has lost UK television with a change of satellite.
The ex pat answer to this is IPTV.
One method is using a proxy server or smart DNS to appear to be in the UK and then using the various players to watch TV via a laptop connected to a television via an HDMI cable.
In another place a so called expert is advising against this as it WILL lead to video card burnout.
I am of the opinion that this is bovine excrement as all that is happening is the transfer of digital signals and nothing is actually being DRIVEN.
Am I right ?

[mixture]

The very purpose of a port, whether laser or copper, on a device whether laptop, server, switch is to facilitate the transfer of I/O between itself and other devices.

The conventionally accepted wisdom is that as long as one does not physically or logically abuse the defined operating parameters of such port, you can transfer as much data down it as you damn well like !

[Saab Dastard]

I wonder if there may be a grain of truth behind this.

Assuming that the laptop is being asked to decode and output several hours of continuous video streaming (HD?), the card will be driven quite hard - certainly I see an increase in temperature on my desktop graphics card (and the fan speed increases) when doing graphics intensive work, such as watching HD videos.

I don't have a problem with my desktop overheating, but it's possible that a laptop could be much poorer at dissipating the heat, causing the GPU to overheat.

Having said that, it would be the same using the laptop's own screen or using any cable to an external screen - DVI, VGA or HDMI. I'm assuming that the resolution is the same - the laptop's own screen resolution is likely to be higher than any TV screen.

What you could do is to download SWI (or similar) and monitor the GPU temperature while watching TV on the laptop, and see if it gets near its safe maximum working temp. If not, then attaching an external monitor / TV isn't going to be a problem.

SD

[Booglebox]

Maybe the guy in question is referring to HDCP / DRM stuff?
I know very little about this as I am lucky enough to use DisplayPort / DVI exclusively :}

[Saab Dastard]

Maybe the guy in question is referring to HDCP / DRM stuff?

Unlikely, as any DRM processing will be done by the CPU, not the GPU. It is likely that this will change in the future, as DRM becomes more prevalent through HTML5, but at present the GPU has little or no role in encryption / decryption.

SD

[Wodrick]

Certain HDMI and nothing else.

Only SD, Broadband in most of Spain will not support HD.

I'll check temperatures but I think it's OK the fan doesn't even speed up.

I think the 'expert' might have a hidden agenda involving set top boxes.

[TOWTEAMBASE]

Is an HDMI lead for a laptop the same as an HDMI lead for an iPad. I bought an adapter for it, but can get no output onto the TV, I'm presuming the set up inside the cable is different, I may be wrong

[MG23]

Unlikely, as any DRM processing will be done by the CPU, not the GPU. It is likely that this will change in the future, as DRM becomes more prevalent through HTML5, but at present the GPU has little or no role in encryption / decryption.

HDMI can be encrypted, but I believe the GPU just tells the HDMI chip to turn encryption on and doesn't have any further involvement in the process. I guess a poorly-designed HDMI chip could burn out, but the one in a laptop is probably the same one used in Blu-Ray players and similar hardware.

[Mike-Bracknell]

If the person saying it WILL lead to video card burnout would like to explain what they mean then you might get a little more info. However IMHO it smells of horses**t.

Currently, my several-year-old HP Microserver with a passively-cooled video card hasn't burned itself out, and several thousand other people with similar kit running XBMC etc don't have the issue either.

Video decoding is not a high-powered requirement for video cards. Hence you can get away with a passively-cooled one rather than requiring a fan (and it's usually fan bearings giving way and the card cooking which does for video cards).

Please note, the decoding and display of MPEG-2 video is considerably less intensive than the *encoding* of such media, which is where SD is seeing his temperature spikes. You won't be encoding anything when watching tv.

As regards HDMI leads, there are different standards, however getting a 1.4 video lead would suit you as they're backwardly-compatible (and I doubt you're talking about 4k images over broadband :E)