HDMI to Enhance CEC Two-Way Control Protocol

HDMI is going to make its control protocol, called Consumer Electronics Control (CEC), really meaningful. And they mean it.

That’s the word from Steve Venuti, president of HDMI Licensing, LLC, who spoke to CE Pro during the recent CEDIA Expo.

HDMI-CEC is a communications protocol that enables devices to control each other via the same HDMI cable that delivers audio and video.

It’s a handy standard, and it is implemented by virtually every major consumer electronics manufacturer.

The problem is, they all implement it differently, so you need an ecosystem of all-Panasonic products, for example, to control an entire A/V system with a single remote.

That’s because HDMI Licensing defines only a tiny set of commands—like on, off and mute—for CEC-compatible devices. Wanting a richer feature set, manufacturers have taken it upon themselves to define and implement their own protocols on top of CEC.

Venuti’s predecessor Les Chard said in January that HDMI was moving toward a single set of standards for CEC.

That hasn’t happened.

“We really mean it this time,” says Venuti.

“We’ve worked with the founders to unify CEC. We’re hoping—and they’re pushing hard—that in Q1 there will be products out there with a meaningful command set,” he says. “The marketing requirements came from retailers.”

The HDMI group has been slow to get its founders—Hitachi, Panasonic, Philips, Silicon Image (the developer of HDMI), Sony, Thomson and Toshiba—on board with a unified CEC plan.

Now, however, “the founders finally said, ‘Yeah, we can do it,’” Venuti says. “The founders are working feverishly. At CES [2009], there will probably be an announcement, and we will have some way to distinguish it [expanded command set].”

Who is Implementing CEC?

It’s tough to tell which vendors are employing HDMI-CEC for their A/V products because they all market the solution under their own brands. Often, they don’t even refer to CEC in the literature.

For that reason, we’ve compiled a list of HDMI-CEC brands by vendor:

• Hitachi – Plain ol’ HDMI-CEC (erroneously referred to in some places as SimplayHD)
• LG Electronics – SimpLink
• Panasonic – Viera Link (originally EZSync)
• Philips - Easy Link
• Samsung - Anynet+
• Sharp - Aquos Link
• Sony – Bravia Sync
• Toshiba – Regza Link (formerly CE-Link)