subject: Active Hdmi Cables Are Green Hdmi Cables [print this page] The A/V cable industry is a very large business and it represents about 70% of the total cable industry. Over the past several years, HDMI has become the leading standard for audio and video connection for high-definition home theatre gear and has replaced older standards such as RCA, composite RCA and S-Video. Every new HDTV has at least two HDMI inputs, and gadgets such as Blu-ray players, DVD players, DVRs, game consoles, computers, cameras and certain portable devices like smartphones and tablets now come with HDMI outputs to deliver audio and video.
Last year there were 210 million HDTVs shipped world wide and that growth potential is estimated at 20% year on year. It is calculated that 250 million HDMI cables are now sold annually with growth for this segment also predicted at 20%. This does not include the rapidly growing portable segment that includes smartphones and web-tablets. For example, 110 million smartphones with HDMI ports are expected to sell through in 2012. For web-tablets this figure is currently 60 million and growing at an even faster rate. There is currently an installed base of over 1.5 billion HDMI-enabled products world wide.
70% of the worlds cables are produced in China there are over 2,000 manufacturers based in the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta regions alone. The main raw materials used to construct cables are PVC and copper and the production and utilization of these materials is increasing yearly. According to a report published by Deloitte in April 2011: Asia and Europe are the leading regions in terms of PVC production capacities along with China accounting for the bulk of PVC production in Asia (65%). China is the key PVC producer in South-East Asia and globally.
The demand world-wide for copper is 575,000 tons yearly and rising steadily. China is responsible for more than 22% of the global copper demand, probably due to its recent economic and construction boom. The main producers of copper are Chile, United States, and Peru. Given that almost 50% of the worlds copper is extracted in South America and much of that is increasingly shipped to China for production, and post-production it is then re-shipped back to various CE markets in The States and Europe, the copper industry obviously places a huge and unsustainable demand on some of the worlds natural resources. Ross Beaty, the chairman of Pan American Silver and Lumina Copper has said that many large copper mines will be exhausted between 2010 and 2015.
High-speed HDMI cables with a data-rate of 3.4Gbps per channel and a length of 2 meters fairly typical of a HDMI cable example- are manufactured with a copper and PVC dense raw cable to cope with the high levels of data transfer. For this, many traditional or passive cable manufacturers use a 28AWG wires resulting in a very thick, inflexible and heavy cable with an outside diameter of 10mm and more. Now, with the introduction of active HDMI cables due to a technology from Irish firm, RedMere, HDMI cables can be made with a 40AWG cable with a diameter as tiny as 2.8mm for the consumer this means that HDMI cables can now be bought that are ultra-slim, portable and because of the unique, patented RedMere smart chip inside the connector ultra-reliable, and can also be produced to reach lengths up to 140 ft. From a technology standpoint the active chip attenuates for the loss of signal due to the reduced copper it takes up the workload of the copper and PVC thus allowing brands like Vizio, Samsung, PNY, Monster, RadioShack, and BUFFALO SUPPLY INC to offer ultra-thin and long active HDMI cables to CE customers.
Apart from the obvious benefits to the consumer as so many hand held smart phones, cameras and tablets have HDMI out and need a portable HDMI cable the benefits to the environment are also very obvious.
Figure 2: Outer diameter comparison of a passive and active cableFigure 1: Traditional passive HDMI (left) and active HDMI cable (right)
As seen from the illustration above, active cables are four times thinner; they also weight up to ten times less and take up approximately ten times less volume than passive cables. All is this has hugely positive implications for the mining and production of copper, the development of PVC and the costs, environmentally and otherwise of shipping. See below:
It is clear from the above table that approx 90% can be saved on raw materials and packing volumes on active over passive cables. For example, the 250 million cables that are sold annually and growing - potentially 17 million kilos of copper and 18.6 million kilos of PVC less would needed to be produced if all HDMI cabling became activethe knock on reduction on shipping and fuel costs and environmental damage would be very real and very obvious, and the resulting financial and natural resource savings are not just to the producer but also ultimately to the end consumer.
