Home audio & video forum: HDMI 1.3 Compatibility Blu Ray Player vs. Televisions

I bought a Sony BDP-S350 (HDMI 1.3) and it will not even recognize my Sony KP-57WS520 (HDMI 1.1). It won't work with my kids' HDMI 1.2 LCD TV either. (Recognizes that the TV's there and the TV sees the HDMI signal, but will not display a picture.) The Sony level 2 tech support people said that the player will not work with any TV that's not HDMI 1.3. Kind of ironic that one of the originators of the HDMI standards would put out a product that ignores the requirement for backwards compatibility.

Well, I was on the phone for over 90 minutes, and did get referred to tech level 2, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't just an attempt to get me off of the phone. They tried to blame it on HDCP, but since my ATSC receiver (aka set top box) uses HDCP and the TV displays that just fine, I discounted that.

As for the incompatibility, my looking into the differences between the HDMI specifications revealed that the maximum clock speed of HDMI 1.3 is higher than that of HDMI 1.2 or 1.1. My suspicion, which I didn't bother following up on because I can't "fix" it is that the player will only use the higher clock rate, and the TV won't respond to it.

Bottom line for me is that a Sony Blu-Ray player should talk to a Sony TV over HDMI no matter what version of HDMI is in use on each end. That is, after all, what the HDMI specification says. It doesn't and Sony admits that it never will because the player only supports HDMI 1.3. That would make the player non-compliant to the HDMI standard, but I'm just one unhappy consumer who just happens to be satisfied by getting 1080i component video over to the TV.

I does make me very leery of buying any Sony HDMI products again though.

Now if someone knows how to retro an older TV and bring it up to HDMI 1.3 or hack the player's firmware to make it talk to older HDMI components, that'd be cool.

Not a single issue. Lightning fast disc load times. Downloads updates on the fly. Supports every codec known to man for home network streaming, Netflix, Vudu, and all the HD audio codecs you could ever want.

The experience is night and day when compared with my old Sony S300.

It's possible. My first two questions would be "Are you sure you are selecting the HDMI input?" followed by "Is the HDMI indicator on the Blu-Ray player coming on?"

The first one is driven by the fact that in both of my non-display cases, I get the "splash" or "logo" screen displayed as the player is going thru it's power up sequence, then the screen goes to a blank screen. Not a static filled display. In fact, when I select the HDMI input with NO cable attached, it displays a blank screen, not static.

The second question is coming from the "handshaking" that's supposed to go on between the player and the television. One of mine (HDMI 1.1) will not handshake so the indicator does not come on. The other set (HDMI 1.2) does handshake, the indicator comes on, and the television displays the correct mode of the input signal. The screen stays blank though.

Again, I'll express my disappointment with SOny for the non-compliant implementation of HDMI 1.3 in their players.