 and here at the CES 2020. Hi. Hi. I'm Brad Bramey. I'm the Vice President of Marketing and Operations for HMI Licensing Administrator, also known as HMI LAG. And with all the things going on here at CES this year for HMI Licensing, the big announcement is the introduction of the Ultra High Speed HMI Cable Certification Program. So in Q1, the HMI Forum will be releasing the compliance test spec for CAT3 cables, which are known as the Ultra High Speed HMI Cables. And along with that is this new certification program that is now mandatory. So after people are passed the certification testing and they get the certificate, every single package of Ultra High Speed HMI Cable, whether it's consumer or for commercial, are required to put this certification label on there. And that guarantees the full HDMI 2.1 support? Yeah. So this cable is from the HMI 2.1 specification. So it is the only cable that supports all the features from HMI 2.1 spec. And primarily the uncompressed AK60 or uncompressed 4K120. And here at Jaboose we're seeing a lot of fiber implementations. Correct. Fiber is a good technology for this? Yeah, it is. When the compliance test specification comes out, it's likely that it may just cover the passive wired first, but very important are the active and the active optical cables because you really need the longer length. So that's very important for when TVs are installed or hanging on walls. So yeah, that's all part of the specification. And sometimes now the TVs are so big you need a longer cable just because the TV is so big. Yeah, especially for the AK TVs, these are really big TVs that might be 75, 85 inches or more and those are going to be hanging on the wall and you need the longer cable to get from the TV and down the wall and to whatever the source is going to be. So the active opticals and the active cables are extremely important. So this is kind of like the big story of the CES 2020, right? I would say the big story at CES in terms of HDMI specifically is that manufacturers have been talking about AK TVs for a couple of years now. But just last month, the first compliance test spec that included fixed rate link, or FRL, which is necessary to really transmit the uncompressed AK60, that's now out. So we've seen some of the first AK TVs actually be certified for HDMI, 2.1 fixed rate link. So these TVs are now in the market also. But these TVs also need this ultra high speed HDMI cable. And the premium HDMI cable, that was for the... The premium HDMI certification program, that was for the high speed cables. And these certify the cables at the 18 gigs and they also have the authentication label on them too. And 4K, 4K content is actually reaching the market. And so as set-top box manufacturers and others are now distributing 4K, these cables are extremely important for them. And so this program is actually growing every year. Alright. And you also have something... Well, we do. As part of the ultra high speed HDMI cable certification program, one thing that's very important is EMI testing. So each cable can go through this EMI testing. So after it goes to an ATC, it's going to go to a special EMI testing chamber. And each cable and every length of every cable is going to go through the EMI testing. And it's extremely important for the performance of the cable. Ed is with Simplay Labs. And Ed has one of the first test tools that's going to be used as part of the EMI testing. Ed, can you tell us a little bit about this and the EMI testing in general? Absolutely. So we've decided... The HDMI organization has decided that they'd like to standardize on the CISPR method of EMI testing. Specifically the CISPR32 for Class B radiated emissions. Those go from 1 to 30 megahertz to 1 gig and 1 gig to 6 gig testing. We've decided on four resolutions, a 480p at 12-bit, a 1080p at 10-bit, 2160p 24 at 8 and an FRL at 12 gigahertz. So we make a box that sends out a calibrated source on the output and then is received on the input. A secondary optional monitor that you would hook up just to make sure that the signal is transmitting through. You go into a chamber with this box, you would disconnect the optional monitor, you turn it off and then the only thing radiating in the chamber is the signal source through that cable. The cable is put like this off the edge of a table, off the floor in a kind of a bow tie, kind of a configuration and then a 3 meter, 10 meter open air chamber. You would rotate 360 degrees and an antenna would raise and lower and at some point the maximum radiation points would be captured and hopefully after the scan you will be under the limits required for the SISPR32. So it's an important part of the HDMI 2.1 is not to have interference and to test it correctly. That's correct. So how long does it take to do this kind of test? If the cable is compliant the amount of time that it takes to rotate 360 degrees and have an antenna go up and down and capture the scans is probably 15 minutes, so 30 minutes for a horizontal and vertical for every resolution and since there are 4 resolutions it would probably take 2 hours for a compliant cable. So you test it one time when you're designing the cable and then that's it or you have to test every cable? You probably have to test every cable because every cable length would make a difference and if there are the construction of the connector, the construction of the cladding around the connector, the actual braiding and foiling of the cable, everything makes a difference and even the length makes a difference, it may radiate at one of those particular frequencies. The cable length might act as an antenna where it wouldn't at one of the other frequencies. So everything matters. With a high of 48 gigabits, is there like a more challenge to make sure there's no interference? Surprisingly not. The FRL, it's a different encoding scheme. It's four lanes of a fixed rate link but the data on the link is scrambled. So in sense when you look at patterns like a checkerboard or something like that, there's less chance of having those compound because of the scrambling. In some sense it's actually easier to pass EMI with FRL but it's much harder to make the cable and so because of that cable manufacturers might try to make a higher gauge of wire and that will affect the radiation that way but all things being equal, it should be easier to pass FRL. That was one of the reasons for going to it.