Hi all,

I'm a newbie to HDMI so please bear with me.

I have a Panasonic (DMR-) EZ45V (EBS) VHS/DVD combination recorder with an unused HDMI socket. My television and Sky+ box are connected to the recorder via SCART.

I need a new monitor for my PC - and I'm considering buying an LCD TV/monitor combination as I spend the vast majority of my time in front of the PC rather than the TV so it makes sense. I am considering a 20" Samsung Pebble with an HDMI socket.

My main question is, if I connect the DVD recorder to the display using an HDMI cable will the Sky+ signal "passthrough" down the cable to the display? (Therefore avoiding the need for a separate cable for the Sky+ box).

Also, would it be okay to use a long HDMI cable, say about 5 metres, as my PC and home entertainment setup are on opposite sides of the room.

Does the EZ45 have HDMI DVD upscaling? Would that make any difference to me considering my setup?

Finally, is there anything else that I might need to know ?

Many thanks in advance for any advice.

Cheers,

Steve.

Hi Steve.

Several things to say.

Firstly, The unit cannot output scart and HDMI simultaneously. It's Either / Or... Just in case that has any bearing on the way you may intend using it.

HDMI is an 'intelligent ' interface [ !] and requires a discrete time to boot. It can only work when the unit is ON. But yes it will will feed-through [ as opposed to pass-through ] Sky when AV2 is selected as input on the '45 ...assuming Sky is connected to the AV2 scart.

Your connected monitor must be HDCP compliant or you may get no sound or no picture or both.

You can use a 5 metre length cable... but that is the max.

HDMI is known to be problematic. It might not work if the units do not like each other... which makes it difficult to plan and predict.

Really all you can do is try.


The 45 upscales to a maximum resolution of 1080i ... but upscaling in the source device is a much over-hyped piece of pointless nonsense.
Your TV- monitor will scale whatever comes into it to it's native resolution.