Audio Video News

Trinnov Audio, the French company specializing in sophisticated audio processing, recently announced that its Altitude¹⁶ and flagship Altitude³² immersive surround-sound processors are now equipped an HDMI 2.1-capable board.

Made by Texas-based Cyrpress Technology, the new board (VMX-H8K-820) provides two HDMI 2.1 outputs and includes all of the features offered in the previous HDMI 2.0 board, except downscaling on the HDMI 1 output. The new 2.1 feature set is enabled via a firmware upgrade (version 4.3.2).

The company also announced plans to make HDMI 2.1 upgrade kits available to owners of existing Altitude¹⁶ and Altitude³² models in February. The cost of the upgrade kit is the same for both models: $1,250 for units with the current HDMI 2.0 board or $1,500 for older units that have Trinnov’s first-generation HDMI 2.0 board.

The upgrade must be performed by a certified Trinnov dealer on Altitude models with the current HDMI 2.0 board and models with the earlier board must been shipped to Trinnov. In the latter case, the upgrade is expected to take about two weeks.

If you’re wondering why it has taken Trinnov so long to offer HDMI 2.1 support on its advanced processors, the company offered the following statement:

“In an ambitious move, the HDMI consortium announced the HDMI standard in November 2017. However, it has taken board manufacturers several years to meet the high bar for performance and features required within the HDMI 2.1 specification. This new board provides most of the HDMI 2.1 feature set.”

The added features include Fixed Rate Link (FRL), an increase in bit rate from HDMI 2.0’s 18 Gbps to 40 Gbps, support for high frame rates (up to 120fps at 4K and 60fps at 8K), dynamic (frame-by-frame) HDR, enhanced gaming features such as Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and Automatic Low Latency Mode (ALLM), and HDCP 2.3 support across all eight inputs and two outputs.

Bit rate is limited to a maximum of 40 Gbps because chips supporting two outputs at 48Gbps were not available, according to Trinnov. For more information, visit trinnov.com.

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