Onkyo is releasing a receiver in may for 599 which will have hdmi 1.3 and the ability to decode all the new formats. How soon does anyone think outlaw will follow suit. Maybe Scott from outlaw can chime in and give us a clue as to how soon we may see something.

This a topic that has a lot of people interested, based on past discussions. One of the Onkyo HDMI v1.3 receivers was mentioned here the other day, followed a few days later by another comment by Jason J about the less expensive ($599) Onkyo. Back in February, Outlaw (by which I mean PeterT himself) said that they are pursuing HDMI v1.3 but don't know when it might be ready. I've said for some time that I'd be stunned if any smaller manufacturer can get HDMI v1.3 to market in a processor or receiver before 2008 - after all, it's taken almost a year since the HDMI v1.3 spec was even published for the first large CE corporation to get an HDMI v1.3 product to market even though they all have surely been working hard on it. We should be seeing similar products from the likes of Sony, Panasonic, and Pioneer before too much longer, but I haven't seen much specific news about them yet. Sherwood has mentioned plans to have a receiver or two ready later this year (September?), but that's as close as anybody has come to committing to anything and I'm still suspicious that the complexities of implementing HDMI v1.3 and the new processing modes is going to lead to some firmware development delays.

gonk:

I was reading on another forum that current 1080p TVs which, of course have hdmi, will not be able to take advantage of increased bandwidth which, if true, is reported to have sharper and better quality pictures than the current 1080p's....(comparing the current hdmi to hdmi 1.3).

Your thoughts, pls.
Thanks

HDMI v1.3's greater video capabilities are basically "future-proofing" the HDMI spec. There is currently no hardware (source devices or displays) and no media formats (broadcast or physical media) that can make use of the extra video bandwidth offered by v1.3. HDMI v1.3 video changes also include support for 120Hz refresh rates, which can potentially be a very good thing, but 120Hz support is going to be similar to the funny business surrounding early 1080p displays - just because a display can operate at 120Hz doesn't mean that it'll accept a 120Hz input. Likewise, you need a source device that is both HDMI v1.3 compliant and will output at 120Hz.

Tom Norton had two good posts in his Ultimate AV blog a couple weeks ago looking at HDMI v1.3 from both a video standpoint and an audio standpoint . Basically, HDMI v1.3 added three key things to the HDMI spec: bitstream support for new audio formats (DD+, TrueHD, DTS-HD MA), automatic lip sync control, and more video capacity. The catches are that the new audio formats can in theory be decoded in the player just fine (although DTS-HD has been rather elusive) and may even need to be decoded there in certain cases, that the automatic lip sync control will only work if the entire signal path is HDMI v1.3 (source device, receiver/processor, video display, and anything else along the way) in order for the automatic sync adjustments to be right, and that no displays or sources can really make use of the extra bandwidth or (at least for now) the higher refresh rate.