Before the Grand HD Cinema, I honestly didn’t know that a USB to HDMI converter was possible. (Though in truth, it’s still really only half possible.)
The Grand HD Cinema does indeed take USB video (along with audio) and upconverts the stream to a 720p HDMI signal that can drive six different HDMI devices. As a means to get clips from PMPs to TVs it certainly makes a lot of sense.
But what you’d consider an impossibly calculation-intensive process really is. The converter requires an XP or Vista rig with a 2.4GHz (or better) processor. So while the Grand HD Cinema is still a pretty interesting device, it’s by no means some convenient little adaptor that will play your iPod on your HDTV.
The Grand HD Cinema is available for $US140 imported from Japan. [Lancerlink via Crunchgear]
Tim Chu
September 15, 2010 at 10:50 AM
These are pretty good units and prices has falled a fair bit since then (picked one up from Circuit central: http://www.circuitcentral.com.au/grand-hd-cinema-usb-to-hdmi-converter-adaptor.html). The Grand HD cinema was pretty much the only USB to HDMI convertor out there that did digital audio signals over HDMI. Everything else required a separate RCA/analogue output.
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