How important is HDMI 1.3 vs 1.2? (marantz)

If you use a PS3 as your blu ray device, it won't make a difference between 1.2 and 1.3 HDMI.

You pretty much summed it up in the OP.


Receiver side lossless decoding pretty much mandates HDMI 1.3. If your receiver decodes TrueHD, for example, it will have HDMI 1.3.


On the video side of things, HDMI 1.3 added one (currently) useless feature DeepColor, and another marginally useful feature xvYCC. DeepColor is a technology without a use, at least the last time I checked. xvYCC is implemented in some cam corders I think, and there might be some TVs which accept it as well.


As long as you have a Blu-ray player which can decode lossless and a receiver which can play back HDMI audio, you are good to go, for playing lossless audio tracks.

I dont think HDMI 1.2 supports HDMI Control. I ran into this issue since my dispaly is only 1.2 and my receiver is 1.3. I wanted to be able to pass video/audio to my display with the receiver turned off (pass-through) for late night casual viewing. When I enable the HDMI CEC Control feature on my receiver (Denon) I lose all signal to my display.

I think that's correct, no CEC with HDMI 1.2.

I am still reading some debates about LPCM vs bitstream. So I am not sure.

There should be no quality difference, it's still using the quality DACs on the receiver before the digital information gets converted into signal out the speaker wires right? The only difference is that the player is using some computing power to decode the lossless audio into another format (PCM) and send over the HDMI cable, there are no DACs at the player side involved.. since it is not decoding into RCA pre-outs. Is this correct.


So there is no power management on 1.2, and means I won't be able to trigger my receiver to turn off from the 1.3 TV. Although I might disable that feature anyway.