AVPhenom has announced that he is considering a class action suit against the HDMI Consortium, citing an estimated $1.7 Million dollars in lost revenue in 2012 from the products revolving door standards.

“It seems that HDMI allows manufacturers to draw 2-3 features out of a hat when deciding what to integrate into their cables”, said Phenom.

AVPhenom has been an outspoken critic of HDMI for sometime, however, it was not until he staged an HDMI extender challenge on the floor of InfoComm13 that he started contemplating the suit.  “The reputations of 3 great extender manufacturers were almost soiled all because the HDMI cables were made to a 1.4 specification that is unclear and inconsistent.”

Phenom came up with the 1.7 million dollar figure by taking his experience on the floor and in his 12 years of integration and applying it.  The SCN Top 50 did about 45,000 AV jobs in 2012.  If 25% of those had HDMI issues at some point, and they take at least two $75/hour technicians an hour to solve, you get 1.7Million in lost billable revenue in 2012 alone.

“We really were duped as an industry.  We ended up with a data guys solution to a video problem, and should have adopted one of the SDI standards for HD instead.”

He is searching for an attorney on the floor with AV sympathies that may take the case. . .

Or maybe he’ll just vent in a blog, we’ll see 🙂