The original Standard or Category 1 cables were certified to handle 1080i or 720p video. The later High Speed or Category 2 cables took the bandwidth up from 4.95Gbit/sec to 10.2Gbit/sec, which meant they could transport 1080p video at 60 frames per second or 60Hz, or 4K video at 30fps or 30Hz. Category 3 or HDMI Premium cable reaches 18Gbits/sec and supports 4K video at 60Hz, while the highest spec Category 3 (8K) or Ultra cable can do 4K at 120Hz or 8K at 60Hz. All these factors led to HEC to be a rarely utilized tool in the consumer electronics world. While the applications for HEC may seem apparent, especially with gaming consoles and computer systems, the fact is that it never quite caught on. One factor that may not have been predicted by the engineers who dreamed up HEC is the evolution of WiFi. While hard-line connections are still more stable and secure, advances in WiFi have made them somewhat obsolete when it comes to consumer use.

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eARC basically does the same, but its capabilities are enhanced. It gets a massive boost in maximum audio bandwidth, enabling high-quality, multi-channel, lossless audio data to be transmitted from your TV to a sound system. With many TVs, HDMI ARC will work automatically. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to grab a remote and tweak a few of your TV settings, including turning off your TV’s built-in speakers and enabling your telly to send audio out to an external speaker or amp. HEC, or HDMI Ethernet Channel, comes included with cables and chip processors HDMI standard 1.4 or higher. They allow for the transmission of internet data at high speeds with better bandwidth. If you are using WiFi, you can use HDMI with ethernet to get a better, faster, and more stable connection. This can simplify your setup and opens up new opportunities for home network management. Think of this example. Say you have a soundbar hooked up to your TV. Using CEC, you can use the remote control for your TV to manage the sound coming from your soundbar. The TV does this by transferring that information across the HDMI cable to your soundbar. You need to make sure your devices are CEC compatible to make sure they will work in this fashion. ConclusionWhile most HDMI protocols work over any standard HDMI cable, you should still look out for the ones that have “Ethernet” mentioned in the specifications to take advantage of the HEC functionality. However, some high-speed HDMI cables often omit the Ethernet channel to allocate more bandwidth to the audio and video streams. If you have an HEC compatible device, it will most likely self-describe somewhere in the user’s manual. Unfortunately, this technology is rarely implemented, and you would be hard-pressed to find a device that uses HEC. Through our research, we were unable to find any modern consumer device that uses HEC.

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Requires a proprietary 2-level commercial grade mobile scanning app available for Android and Apple and also in the top 10 China app stores An HDMI to Ethernet converter lets you connect a standard HDMI cable on one end and a Cat5 / Cat6 network cable on the other end, giving you audio/video output over longer distances without any quality loss. However, it’s a niche use-case for the average consumer and costs a lot of money to set up. When HDMI 1.4 made its debut, HEC or HDMI Ethernet Channel was pitched as a convenience factor. Rather than relying on two separate cables for AV and Ethernet, users could just use one cable connected to a TV or home entertainment device to fulfill their needs.

An HDMI cable with Ethernet relies on HDMI Ethernet Channel (HEC), a protocol introduced right alongside Audio Return Channel (ARC) with the HDMI 1.4 release in 2009. It provides a bidirectional network data delivery link between two HDMI-connected devices, allowing them to share an internet connection at speeds of up to 100 Mbit (12.5 Mbyte) per second. The main benefit of eARC is a big boost in bandwidth and speed. This allows you to send higher-quality audio from your TV to a soundbar or AV receiver.

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The problem is your device, in most cases, the TV doesn’t have the hardware to support HEC but it can support ARC. Even if your TV can connect to the internet, it would use WiFi or an ethernet port, which would probably be many times faster than HEC, so there’s really no point for TV manufacturers to change their TV hardware to support HEC. Do I Need HDMI with Ethernet or ARC or eARC? Interestingly enough, HDMI Audio Return Channel, the feature most soundbars and television sets use for audio, uses the same pins as HEC. In some cases, these two are combined into one term – HEAC – but it’s not very common. In short, an HDMI cable that is labeled as High Speed or ARC compatible is also HEC compatible. It wasn’t until 2009 that the HDMI ARC protocol was added to the spec sheet. It was introduced as part of HDMI version 1.4 and has been part of the specification ever since. What is ARC?This information guide will give you a full rundown on Ethernet over HDMI and explain whether it’s a good idea to invest in an HDMI Cable With Ethernet. What’s an HDMI Cable with Ethernet? The idea of HEC was to connect one HDMI cable with ethernet from a modem or router to a TV and then all the devices that are connected to that TV via HDMI can also benefit from the internet connection (Gaming consoles, Bluray Players, etc). It would allow you to use one cable for all your connection needs (audiovisual and internet) instead of having to use separate connections. Why Didn’t Internet over HDMI Catch On?

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HEC is dead, but its companion protocol ARC or Audio Return Channel isn’t. In fact, ever since the release of the HDMI 1.4 standard, ARC used the same pins on the connector as HEC. Thus, they are referred to as HEAC (HDMI Ethernet Audio Control) when combined, which you may sometimes find in the spec charts of HDMI cables.

One of the best and only uses for HEC in modern consumer tech is in the use of HDMI ARC and CEC connections. These technologies utilize the shielded wire pairs intended for the internet to communicate other data across the cable. They are often used in a few different ways, which we’ve explored before, but will briefly touch on again here. They communicate audio signals and control consumer elections. HDMI cables can carry the internet just like an ethernet cable does. Since HDMI 1.4 was introduced in 2009, this has become standard for most cables. All you need to do is make sure your devices are HEC (HDMI Ethernet Channel) compatible, which is rare.