WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.880 Of all the technologies we have right now that suggest we really are living in the future, 00:00:04.880 --> 00:00:11.040 perhaps nothing sounds more futuristic than the fact that we can transmit data with laser light. 00:00:11.040 --> 00:00:16.000 Indeed, many of the highest capacity cables that form the backbone of the internet use 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:21.200 fiber optics, and fiber to the home connections that deliver very high speeds have become more 00:00:21.200 --> 00:00:26.800 popular in recent years. But did you know that one optical technology that used to be pretty 00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:33.120 common place in home audio is now getting replaced by good old-fashioned copper? I'm not talking about 00:00:33.120 --> 00:00:38.640 CDs, which you can learn more about up here. I'm actually referring to the Toshiba link, 00:00:38.640 --> 00:00:43.680 or TOS link connector. If you're not sure what that is, there's actually a good chance you have 00:00:43.680 --> 00:00:49.680 one on the back of your desktop PC. It's a square-ish looking connector that's lit up with red light. 00:00:49.680 --> 00:00:55.680 They were also extremely common not so long ago when DVD players ruled the world. You see, 00:00:55.680 --> 00:01:02.080 although TOS link was originally developed in the 1980s to connect CD players to other audio equipment, 00:01:02.080 --> 00:01:08.160 it made its way into DVD players and computers as an easy way to deliver digital audio over just 00:01:08.160 --> 00:01:14.560 one cable. So if you had a 5.1 surround setup, for example, you could use a single TOS link cable 00:01:14.560 --> 00:01:22.080 to send a digital signal to a receiver that would then decode it, rather than one RCA cable for every 00:01:22.080 --> 00:01:27.360 channel, which would suck. And it did. And another cool thing about TOS link was that because it 00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:32.960 used light, it wouldn't suffer from interference from other nearby electronics. So what we had was 00:01:32.960 --> 00:01:40.400 a convenient, clean, futuristic pathway for high-resolution audio. So why is it going away? Well, 00:01:40.400 --> 00:01:46.000 one reason is that it's actually not very good at carrying signals over any kind of significant 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:51.760 distance, which is counterintuitive because those fiber optic cables on the ocean floor use light 00:01:51.760 --> 00:01:57.360 to transmit data and they work for huge amounts of information being sent thousands of miles away. 00:01:57.360 --> 00:02:04.480 So what gives? The answer is in how the cables are physically constructed. Unlike higher spec, 00:02:04.480 --> 00:02:10.000 high bandwidth fiber optic cables, optical TOS link cables are often built with how you say 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:15.920 cheap plastic as a transmission medium inside, contributing to the light attenuating or losing 00:02:15.920 --> 00:02:21.040 its strength as it travels down the pipe. This means that not only do TOS link cables have a 00:02:21.040 --> 00:02:27.120 maximum length of around 10 meters or 33 feet, but also that they're bandwidth limited compared 00:02:27.120 --> 00:02:33.360 to other solutions. The latest version of TOS link has data rates up to 125 megabits per second, 00:02:33.360 --> 00:02:38.480 which is certainly fast enough for high res audio and even theoretically for high def video at the 00:02:38.480 --> 00:02:45.680 same time. But the release of HDMI in the early 2000s created a very sticky situation for TOS link. 00:02:45.680 --> 00:02:52.240 Not only did HDMI offer a relatively easy one cable solution for both audio and video, 00:02:52.240 --> 00:02:58.080 even the very earliest versions of HDMI were a lot faster than TOS link, meaning they were not 00:02:58.080 --> 00:03:02.880 only good for consumer applications, but also professional settings where users needed to work 00:03:02.880 --> 00:03:08.880 with uncompressed video and audio. Despite the fact that HDMI just uses copper cables without any 00:03:08.880 --> 00:03:14.080 fancy optical data transfer, their construction meant that they could carry faster signals over 00:03:14.080 --> 00:03:19.840 longer distances. And TOS link cables also had a bad habit of breaking if you bent them too much, 00:03:19.840 --> 00:03:25.600 due to their more rigid cores, something that HDMI cables could withstand a lot more easily. 00:03:25.600 --> 00:03:32.000 So as time went on, the industry concentrated on expanding the HDMI spec to support more and more 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:39.120 audio standards, such as Lossus DTS Master Audio, Dolby True HD and the newer DTSX and Dolby Atmos, 00:03:39.440 --> 00:03:45.360 which you can learn a lot more about up here. TOS link on the other hand was more or less left 00:03:45.360 --> 00:03:49.840 to languish. Although it certainly would have been possible to update the spec and make it 00:03:49.840 --> 00:03:55.760 compatible with newer fancier formats, no one ever really got around with it, because HDMI largely 00:03:55.760 --> 00:04:01.680 made it irrelevant. But that doesn't mean that TOS link is totally useless today. It still works 00:04:01.680 --> 00:04:07.920 well as a simple hookup for a compressed digital audio like bog standard Dolby digital or DTS 5.1, 00:04:07.920 --> 00:04:13.040 and you'll still find it on many soundbars out there as an easy way to connect to a display, 00:04:13.040 --> 00:04:18.160 even if there's no HDMI out available. Even some small devices use mini TOS link, 00:04:18.160 --> 00:04:22.240 which can be combined with a standard 3.5 millimeter jack in order to save space. 00:04:22.240 --> 00:04:26.240 And if you're using a vintage audio receiver, maybe that doesn't have HDMI, 00:04:26.240 --> 00:04:32.320 so you gotta get to your TV somehow. So it's not quite dead yet, okay? Just don't tell those 00:04:32.320 --> 00:04:37.520 coroners from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A reference from before you were born probably.