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Wednesday, 21 June, 2006

HDMI 1.3 arriving and Sony PS3 will have it first

The next-generation HDMI connector, HDMI 1.3, is nearing approval and will be fitted first to Sony’s PlayStation 3, according to US trade magazine TWICE.

Back in January at CES, HDMI Licensing outlined what the new standard will offer:

New mini connector: With small portable devices such as HD camcorders and still cameras demanding seamless HDTV connectivity, HDMI will offer a new, smaller form-factor connector option. Since HDMI offers the highest quality digital audio and video on a single connection, such devices will be also benefit from a reduced connector count.

Greater PC/CE convergence: HDMI will be enhanced for easier integration into low voltage, AC-coupled PC graphics controllers, cementing HDMI’s position as the de facto standard digital multimedia interface enabling true convergence across PC and CE platforms. The HDMI Founders also support compatibility between HDMI and the Unified Display Interface (UDI), the HDMI-compatible digital video interface for PC displays announced recently by a group of leading PC technology makers.

Lip Sync: CE devices are employing increasingly complex digital signal processing of high-resolution video and audio formats to enhance the clarity and detail of the content. As a result, synchronization of video and audio in user devices has become a greater challenge and could potentially require complex end-user adjustments. HDMI will incorporate features to enable this synchronization to be done automatically by the devices with greater accuracy.

New compressed audio formats: In addition to HDMI’s current ability to support high-bandwidth uncompressed digital audio and all currently-available compressed formats (such as Dolby Digital and DTS), HDMI will add additional support for new compressed digital audio formats Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD.

Higher speed: Though HDMI has more than twice the bandwidth needed to support all HDTV formats, HDMI will increase its single-link bandwidth to support the demands of future HD display devices, such as higher resolutions, deep colour and high frame rates.

Deep colour: HDMI will support 30-bit, 36-bit and 48-bit colour depths for stunning rendering of over one billion colours in unprecedented detail.

As expected, HDMI Licensing says that products implementing new versions of the HDMI specification will continue to be fully backward compatible with earlier HDMI products.

TWICE says that HDMI 1.3 connectors could appear on a wide range of CE products including HDTV sets Blu-ray and HD DVD players, A/V receivers, surround-sound preamp/processors and PCs.

The report quotes Silicon Image as saying that it expects a number of HDMI 1.3-equipped products to appear at CES in January 2007, many of which will ship in the US in the first quarter.