If you're a home theater aficionado, or if you're just setting up a new Blu-ray player and HDTV for the first time, you've probably heard of HDMI. As with many things in the consumer electronics industry, you might have heard that HDMI is fantastic, but have very little idea about what it actually does. What is HDMI? HDMI is the interface of the future, providing high-quality video and audio signal in a single cable.
What is HDMI: Basic Overview
HDMI, which stands for High-Definition Multimedia Interface, is a video and audio interface. It's a way to transfer video and audio signal from the source to your home theater system or HDTV. It's a basic task, but the technology used in the HDMI interface far superior to that of older interfaces, such as S-video, component or composite connections.
What is HDMI: Uncompressed and All-digital
HDMI carries uncompressed, totally digital signals. When you start with a digital video source, such as DVD or Blu-ray, and use an analog interface, such as S-video, component video or composite video, the video signal loses integrity when you convert it from digital to analog. If you're sending the signal to a digital television, such as a HDTV, the video signal loses even more integrity when you convert it from analog back to digital. This causes a decline in picture quality.
However, if you use HDMI to connect a digital source to a digital television, the signal stays digital throughout the entire process. You don't have the same quality loss as you do when switching it from digital to analog and back to digital again. Furthermore, other interfaces compress signal data; squishing it up to make it easier to carry across antiquated connections. HDMI has plenty of bandwidth, making it unnecessary to compress the signal and lose more video and audio quality.
One Cable, Many Signals
The HDMI interface carries both video and audio signals, with an incredibly high bandwidth of 5 Gigabytes per second. HDMI cables carry uncompressed video and up to 8 audio channels for surround sound setup. In the old analog-style setups, you'd need to use three video cables and six audio cables to run video and surround-sound. However, the use of a single HDMI cable simplifies the setup process, with only one cord to run between the component and television for both video and audio setup.
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