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Brief History of HDMI**
The HDMI Founders are Hitachi, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic/National/Quasar), Philips, Silicon Image, Sony, Thomson (RCA), and Toshiba. Digital Content Protection, LLC provides HDCP (which was developed by Intel) for HDMI.
HDMI has the support of motion picture producers Fox, Universal, Warner Bros., and Disney, along with system operators DirecTV, EchoStar (Dish Network), and CableLabs.
And with all these major companies supporting the development of the HDMI cable, the founders knew they had a great thing when they heard and saw it. According to In-Stat, the number of HDMI devices sold was 5 million in 2004, 17.4 million in 2005, 63 million in 2006, and 143 million in 2007. HDMI is becoming the de facto standard for HDTVs, and according to In-Stat, around 90% of digital televisions in 2007 included HDMI.
In-Stat has estimated that 229 million HDMI devices were sold in 2008. On January 7, 2009, HDMI Licensing, LLC announced that HDMI had reached an installed base of over 600 million HDMI devices. In-Stat has estimated that 394 million HDMI devices will sell in 2009 and that all digital televisions by the end of 2009 would have at least one HDMI input.
In 2008, PC Magazine awarded HDMI a Technical Excellence Award in the Home Theater category for an "innovation that has changed the world". Ten companies were given a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for their development of HDMI by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences on January 7, 2009.
Applications - PC**
PC's with a DVI interface are capable of video output to an HDMI-enabled monitor. Some PCs include an HDMI interface and may also be capable of HDMI audio output, depending on specific hardware.
For example, Intel's motherboard chipsets since the 945G have been capable of 8-channel LPCM output over HDMI, as well as NVIDIA’s GeForce 8200/8300 motherboard chipsets. Eight-channel LPCM audio output over HDMI with a video card was first seen with the ATI Radeon HD 4850, which was released in June 2008 and is supported by other video cards in the ATI Radeon HD 4000 series.
Linux can support 8-channel LPCM audio over HDMI if the video card has the necessary hardware and supports the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA). The ATI Radeon HD 4000 series supports ALSA.
Cyberlink announced in June 2008 that they would update their PowerDVD playback software to support 192 kHz/24-bit Blu-ray Disc audio decoding in Q3-Q4 of 2008. Corel's WinDVD 9 Plus currently supports 96 kHz/24-bit Blu-ray Disc audio decoding.
Even with an HDMI output, a computer may not support HDCP, Microsoft's Protected Video Path, or Microsoft's Protected Audio Path. In the case of HDCP, there were several early graphic cards that were labeled as "HDCP-enabled" but did not actually have the necessary hardware for HDCP.
This included certain graphic cards based on the ATI X1600 chipset and certain models of the NVIDIA Geforce 7900 series. The first computer monitors with HDCP support started to be released in 2005, and by February 2006, a dozen different models had been released.
The Protected Video Path was enabled in graphic cards that supported HDCP, since it was required for output of Blu-ray Disc video. In comparison, the Protected Audio Path was only required if a lossless audio bitstream (such as Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA) was output.
Uncompressed LPCM audio, however, does not require a Protected Audio Path, and software programs such as PowerDVD and WinDVD can decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA and output it as LPCM. A limitation is that if the computer does not support a Protected Audio Path, the audio must be downsampled to 16-bit 48 kHz but can still output at up to 8 channels.
No graphic cards were released in 2008 that supported the Protected Audio Path. In June 2008, Asus announced Xonar HDAV1.3, which in December 2008 received a software update and became the first HDMI sound card that supported the Protected Audio Path and can both bitstream and decode lossless audio (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA), although bitstreaming is only available if using the ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre software.
The Xonar HDAV1.3 has an HDMI 1.3 input/output, and Asus says that it can work with most video cards on the market. In September 2009, AMD announced the ATI Radeon HD 5000 series video cards which features support for HDMI 1.3 output (Deep Color, xvYCC wide gamut support, and high bit rate audio), support for 8-channel LPCM over HDMI, and an integrated HD audio controller with a Protected Audio Path that allows bitstream output over HDMI for AAC, Dolby AC-3, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS Master Audio formats.
The ATI Radeon HD 5870 released in September 2009 is the first video card that supports bitstream output over HDMI for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.
What HDMI cable should I buy?**
Per CNET, "Cheap HDMI cables widely available from online retailers instead of the expensive counterparts sold in your local electronics store."
Expensive cables aren't worth it. If you walk into your typical electronics store to buy an HDMI cable, you're likely to see prices upward of $50 with promises of better performance and faster speeds.
You should never pay more than $10 for a standard six-foot HDMI cable. And despite what salesmen and manufacturers might tell you, there's no meaningful difference between the $10 cable and the $50 cable.
Unless you see something obvious, such as dropouts or a flashing screen, the digital information transmitted by both cables is exactly the same--no cable can make the picture any better or any worse.
"Cheap HDMI cables sound great! Where can I get them?"
Per CNET, "The best way to score a cheap HDMI cable is to order over the Internet. ABACUS 24-7, one online retailer, has several HDMI cables for less than $10. You can click on any of the HDMI cable links below to access their site."
Grab your HDMI cable here, and see and hear what you are missing on your big screen!
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