Sunday, April 29, 2012

How Do HDMI Cables Work - Inside The Cable And The Versions

By Kihoha Layinda


Electronics require connections to transfer content between themselves. Monitors require VGA connectors to attach to video card and SCART cables connect older televisions to DVD players. However, there are so many more connections that improve the quality and compatibility between them all. High-Definition Multimedia Interface connections have become a mainstream connector for new, high-end electronics, such as televisions. The basic explanation of HDMI is that it converts analog signals to digital, allowing for much better image quality. Let's look and see how do HDMI cables work.

The HDMI Innards

The standard HDMI connector is a 19-pin variation. These pins serve a variety of purposes, allowing for compatibility, performance and quality. For example, seven of the pins provide power and communication between other devices. The first nine are focused purely on the conversion of analog to digital through three separate data channels. These channels are governed by three further pins, while two additional pins control the flow of data back and forth through the first nine.

Versions Of HDMI

Long running hardware often has upgrades to enhance the performance of the electronics. Since it's not simply an issue of releasing an update for everyone to enjoy, it's only possible to receive hardware revisions by purchasing the latest items. With version 1.0 of HDMI, standard RGB and YCbCr, 8 channel LPCM, 192 kHz, 24 bit audio capabilities, blu-ray and HD DVD at full resolution and Consumer Electronic Control commands were supported. With the advent of newer technologies and electronic products, they needed to add additional options for it to stay relevant. So with version 1.1 and 1.2(and 1.2a), DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD were added, respectively. They provide a much higher quality audio than traditional audio CDs.

With version 1.3 (the biggest update), Deep Color with its more than 16.7 million colors, xvYCC with its extended color gamut, auto lip-sync, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio were all added, making it the largest update so far. A small update to the CEC command list was released as well. 1.4 brought in several more hardware capabilities, such as compatibility with ethernet, audio return, 4k x 2k resolutions and 3D video, with 3D video's higher resolution available with a later update.




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