What is HDMI, and how does it compare to DVI?
HDMI stands for “High Definition Multimedia Interface”. It is the latest standard which integrates the same digital video bitstream as DVI-D (Single Link) with up to eight channels of high-res digital audio. What’s more, it is a two-way communicating bus, allowing a source and display device to “talk” to each other. For example, a display device (eg Plasma screen) can tell your source devcie (eg DVD) what format it wants to run in, and the DVD can output the appropriate signal. This is of course reliant on the manufacturers making their firmware compatible with this capability. It’s essentially the modern-day SCART cable, containing both picture and sound. The picture quality of DVI-D and HDMI will be identical, assuming the same standard of cable is being compared, as the video signal/bitstream is the same. HDMI differs in that it also contains audio, has communications ability, and takes up less real estate on a device’s connections panel.
