14 DAY TRIAL // The seven HDMI Founder companies - Hitachi, Ltd., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (Panasonic), Royal Philips Electronics, Silicon Image, Inc., Sony Corp., Thomson, Inc. and Toshiba Corp. - released an important development of the High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) specification, the standard digital interface for high definition consumer electronics - HDMI 1.3, informs Hardware News.
"HDMI is an established cornerstone for the whole High Definition TV industry and Philips is extremely pleased to see such significant improvements for picture and sound quality with this new version," said Johan van de Ven, CTO and Senior Vice President of Royal Philips Consumer Electronics International B.V. "We look forward to continuing to work with other HDMI Founder companies to extend the scope of HDMI across new devices and applications, while remaining entirely committed to ensuring full backward compatibility with existing products."
It seems that this new development can be reinterpreted as a not-giving-up action on HDMI, consequently, trying to ensure a future for their development.
The HDMI 1.3 specification is said to double HDMI's bandwidth and, in the same time, to add support for Deep Color technology, new digital audio formats, a broader color space, automatic audio/video synching capability and an optional smaller connector meant for video devices.
"PLAYSTATION3 will be the most advanced computer platform for enjoying a wide range of entertainment content, including the latest games and HD movies, in the home," said Ken Kutaragi, president and group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. "By introducing the next-generation HDMI 1.3 technology, with its high speed and deep color capabilities, PS3 will push the boundaries of audiovisual quality to the next level of more natural and smoother expression on the latest large flat panel displays."
The new interface revolutionizes the way the images are displayed. Previously, the interfaces constrained all the content to be shown using a range of colors. Now, after the new HDMI 1.3 emerged, all these constraints become history.
The new development comes out in a perfect moment, in which HDMI Licensing, LLC announced that more than 400 makers of consumer electronics and PC products worldwide have adopted HDMI.