14 DAY TRIAL // HDMI stands for High-Definition Multimedia Interface. No surprise here since probably most of you knew that. Its sole purpose is to keep a HD stream at its highest quality without any of it being lost. Since it is a digital interface it can only be used with HDMI enabled output devices such as large LCDs or plasma screens. And as a reminder it can carry both audio and video at the same time.
On the market side, HDMI devices shipments will grow at a rate of 78% per year until 2010, while the standard DVI will begin lose ground through 2007. DVI and HDMI are both high-bandwidth digital interfaces but while DVI's target is the PC and peripherals, HDMI is aimed at the CE market.
Nothing new, excepting perhaps the fact that HDMI is starting to appear as an output on graphics cards also, making the existence of DVI a matter of time. And although DVI interfaces are still dominant (90 million DVI-capable devices were sold last year in USA alone), they are starting to lose ground to the more capable and ergonomic HDMI. It's now a safe assumption the fact that DVI interfaces will disappear from the market in the next 2 years.