What consumer electronics products will have an advantage because of the new HDMI 1.3 capabilities?

What consumer electronics products will have an advantage because of the new HDMI 1.3 capabilities? With all the build up surrounding the new HDMI 1.3 version, consumers are anxious to know when these products will hit the market to be purchased. HDMI 1.3 is approved and Silicon Image is sampling HDMI 1.3 chips. November saw the release of the new Playstation 3, which was the first HDMI 1.3 product on the market.. The big question being, of course, is when will some other HDMI 1.3 products come out on the market? HDMI 1.3 supports the new audio formats like DTS HD Master and Dolby TrueHD.

Announcements by manufacturers state that the new high definition DVD formats, like BluRay and HD-DVD, and new game systems, including the Playstation 3, will be enabled to take advantage of the new HDMI 1.3 specifications. Digital televisions will have the ability to provide images that are nearer to real life than has ever been previously possibly. This includes plasma display microdisplays, LCD T.V.s, and rear projection microdisplays.

Silicon Image states that several new HDMI 1.3 products appeared at January’s CES show. HD televisions, A/V receivers,, and HD disc players were shown with HDMI 1.3 support.

Epson released the EMP-TW1000. This is the first display supporting 30-bit deep color, one of the benefits of HDMI 1.3a . The EMP-TW1000 is a new 3LCD projector that originated from Japan. It has the ability to pump out a Full HD (1080p) 1920x1080 resolution image across that 2.1x optical manual zoom lens with the inclusion of HDMI 1.3 to put out pixels at up to 340Mpixels/sec to support 48 bit color depth and lossless audio streams. The TW1000 throws a maximum contrast ratio of 12,000:1 in a room that has total darkness with a 1200 lumen lamp that stays within 26dB of noise.

The Sony Playstation 3 shipped in November 2006. This was the first source product to provide the highest quality imagery to these displays. The Playstation 3 supports deep color which gives unbelievable graphics and color shadings. It is the next generation of game systems. Xbox has not yet commented on whether or not their latest system will have HDMI 1.3 capabilities.

The majority of HDMI V1.3 devices, like hi-definition DVD players, A/V receivers, and HDTV's, are not expected to hit the consumer electronics market until sometime in mid 2007. Consumers who want products that are enabled for the new specification may have some problems finding them. This is because the licensing organization does not require manufacturers to state what version of HDMI a particular product has enabled. The licensing group just says that consumers should look at the functionality that they desire the device to support, like TruHD audio or deep color video, not search for a particular version of HDMI. Receivers that decode Dolby TruHD and DTS-HD Master will also begin to show up early this year. It is recommended that any purchase of an HDMI 1.3 device should not be done before confirming the product compatibility with either the website of the manufacturer or discuss these compatibility issues on any of the online forums.

Personal Computer graphics companies can bake the HDMI 1.3 technology into their video cards fairly easy, so companies like Nvidia and ATI have said they will produce products that are supported by HDMI 1.3 specifications.

These new HDMI 1.3 specifications include several updates. These updates include single-link bandwidth increases to 10.2 Gbps or 340 MHz, plus automatic capability for audio syncing, or lip syncing, incorporated. HDMI 1.3 also supports 30 bit, 36 bit, and 48 bit xvYCC with deep color, which is over one billion colors. This is a definite improvement over the 24 color bit depth of the sRGB or the YCbCr in earlier versions. HDMI 1.3 also offers support for the output of DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TruHD streams to be decoded externally for A/V Receivers. These formats are lossless audio codec formats that are used on HD-DVDs and BluRay discs. If the disc player has the ability to decode these streams into uncompressed audio, then HDMI 1.3 is not needed because all HDMI versions can transport uncompressed audio signals. There is also the availability of the new mini connector for portable devices like camcorders and digital still camera.

As more time passes, consumers will see more and more products to hit the market that take advantage of the HDMI 1.3 specifications.