Sony STR-DA7100ES Technical Background page 17

Image 3 cables
Sound Analogue 6 cables
DVD
Sound Digital 1 cable i.LINK or SPDIF
Before HDMI (left), you needed nine cables to get component video and
5.1-channel analog audio from your DVD player and into your receiver.
If you wanted digital audio as well, that would mean a tenth cable.
HDMI conveys both video and audio with full resolution and digital
precision—all on a single cable!
The options for audio are equally rich. For example, the HDMI output of
Sony ES Series DVD players can support a full range of digital audio, including
2-channel stereo PCM, Dolby Digital® and DTS® 5.1-channel compressed audio
and even uncompressed multi-channel PCM audio! With so many choices for
video and audio output, you may wonder whether users will be knowledgeable
enough to get the best performance from their systems. Is RGB preferable to
Y/Cb/Cr? Is 720p better suited to their television or 1080i? While users will have
their choice from a menu of options, HDMI offers a simpler way.
Component-to-component communication
A system called "product unique key exchange" enables connected
equipment to automatically confirm the type of component connected through
HDMI. In addition, a source component (such as Sony's DVP-NS9100ES DVD
player) can automatically transfer the appropriate audio and video by checking
the input capabilities of product next to it (such as an HDMI equipped television
or A/V receiver). In this way, the equipment can automatically choose the
highest performance audio and video formats that the source and target
components both have in common!
Consider what happens when you connect an HDMI equipped DVD player
to an HDMI equipped television. On first connection the two components
exchange basic information—they "introduce themselves."
DVD player
with HDMI
output
Hi. I'm a DVD player.
ES Receivers v1.0
Component
TV
STR
etc
HDMI 1 cable
DVD
Hi. I'm a television.
TV
STR
etc
Television
with HDMI
input
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