As far as display compatibility is concerned, HDMI supports every uncompressed standard, enhanced, and high definition video format including the older PAL format. Furthermore, HDMI’s high definition television resolutions supported are 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. Most standard PC monitor formats are also supported by HDMI. These include VGA, XGA, and SXGA at resolutions of 1600x1200 and beyond.
HDMI also supports uncompressed audio formats and compressed audio formats including Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital EX, DTS, and DTS EX. Following the DVD-Audio standard, HDMI was built to handle 1-8 uncompressed audio streams and has sample rates of 48, 96, or even 192 kHz. Compressed multi-channel audio streams can also be handled at sample rates of 192 kHz.
Fortunately for those with numerous DVI devices, HDMI is backwards compatible with these and devices using the EIA-861 DTV profile. The additional features of HDMI, however, including digital audio and Consumer Electronics Control (CEC), will not work on these systems.
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