You’ll probably be hearing a lot in the coming year about HDMI, or high-definition multimedia interface, a new cable standard which can transmit an uncompressed digital audio and video so that you could conceivably have just one cable connecting your DVD player to your digital surround sound A/V receiver. Besides improving picture quality, making it a heck of a lot easier to connect things together, and clearing some of that cable clutter, HDMI allows components to communicate between themselves, so that your DVD player could tell your digital TV that it is about to start playing a movie in widescreen movie and to adjust its settings. The first TVs and DVD players with HDMI started showing up earlier this year and there should be tons more next year.
