News

Consumer Electronics Industry Embraces HDMI at CES (19/1/2004)

Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, Thomson/RCA and Onkyo Among Manufacturers Showcasing 70+ HDMI Products Featuring Silicon Image's PanelLink Cinema Silicon

Next-generation digital TVs, DVD players and set-top boxes have a new look this year. Smaller than the size of a quarter, the High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) connector has quickly emerged as the premier all-digital audio and video interface for consumer electronics products. More than 70 HDMI source and display devices featuring Silicon Image's (NASDAQ:SIMGE) PanelLink Cinema(TM) technology are being showcased at CES this week by a number of leading manufacturers, including Panasonic, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, Thomson/RCA and Onkyo.

Silicon Image, a leader in multi-gigabit semiconductor solutions for the secure transmission and storage of rich digital media, is the first company to ship HDMI silicon solutions in the marketplace. Meeting the industry's need for secure digital content delivery, Silicon Image's HDMI-compliant PanelLink Cinema transmitters and receivers feature High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP), enabling consumer electronics devices to deliver premium content and the highest-quality, all-digital audio and video viewing experience to consumers. HDCP is supported by all links in the CE value chain, including Hollywood studios, cable and satellite providers, and CE manufacturers.

"We're excited to see such a wide variety of HDMI source and display products at CES, all enabled by our PanelLink Cinema technology," said John LeMoncheck, Silicon Image vice president, consumer electronics products. "HDMI is taking the CE industry by storm. With our proven PanelLink Cinema solutions, we're enabling the industry's rapid transition to HDMI and allowing manufacturers to introduce more feature-rich HDMI products."

The following manufacturers are among the many companies showcasing HDMI products at CES featuring Silicon Image's PanelLink Cinema silicon:

-- Panasonic -- 5 plasma TVs, 2 LCD TVs, 4 flat-screen CRTs, 3 rear-projection TVs, 2 DLP projection TVs, 5 rear-projection TVs and 1 DVD player

-- Pioneer -- 4 HD plasma TVs, 2 HD projection TVs, 2 HD plasma monitors and 1 DVD player

-- Samsung -- 1 plasma TV, 8 DLP projection TVs, 3 CRT projection TVs and 2 LCD TVs

-- Sharp -- 11 LCD TVs

-- Onkyo -- 1 A/V receiver and 1 DVD player

-- Thomson -- Various projection HDTV Monitors and HDTV Sets

Thomson, the marketer of RCA and RCA Scenium HDTV products, was the first to add secure digital interfaces to all of its HDTV Monitors and HDTV Sets. All of Thomson's new 2004 HDTV Sets and projection HDTV Monitors will feature the HDMI interface with HDCP copy protection, including more than a dozen models that will be marketed as Digital Cable Ready HDTV Sets.

To support the plethora of new HDMI products and promote connectivity between home theater devices equipped with HDMI, Monster Cable is launching its new HDMI cable line, providing consumers with a variety of lengths and configurations to connect HDMI products to one another and to backward-compatible DVI products.

"With the increasing number of high-definition video sources available, getting all the connections right to take advantage of these technologies is a major challenge to consumers," said Noel Lee, The Head Monster of Monster Cable. "Being able to consolidate uncompressed digital video and digital audio into one cable will make home theater hook-up much easier. We are working in partnership with Silicon Image to launch 50 new Monster HDMI connectivity products at CES and will be demonstrating the benefits of HDMI in our South Hall booth and Hilton suites."

"The increasingly digital landscape for home entertainment is causing a bandwidth crisis in digital CE products," said Jack Gold, vice president, META Group. "Indeed, without high-speed interconnections like HDMI, the feature-rich digital media experiences that are now coming to market will not provide the incremental improvements necessary to get consumers to update their legacy equipment. We expect the availability of HDMI to become a key criteria by which new age products are purchased and deployed."

Jim Sanduski, vice president of marketing for Samsung, noted, "With its all-digital video and audio capability and sleek, user-friendly connector, HDMI provides consumers with optimal quality and ease-of-use. Samsung is incorporating HDMI on a wide variety of source and display devices to provide consumers the ultimate home theater connectivity solution."

"HDMI is an important standard for bringing the all-digital experience to consumer households," said Ed Wolff, Sr. Manager, Vice President, Display Group, Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company, which is a division of Matsushita Electric Corporation of America, the principal North American subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., LTD. "As an HDMI founder, Panasonic is committed to leading the way with HDMI-enabled devices, and Silicon Image was the only company to provide the necessary technology that allowed us to design and ship this season's digital products with HDMI in mind."

"Our customers have grown to expect not only high quality audio and video from Onkyo but they also demand that our products be easy to connect and use," said Don Milks, national product and marketing manager, Onkyo USA. "We believe that the high-speed interconnectivity offered by HDMI will address these needs now and going forward into the foreseeable future and we are firmly committed to this technology."

www.siliconimage.com