HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) is the newest interface for audiovisual equipment such as high-definition television and home theater systems. With 19 wires wrapped in a single cable that resembles a USB wire, HDMI is able to carry a bandwidth of 5 Gbps (gigabits per second). This is more than twice the bandwidth needed to transmit multi-channel audio and video, future-proofing HDMI for some time to come. This and several other factors make HDMI much more desirable than its predecessors, component video, S-Video and composite video.

HDMI is an uncompressed, all-digital signal, while the aforementioned interfaces are all analog. With an analog interface, a clean digital source is translated into less precise analog, sent to the television, then converted back to a digital signal to display on screen. At each translation, the digital signal loses integrity, resulting in some distortion of picture quality. HDMI preserves the source signal, eliminating analog conversion to deliver the sharpest, richest picture possible.