The ballpoint pen. The automatic transition. The remote control. The microwave oven. All devices that turned chaos, or at least inconvenience, into order, making the complicated stupid simple.

And now, HDMI.

Hyperbole? Maybe, but when was the last time you hooked up an A/V system? A dish of spaghetti looks more orderly than the tangle of cables in the rear of some enthusiasts' A/V gear stack.

HDMI, aka High Definition Multimedia Interface, is the only all-digital audio/video cable interface – the tri-color component video cable is an analog connector. HDMI connections morph the aforementioned analog plate of pasta into something resembling neat shoe lacing.

One HDMI cable can replace up to 11 A/V cables to connect a single device. When you're connecting three or four HD devices such as an HD cable or satellite set-top box, a standard definition or Blu-ray DVD player, a high def-enabled video game system, and/or an Internet TV box, even Monk would be satisfied with the resulting minimal cable array.

With the number of HDMI-enabled devices multiplying like a calculator, the number of HDMI inputs on your HDTV becomes a prime purchase delineator. LG's LG90, LG70 and LG60 1080p LCD HDTVs and its PG60 1080p plasma HDTVs all include four HDMI inputs, while the HD LCD LG50, LG40 and LG30 sets all are equipped with three HDMI inputs.

HDMI Delivery
To say HDMI carries all digital video and audio data is an understatement. The current 1.3 version of the HDMI standard neatly conveys all ATSC digital video formats – standard, enhanced, or high-definition, interlaced or progressive. HDMI also transmits all current multi-channel digital audio formats including 8-channel 192kHz uncompressed digital audio, Dolby Digital and DTS along with lossless digital audio formats Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.

HDMI 1.3 also includes additional attributes to enhance your HD listening and viewing. For instance, HDMI 1.3 supports the new Deep Color standard, available through all HDMI jacks on all LG plasma and LCD 1080p HDTVs. Deep Color is 10-bit, 12-bit and 16-bit (RGB or YCbCr) color depths, up from the 8-bit depths in previous versions of the HDMI specification. In less geeky terms, Deep Color means stunning rendering of more than a billion colors in unprecedented detail.

Perhaps more important than a billion colors is Lip Sync. With all the complex digital signal processing going on it gets harder to make sure the dialog you hear matches up to the lip movement you see on screen. Just a micro-second off between sound and mouth movement can ruin any viewing experience. HDMI 1.3 incorporates automatic audio synching capabilities, which allows digital devices to perform this lip service automatically with perfect accuracy.

Finally, HDMI 1.3 is future-proof. It supports single-link bandwidth to 340 MHz (10.2 Gbps), which meets the demands of future HD displays, such as next-gen 1440p resolution and higher frame rates.

Who's In Control?
But HDMI carries more than digital aural and visual data. It also carries the unified remote control codes of HDMI-CEC, or Consumer Electronics Control.

All CEC-enabled HD equipment, which includes LG's plasma and LCD HDTVs, can talk to each other. This data communication can vastly simplify your life, removing one of high-tech's greatest frustrations – that Jenga-like pile of remotes. With CEC-enabled gear connected via HDMI, push one button and all your gear turns on; hit "play" and all equipment switches to the correct settings and your DVD begins to play. Heaven!

But entertainment systems consisting of CEC-enabled gear from varying manufacturers are limited in their CEC capabilities. LG has expanded CEC into SimpLink, which expands the one-touch control capabilities of all HDMI-connected LG SimpLink gear.

HDMI Is Not Alone
HDTV jack packs, of course, include more than just HDMI connectors. After all, you still may have some analog A/V devices such as a VCR or an older video game system or a DVD player lacking HDMI.

For instance, there's component video, those triple cables with red, green and blue RCA connectors used to connect pre-HDMI-equipped HD gear. Component cables split analog video signals into two channels for color and a third for luminance, or brightness. While component cables can carry 1080p signals, many 1080p devices require HDMI. Plus, component can't convey Deep Color and, obviously, carry only video, not audio.

S-video cables have a metal round 4-pin connector, and splits an analog NTSC video signal into luminance and color. You'll want to use this connector if you still have a VCR rather than the single yellow composite video cable, the one with the RCA jack at the end.

Older plasma HDTVs have an earlier form of HDMI called DVI, or Digital Visual Interface. This 29-pin connection, commonly used with computer monitors, carries digital video signals. You can get an adapter to connect an older DVI-equipped HDTV to an HDMI-equipped source component, but you'll still need to connect a separate digital audio cable. Connecting HDMI-equipped cable boxes via DVI also may be a problem since HD cable boxes often require HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection)-enabled HDMI-only connections. You can still use a component cable if you're stuck in this bind.

Get On The Bus
Computer enthusiasts are well aware of the wonders of USB (Universal Serial Bus), especially new multi-gigabyte thumb-sized jump drives. These skinny flash memory wands are the new, albeit more copious, floppy disks, and are generally used to ferry digital photos, music and office files from PC to PC.

Recognizing the sudden ubiquity of these USB jump drives, LG has included USB 2.0 ports on all its 1080p LCD HDTVs. These USB ports allows you to plug in a thumb drive and view its digital photos or listen to its digital music files on your LG HDTV. You can even create a slide show set to music.

And just like you haven't seen a movie or TV show until you've seen it in high-def though an HDMI connection, you haven't seen your megapixel digital photos until you've seen them blown up on a 50-inch HDTV screen. As you gaze in wonder upon them as if peering through a crystal window, you'll realize what all those millions of high-def pixels are for.

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