MUMBAI: The seven High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) founder companies in the US - Hitachi, Panasonic, Phillips, Silicon Image, Sony, Thomson and Toshiba - have released a major enhancement of the HDMI specification, the de facto standard digital interface for high definition consumer electronics.

HDMI 1.3 will enable the next generation of HDTVs, PCs and DVD players to transmit and display content in billions of colours with vividness and accuracy.

The companies state that the HDMI 1.3 specification more than doubles HDMI's bandwidth and adds support for deep colour technology, a broader colour space, new digital audio formats, automatic audio/video lip sync capability and an optional smaller connector for use with personal photo and video devices.

The partners say that the update reflects their determination to ensure that HDMI continues evolving ahead of future consumer demands.

The update arrives at a time of strong momentum for the HDMI standard. More than 400 makers of consumer electronics and PC products worldwide have adopted HDMI. Market researcher In-Stat expects 60 million devices featuring HDMI to ship in 2006.

With the adoption of Deep Color and the xvYCC color space, HDMI 1.3 removes the previous interface-related restrictions on color selection. The interface will no longer be a constraining pipe that forces all content to fit within a limited set of colours, unlike all previous video interfaces.