HDMI in Actions and HDMI in Applications

Digital cameras and camcorders: As of 2011, most standalone camcorders, as well as many digital cameras, are equipped with a mini-HDMI connector.

Blu-ray Disc/HD DVD players: Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD, introduced in 2006, offer new high-fidelity audio features that require HDMI for best results. HDMI 1.3 can transport Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD Master Audio. This capability allows for an AV receiver with the necessary decoder to decode the compressed audio stream. The Blu-ray specification does not support video encoded with either Deep Color or xvYCC so that HDMI 1.0 can transfer Blu-ray discs at full video quality.

Blu-ray permits secondary audio decoding, whereby the disc content can tell the player to mix multiple audio sources together before final output. Some Blu-ray and HD DVD players can decode all of the audio codecs internally and can output LPCM audio over HDMI. Multichannel LPCM can be transported over an HDMI connection, and as long as the AV receiver supports multichannel LPCM audio over HDMI and supports HDCP, the audio reproduction is equal in resolution to HDMI 1.3 bitstream output. Some low-cost AV receivers, such as the Onkyo TX-SR506, do not support audio processing over HDMI and are labelled as "HDMI pass through" devices.

Personal computers: PCs with a DVI interface are capable of video output to an HDMI-enabled monitor. Some PCs include an HDMI interface and may also be capable of HDMI audio output, depending on specific hardware. For example, Intel's motherboard chipsets since the 945G have been capable of 8-channel LPCM output over HDMI, as well as NVIDIA’s GeForce 8200/8300 motherboard chipsets. Eight-channel LPCM audio output over HDMI with a video card was first seen with the ATI Radeon HD 4850, which was released in June 2008 and is supported by other video cards in the ATI Radeon HD 4000 series. Linux can support 8-channel LPCM audio over HDMI if the video card has the necessary hardware and supports the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA). The ATI Radeon HD 4000 series supports ALSA. Cyberlink announced in June 2008 that they would update their PowerDVD playback software to support 192 kHz/24-bit Blu-ray Disc audio decoding in Q3-Q4 of 2008. Corel's WinDVD 9 Plus currently supports 96 kHz/24-bit Blu-ray Disc audio decoding.

Even with an HDMI output, a computer may not support HDCP, Microsoft's Protected Video Path, or Microsoft's Protected Audio Path. In the case of HDCP, there were several early graphic cards that were labelled as "HDCP-enabled" but did not actually have the necessary hardware for HDCP. This included certain graphic cards based on the ATI X1600 chipset and certain models of the NVIDIA Geforce 7900 series. The first computer monitors with HDCP support started to be released in 2005, and by February 2006, a dozen different models had been released. The Protected Video Path was enabled in graphic cards that supported HDCP, since it was required for output of Blu-ray Disc video. In comparison, the Protected Audio Path was only required if a lossless audio bitstream (such as Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA) was output. Uncompressed LPCM audio, however, does not require a Protected Audio Path, and software programs such as PowerDVD and WinDVD can decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA and output it as LPCM. A limitation is that if the computer does not support a Protected Audio Path, the audio must be downsampled to 16-bit 48 kHz but can still output at up to 8 channels. No graphic cards were released in 2008 that supported the Protected Audio Path.
In June 2008, Asus announced Xonar HDAV1.3, which in December 2008 received a software update and became the first HDMI sound card that supported the Protected Audio Path and can both bitstream and decode lossless audio (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA), although bitstreaming is only available if using the ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre software. The Xonar HDAV1.3 has an HDMI 1.3 input/output, and Asus says that it can work with most video cards on the market.

In September 2009, AMD announced the ATI Radeon HD 5000 series video cards which features support for HDMI 1.3 output (Deep Color, xvYCC wide gamut support, and high bit rate audio), support for 8-channel LPCM over HDMI, and an integrated HD audio controller with a Protected Audio Path that allows bitstream output over HDMI for AAC, Dolby AC-3, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS Master Audio formats. The ATI Radeon HD 5870 released in September 2009 is the first video card that supports bitstream output over HDMI for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.
In December 2010 it was announced that several computer vendors and display makers including Intel, AMD, Dell, Lenovo, Samsung and LG would stop using LVDS from 2013 and legacy DVI and VGA connectors from 2015, replacing them with DisplayPort and HDMI.