News written by James Delahunty (October, 2006)

Earlier this week, Silicon Image, Inc., introduced two new VastLane High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) transmitter chips that enable PC manufacturers to drive their digital output to PC monitors and HDTVs from a single transmitter. The VastLane SiI1392-3 and VastLane SiI1932-3 offer performance of up to 340MHz or 10.2Gbps, letting them support monitor resolutions up to WQXGA (2560 x 1600 pixels) or HDTV resolutions up to 1440p.

The previous generation of HDMI chips for PCs operated at up to 165 MHz, which limited them to monitor resolutions of UXGA (1600 × 1200 pixels). Silicon Image is one of the HDMI founders and is delivering the components needed to strengthen the market leadership of the HDMI interface in the PC space. HDMI is already becoming the standard digital interface for HDTVs and HD CE equipment.

"Silicon Image is enabling PC manufacturers to realize the benefits of HDMI with HDMI transmitter solutions designed for all PC sources," said Dale Zimmerman, vice president of worldwide marketing at Silicon Image. "These products bring cost-effective, high-performance HDMI functionality to a variety of PC platforms, including motherboards with integrated graphics chipsets, notebook PCs and discrete graphics cards. PCs using these transmitters will have truly universal connectivity with the estimated 150 million DVI and HDMI monitors and TVs already in the market."

Following a ruling earlier this month by the High Court of London, Lik-Sang has declared itself out of business "due to multiple Sony lawsuits". The ruling found that sales of PSPs from Lik-Sang to customers in the UK and the European Economic Area (EEA) are unlawful. The hearing took place on October 9 at the High Court of London, without Lik-Sang's legal representatives attending or arguing at the hearing.

The argument over PSP sales started in August 2005, when Lik-Sang was shipping PSP consoles to the UK and the rest of Europe where it was not available in stores yet. Sony alleged that Lik-Sang advertised the Sony products "in a dishonest manner" and "unlawfully interferes with Sony's economical interests" in a lawsuit in the High Court of Hong Kong.

Sony also filed a lawsuit in the UK for the sale of the PSPs but also went after Lik-Sang for copyright infringement for mirroring the freely available PSP user guides on their servers. Yesterday, Lik-Sang left an article on its website explaining to customers that the company is out of business and that Sony is to blame.