scope:

CEA-861-C establishes protocols, requirements, and recommendations for the utilization of uncompressed digital interfaces with consumer electronics devices such as digital televisions (DTVs), digital cable, satellite or terrestrial set-top boxes, and related peripheral devices including, but not limited to DVD players/recorders, and other related source or sink devices.

Specific, applicable physical interfaces are based on the DVI 1.0, Open LDI, and HDMI specifications. Protocols, requirements, and recommendations that are defined include video formats and waveforms; colorimetry and quantization; transport of compressed and uncompressed, as well as LPCM, audio; carriage of auxiliary data; and implementations of the VESA Enhanced Extended Display Identification Data Standard (E-EDID), which is used by sink devices to declare display capabilities and characteristics.

CEA-861 adopters are strongly encouraged to implement HDCP content protection defined by the Digital Content Protection (DCP, LLC) [4] method, in order to be compatible with digital cable set top boxes as authorized by 47 CFR Parts 76.602 and 76.640. HDCP adoption in a CEA-861-C-enabled DTV also permits viewing of high-value content that may be available from other video sources in a home network.