CTA-861 establishes protocols, requirements, and recommendations for the utilization of uncompressed digital interfaces by consumer electronics devices such as Digital Televisions (DTVs), digital cable, satellite or terrestrial set-top boxes (STBs), and related peripheral devices including, but not limited to DVD players/recorders, and other related Sources or Sinks.

CTA-861 is applicable to a variety of standard DTV-related high-speed digital physical interfaces - such as Digital Visual Interface (DVI) 1.0 [4], Open LVDS Display Interface (LDI) [8], and High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) [71] specifications. Protocols, requirements, and recommendations that are defined include Video Formats and waveforms; colorimetry and quantization; transport of compressed and uncompressed, as well as Linear Pulse Code Modulation (L-PCM), audio; carriage of auxiliary data; and implementations of the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) Enhanced Extended Display Identification Data Standard (E-EDID) [9], which is used by Sinks to declare display capabilities and characteristics.

CTA-861 adopters are strongly encouraged to implement High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) [3] content protection, defined by the Digital Content Protection, LLC (DCP) method, in order to be compatible with digital cable STBs as authorized by 47 C.F.R. ? 76.602 [69] and 47 C.F.R. ?76.640 [70]. HDCP [3] permits viewing of high-value content that may be available from other video Sources in a home network.