HDMI 2.2 brings higher resolutions and frame rates
[19:20 Mon,16.December 2024 by Thomas Richter]
The HDMI Forum, the organization responsible for the development of HDMI, has announced that it will unveil a new HDMI standard at CES 2025 in early January. This new standard will feature new technology and higher bandwidth for transmitting display data. It is highly likely that this new version will be called HDMI 2.2 and will offer higher resolutions and refresh rates compared to the current HDMI 2.1 standard.
Given that AMD and Nvidia will announce their new Radeon RX 8000 and GeForce RTX 50 graphics card series on the same day, it is speculated that these will support the newly introduced HDMI 2.2 standard. Consequently, displays that leverage the new capabilities of HDMI 2.2 could be announced at CES 2025.
DisplayPort 2.1 vs HDMI 2.1 / 2.2
HDMI 2.1 currently offers a maximum bandwidth of up to 48 Gbit/s, supporting uncompressed resolutions up to 8K/10K (10,240 × 4,320) at 30 Hz (compressed up to 10K at 100 Hz), dynamic HDR, Enhanced Audio Return Channel (eARC), Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), Quick Frame Transport (QFT), Quick Media Switching (QMS), and Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM).
The competing DisplayPort standard, in its current version 2.1, has a significant advantage over HDMI 2.1. DisplayPort 2.1 (DP2.1), with a data rate of up to 80 Gbit/s (DP80), supports resolutions up to 16K (15,360 × 8,640 pixels) at 60Hz with DSC, a refresh rate of up to 240 Hz at 4K resolution, and the ability to daisy-chain multiple monitors with a single cable via USB-C Alt Mode or DP using the Multi-Stream Transport protocol.
It can be assumed that HDMI 2.2 aims to close this technological gap and will therefore offer at least the same data rate as DisplayPort 2.1. This would enable higher resolutions, frame rates, or color depth, such as uncompressed 8K at 60 Hz or 4K at 240 Hz. However, as with DP 2.1, the use of a higher data rate will necessitate new cables, which are also mentioned in the HDMI Forum&s press release.
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