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HDMI 2.1 Is Here With 10K and Dynamic HDR Support (engadget.com)
Swapna Krishna reports via Engadget: Back in January, the HDMI Forum unveiled its new specifications for the HDMI connector, called HDMI 2.1. Now, that HDMI specification is available to all HDMI 2.0 adopters. It's backwards compatible with all previous HDMI specifications. The focus of HDMI 2.1 is on higher video bandwidth; it supports 48 GB per second with a new backwards-compatible ultra high speed HDMI cable. It also supports faster refresh rates for high video resolution -- 60 Hz for 8K and 120 Hz for 4K. The standard also supports Dynamic HDR and resolutions up to 10K for commercial and specialty use. This new version of the HDMI specification also introduces an enhanced refresh rate that gamers will appreciate. VRR, or Variable Refresh Rate, reduces, or in some cases eliminates, lag for smoother gameplay, while Quick Frame Transport (QFT) reduces latency. Quick Media Switching, or QMS, reduces the amount of blank-screen wait time while switching media. HDMI 2.1 also includes Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), which automatically sets the ideal latency for the smoothest viewing experience.
Sure, I like innovation but most television providers still deliver their content at 720p. The Verizon FiOS install guy quietly admitted to Verizon only offering HD content at 720p. Why in the sam hill would I pony up the money for a 10K TV when content is nowhere near ready.
...will it run Linux?
That sounds like an ad for one of those $200 directional Monster cables. Or $10,000 AudioQuest Ethernet cables.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Does it required the connectors to be gold-plated for faster throughput?
Celebrate, celebrate my friend ! This will enable 10K consumer TVs which I can buy for 500€ and use as my main monitor for opening 10 terminals (or whatever) simultaneously.
I can see the standard being useful so that we allow for this situation. It means that if someone does want to make a VR ball, then they just need to think about the display; the generation hardware simply needs to be able to output at that speed. I'm sure some high end off-the-shelf hardware maxes out the specs of HDMI 2.0.
What's the point of a 4K command line, anyway?
A whole bunch of them at once without overlap. Or *gasp* maybe doing something else at the same time. I know, crazy right?
Just good old ARM (Macrovision).
Linux will support it just fine. Your graphics chip has to speak HDMI, but Linux doesn't. And you don't have to use HDCP, so no worries there.
That happens when you get a post downvoted a significant amount. It has *always* been that way.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
which means a 10K screen would need to obstruct your ENTIRE field of view to be useful
Or maybe, since this is for commercial displays, you don't need to see the whole screen at once for this to be useful.
Think about a McDonald's digital menu board without seams every couple feet. Or an information display at an airport.
RTFA please before you post about it. gigaBITS, with a small "b". There's an 8 (or 9) fold difference between "Gb" and "GB". If you can't remember what the abbreviation stands for, quit using it and just spell it out properly.
(from TFA: "A bigger pipe (48 gigabits per second) allows more information for higher resolutions, ")
Pisses me off to no end when broadband providers get it wrong in their ads. "can I get that in writing?" (long hold) "actually sir what we meant to say was..."
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Bigger than 8K so 8K can be seen and worked on. Then the 8K content is ready for consumers.
Displays are often different in size to the content size they finally produce for consumers to enjoy.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Shouldn't it be 16k?
...
Doesn't the D in HDR means 'Dynamic'? Isn't 'Dynamic HDR' wrong like 'LED diode'?
drmad
Here are links to the actual HDMI Forum press release on the HDMI 2.1 specification, and high-level presentation discussing the new features in the 2.1 spec.
Press release: https://www.hdmi.org/press/pre...
High-level presentation: https://www.hdmi.org/download/...>
In addition to the other good points raised - the human eye can detect the *presence* of detail at considerably higher detail than it can actually resolve what that detail is. E.g. it can tell that there's a difference between a high-resolution checkerboard pattern and a uniform field of the same average color, even though it can't tell what exactly the pattern is.
Perhaps more relevantly,HDMIis a video interconnect standard, and there's lots more video uses than just TVs, monitors, and signs. A couple obvious ones:
- Light field displays - the HoloPlayerOne for example integrates images from 32 different angles using a "2k" 2560x1600 display, meaning that assuming an optimal pixel distribution it averages only 128k pixels per view, or about 358 pixels square on a display about a foot across. Pretty chunky. 7680x4320 8K would push that up to a 1018 square, 10k a bit farther. I bet you a 40" lightfield display would benefit from many times more pixels than that.
- VR/AR, because lets be honest - pixel densities and field-of-view both have a long way to go before they start reaching human perceptual limits. And that's even before you consider integrating light-field or other technology to provide proper focal depth.
Basically, a video interconnect standard is well behooved to stay many years in front of widespread adoption, so that developing display technologies are inclined to user the existing standard rather than having to develop a new one that might become a competitor.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Gold plating on cable connectors isn't all that expensive even with the current cost of gold
Disclosure. I am the general manager of a company that manufactures custom wire harnesses for my day job. I buy terminals and connectors daily.
First a bit of pedantry. Connectors are assemblies typically consisting of a housing, some sort of contact and sometimes some locks or seals. Gold plating goes on the contact portion of the assembly, typically a terminal or insulation displacement contact. So saying "gold plated connector" is a bit of a non-sequitur although I understand what you mean.
When you are talking about gold plating a contact the price difference between a gold plated version and a tin or bronze or copper version typically is close to an order of magnitude. If I use a contact that would cost $0.01 in a tin version, the gold plate version will typically cost $0.07-0.10 each. Basically move the decimal point. Now this might be a relatively small cost in the overall cost of the cable assembly but it definitely isn't cheap on a component cost basis.
99.99% of the time that gold plated contacts are specified they are a complete waste of money that provides zero marginal utility to the customer. There are applications where gold is the proper material but these applications are uncommon. The vast majority of the time gold is used it is purely for marketing value to unaware consumers. It works fine but its an unnecessary extra cost most of the time.
The frame rate the cable is capable of supporting has nothing to do with display refresh rate. Example: LCD's of recent years refresh at 120hz, using 24 and 30hz source frame rates.
Sometimes they gold plate the housing since many of them are made of metal and in some cases they serve some transmission purposes, usually ground but occasionally signal. A USB cable is sort of like this - the "housing" for the signal contacts is really a conductor too (usually embedded in molded plastic for strain relief) and sometimes it is gold plated though this is rarely necessary in practice. Obviously the contacts are almost always what we mean so why not say it accurately and say gold plated contacts when that is what you actually mean? We're engineers here on slashdot so sloppy shorthand is kind of unbecoming.
Only an idiot claims that an upgrade is needed when it will not be needed for the foreseeable future. Also note that there is no clear planned upgrade path comforts _my_ position, not yours.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Only an idiot claims that an upgrade is needed when it will not be needed for the foreseeable future.
Who are you to decide what other people might need in the foreseeable future? You have to have the hardware in place for people to develop content for it. Some people probably have a use for 10K content even if you lack the imagination to see what it is today.
Except I call it film.
8K at 60 does not fit in 48Gb it is over 71Gb, of course 4K does not fit in 16Gb either for the old standard. You have to be giving up something.
To take advantage, once any 10k content becomes available, all I have to do is upgrade my TV, DVR/Tivo, home theater receiver, Blu-ray player, etc... Can't wait! So happy I skipped the 4k revolution. Maybe I'll just wait until HDMI is upgraded to support Quantum Entanglement or something.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
That's nice, a new HDMI version. I'm sure it will be picked up by the industry just as well as HDMI 1.4.
HDMI 1.4 added audio return channel, an Ethernet channel, 3D, and 4K. I've started looking for a new KVM switch to replace my VGA switch, something that I know will support at least 4K for future growth. All my computers have some kind of digital output so I don't much care if the KVM is HDMI, DisplayPort, or something else. So long as any kind of adapter I'd need is cheap enough then I don't care what the connectors on the KVM switch are.
I like that HDMI allows for things like CEC, Ethernet, 3D, and more but very few devices seem to support them. I'll see "HDMI 1.3" on devices. It seems everyone has stopped there. Sure, I'll find cables that support later versions but finding devices is impossible.
If I can't get the other features that HDMI offers then all it is to me is an alternative connector for DVI and DP. I know that putting a DP to HDMI cable between devices means it's "talking" HDMI but that means nothing.
The ThunderBolt 3 spec includes support only for HDMI 1.2. Thunderbolt and HDMI can now use the same USB-C connector but is there such a thing as a laptop, tablet, or smartphone that actually puts HDMI natively on it's USB-C port? I'll see adapters for USB-C to HDMI but they are all really just converting DisplayPort or providing a GPU on USB or ThunderBolt.
If I'm to even care about HDMI anymore I'll need to actually be able to buy devices that support it beyond the ten year old version 1.3. Perhaps this diminished adoption of HDMI is a good thing. If HDMI on USB-C was actually used then that would just pile on the confusion for what kind of cable or adapter someone might need.
Getting 10K on HDMI is useless if I can't even find 4K on HDMI. It looks like everyone has moved on to DisplayPort for 4K. HDMI looks better on paper with more features and just as good of resolutions supported but I can get DisplayPort devices that support 4K (and 5K and 8K) right now.
Oh, then there is MHL. That's another protocol that's best left behind unless we can see some real support on devices and cables.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
More bandwidth is always good, and dynamic HDR is probably a good thing, but once again I remind you that human visual acuity peaks at around 4000x4000... meaning paying for resolutions greater than that is pointless because no human being is capable of perceiving the difference when the entire picture is in their field of view! Higher resolution for photos makes sense because you can blow up a small part of the photo, and phone screens should be 8000x4000 so they can be used in VR goggles (4000x4000 pixels for each eye stereoscopic vision). But recording and shipping your favorite videos in anything greated than 4K resolution is pointless!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
HDMI 2.1 gives you a usable Audio Return Channel! ARC gains enough bandwidth to actually make a surround sound setup worthwhile, it gains reliability since it isn't dependent on 1kHz CEC signalling with dubious vendor support, it gains more reliability because the wires it runs over are guaranteed to be properly shielded (little known fact: If you want to use ARC on HDMI 2.0 and below, buy a HDMI-ethernet-cable), it gains usefulness because it contains a lip-sync signal so you don't have to fiddle with audio delay settings to get video and audio to line up.
It will transform surround "receivers" completely. No longer will they need 7 HDMI inputs and go obsolete the moment the next HDMI standard comes out. No longer will they need complex remotes to try to get the right audio and video to the right outputs. No longer will they struggle with getting HDCP through from box to TV. You will simply plug the "receiver" into the TV with one HDMI cable, and the TV will do all that -- and the "receiver" will go back to its proper function and be a pure amplifier.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
the human eye can detect the *presence* of detail at considerably higher detail than it can actually resolve what that detail is
While UHD TVs have enough resolution (96 pixels/degree) to emulate the ability to resolve what the detail is like letters on a Snellen chart for people with normal or average visual acuity (60-80 pixels/degree), they are not enough for people approaching maximal visual acuity (150 pixels/degree).
And they're very far from supporting Vernier acuity/hyperacuity (450 pixels/degree), which may be argued as giving the ability to resolve what detail is, like for Veronica Seider who could identify people at a 1 mile distance.
HDMI has vastly more capacity in one direction. Modern ethernet is full duplex. If you replace HDMI 2.1 with ethernet, you first have to use twice the lanes, and half of them would then sit mostly unused.
You could use plain 100Gbps ethernet over copper, but even the cheapest transceiver options would be close to the cost of a cheap TV.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
One thing I wonder is if HDMI 2.1 will be an alternate mode of USB-C. They point out that new cables will have to be labeled as "48G" to support HDMI 2.1. USB-C seems to have a max bandwidth of 40 Gbps, and HDMI 2.1 is 48 Gbps. Can HDMI 2.1 work on USB-C?
A side note on the HDMI cable naming conventions, they seemed to have fallen in the same trap as USB. The cables are "Standard", "High Speed", "Premium High Speed", and now "48G". Unless there is a chart to go with the cables describing the difference then I can imagine a lot of complaints and confusion on what is what. You'd think that people would have learned by now not to use "high speed", "advanced", and such to describe cables and speeds. Had they at least used some acronym then they could "back-ronym" things, like DVD becoming "Digital Versatile Disc" instead of "Digital Video Disc".
What happens to DisplayPort++? Will DisplayPort be able to continue using a passive adapter for HDMI? I'm sure that existing DisplayPort devices will continue to support HDMI, it's not like someone is going to come around and rip that out. DP 1.3 mandated HDMI 2.0 dual mode capability. I don't recall seeing this same dual-mode mandate in DP 1.4, is it still there? I think I might miss that backward compatibility if it goes away. DisplayPort might run into bandwidth issues too on the existing DP++ connector and USB-C connector in its next version. If DP wants to keep up with HDMI and MHL then it's going to need more bandwidth, and the current connectors might not allow that.
I believe much of what keeps HDMI alive is DP++ dual mode, USB-C alt mode, and MHL using the HDMI connector. Basically people use HDMI because it comes "free" with another standard or protocol, not for HDMI itself.
If USB-C alt mode and DP++ dual mode won't work then I see trouble for HDMI 2.1 ahead. If HDMI gets stuck at v2.0 because of bandwidth issues on connectors then HDMI in all versions might go away too. I pointed out in another post about how even older versions of HDMI seem rare any more. HDMI seems to be dead or dying already, getting 5K, 8K, or even 10K now might not save it.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
So you understood what he meant, I understood what he meant, everyone understood what he meant, he used common language terms that everyone uses, and yet you criticized him for it?
I didn't criticize him, I corrected his terminology and hopefully educated in the process. By your userID number you've been here long enough to know that if you say something technically inaccurate someone will correct you. It's happened to me too and I learn things when it happens. Just because lay people commonly say something incorrect does not in the world of engineering make it correct. Just because people commonly refer to concrete as cement does not mean that they are the same thing. Concrete is a composite material bonded together with cement but cement is not concrete and no amount of common parlance will make it the correct term. Same with connectors versus contacts. Contacts are a component of a connector. Saying "gold plated connector" isn't the correct terminology and I don't think it is asking the sorts of geeks that hang out here to be accurate with their terminology. We don't have to reduce ourselves to marketing speak here.
This is what makes dealing with some specialists (like yourself) so much harder than it has any need to be.
Only to self righteous people such as yourself. Calm down. I said up front that it was a pedantic point and said it to ensure clarity and educate.
As the average person buys the entire assembly, and not just a contact, the relevant comparison is the price of the entire assembly, not the price of the component. So "isn't all that expensive" is completely accurate.
Except it often is not accurate at all. That's the point. I buy this stuff for a living and I know exactly how much it costs. Sometimes the cost of gold plating is a rounding error and sometimes it's a double digit percentage of the cost. Depends on the product. You cannot make a blanked statement that gold plating isn't expensive until you actually can evaluate the bill of materials for that product and know something about the labor content involved. What you can say as a blanket statement is that the vast majority of the time (over 99%) it is unnecessary and needlessly increases costs.
This is the one place you're completely correct.
Gee thanks for the condescension. I'm glad you know more about what I do for a living than I do.