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Earlier this year, we first began hearing about the upcoming HDMI 2.1 specification, which is set to pave the way for 4K/120Hz and 8K/60Hz. Now after several months of additional work, the HDMI Forum has finalized its specification, making HDMI 2.1 official.
The HDMI 2.1 specification is now available, which means TV/monitor makers can start making good use of it. The latest HDMI specification supports a range of higher resolutions, including 8K/60, 4K/120 and higher resolutions up to 10K. Dynamic HDR formats are also supported.
In all, HDMI 2.1 has a bandwidth capability of 48Gbps, which is supported by the new Ultra High Speed HDMI cable. This cable will ensure users can properly display bandwidth reliant content, like 8K with HDR enabled.
HDMI 2.1 also has some enhanced refresh rate features specifically for smoother gaming. This includes support for Variable Refresh Rate, which reduces stutter and tearing. Quick Media Switching support is there for movies and video to eliminate the delay that can cause blank screens to appear before content is displayed. Finally, Quick Frame Transport is there to reduce latency.
The HDMI 2.1 Compliance Test Specification will be published some time between Q1 and Q3 next year, at which point, TV and monitor makers can start submitting their upcoming products for full certification.
KitGuru Says: For PC users, DisplayPort will still be ideal, as it can support 4K/144Hz using the DP 1.4 specification. However, it will be nice to have HDMI 2.1 available as an option in the not too distant future as well.
Wouldn’t 8K@60Hz be pushing twice the amount of pixels of 4K@120Hz? Is the 120Hz limit of 4K artificial?
Nice resolutions, but yet to see GPU’s that can get close to 4K 60FPS let alone 120fps.
I would love to see variable refresh rates become the norm. My desktop’s Freesync display is a joy to play on but when I go on my gaming laptop I really miss the adaptive sync feature.
Well, they’re definitely not related to pixels…..think about it 4k into 8k means twice the horizontal AND vertical resolution, so not 2 times, but 4 times the pixels….meaning if it was just scaled by pixels if hdmi 2.1 maxed out at 4k@120Hz, then it should theoretically only do 8k@30Hz.
So there’s gotta be some other reason than just the number of pixels pushed…..
Like I stated, 7680x4320x60 is exactly two times 3840x2160x120. So yes, it is apparently not just about the amount of pixels per second pushed through the cable.