The HDMI Forum has officially finalized HDMI 2.2, the next generation of the video standard, rolling out to devices throughout the rest of this year. We already saw a bunch of key announcements at CES in January, but now that the full spec is here, it's confirmed that HDMI 2.2 will eclipse DisplayPort in maximum bandwidth support thanks to the new Ultra96 cables.
What the heck is an "Ultra96" cable?
The key improvement with HDMI 2.2 over its predecessor, HDMI 2.1, is the bump in bandwidth from 48 GB/s to 96 GB/s. In order to ensure a consistent experience across all HDMI 2.2 devices, you'll be seeing new HDMI cables with an "Ultra96" label denoting the aforementioned transfer rate capability. These cables will be certified by the HDMI Forum with clear branding that should make them easy to identify.
This new bandwidth unlocks 16K resolution support at 60 Hz and 12K at 120 Hz, but with chroma subsampling. That being said, you can expect 4K 240 Hz at up to 12-bit color depth without any compression. DisplayPort 2.1b UHBR 20 was the first to do this with some monitors already available on the market, but that standard is limited to only 80 GB/s and HDMI 2.2 edges it by just a bit, which allows for even uncompressed 8K at 60 Hz.
It's important to keep in mind that only cables explicitly labeled Ultra96 can allow for all this video goodness. As always, the HDMI Forum will allow manufacturers to make the claim that their devices are HDMI 2.2 compliant, but without actually enforcing the bandwidth rule. Therefore, it's important to look for the Ultra96 label so you know you're getting the real deal.
Thankfully, though, if you don't care about the super high resolutions or frame rates, HDMI 2.2 will be backwards compatible. That means you can use the new cables with older ports (or new ports with older cables) and get the lowest common denominator experience. For instance, if you plug an HDMI 2.2 Ultra96 cable in a TV with only HDMI 2.1 support, you should still get HDMI 2.1 features and speeds without any issues.
Apart from backwards compatibility, HDMI 2.2 will bring another comfort feature called "Latency Indication Protocol" (LIP) that will help with syncing audio and video together. This only really matters for large, complicated home theater setups incorporating a lot of speaker channels with receivers and projectors (or screens). If you're part of the crowd, expect reduced lip-sync issues across the board.
AMD Might Be the First to Adopt HDMI 2.2
The first HDMI 2.2 devices will likely start to roll around toward the last quarter of the year, with AMD's upcoming UDNA GPUs rumored to be among the first to adopt the standard. Little is known about the next-gen Radeon cards, but an earlier leak pointed to limited HDMI 2.2 support for UDNA that would restrict the maximum bandwidth on most models.
As it stands right now, AMD's Radeon Pro cards are the only ones that support the full DisplayPort 2.1b UHBR20 standard, with the RX 9000 series being limited to only 54 GB/s (down from the 80 GB/s maximum). It remains to be seen if AMD pulls something similar with UDNA and only offers the full HDMI 2.2 bandwidth with their workstation GPUs.
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