The HDMI forum behind the cable and transmission standard used in the consumer environment for virtually all video and audio transmissions in the living room, from TVs to games consoles to PCs, has scheduled a press conference for January 6 at the Mandalay Bay Conference Centre in Las Vegas. A new standard is expected – for the moment, we’re calling it HDMI 2.2 – and it’s going to change a lot of things.
New HDMI 2.2 standard = new cables
[at CES 2025] The HDMI Forum will announce a new version of the HDMI specification. The new specification with next-generation HDMI technology and higher bandwidth enables a variety of higher resolutions and refresh rates, and is supported with a new HDMI cable. New technologies offer today and tomorrow better quality options for content producers such as TV, film and game studios, while making multiple distribution platforms possible […] The new specification with next-generation HDMI® technology and higher bandwidth allows a variety of resolutions and higher refresh rates, and is supported with a new HDMI cable. New technologies offer today and tomorrow better quality options for content producers such as TV, film and game studios, while making multiple distribution platforms possible.
Admittedly, we don’t know much more about this standard, but it could be supported by the new RTX 50 and RDNA 4 cards that AMD will also be launching at CES. The main promise, however, is higher bandwidth to support a variety of resolutions and higher refresh rates. Is “HDMI 2.2” intended to eclipse the Display Port and enable 8K at 120 Hz or 4K at 240 Hz, with or without compression?
The important thing to note is that a new cable is required, even if the connector keeps the same shape. The official cables for the current HDMI 2.1 are called “Ultra High Speed HDMI cables”
The current HDMI 2.1 is designed for a transfer rate of 48 Gbit/s and a data transfer rate of 42 Gbit/s. This allows, among other things, 8K with 7,680 × 4,320 pixels and 10K with 10,240 × 4,320 pixels at 30 FPS each without Display Stream Compression (DSC).
