#21 HDMI 2.1

You know that 4K TV you bought? Well… don’t worry. It’s not obsolete quite yet.

But, refracting rather prettily through the horizon are some of the technologies of tomorrow’s TVS. How far hence are we talking? The Tokyo Olympics in 2020 is an obvious waypoint, as 8K broadcast coverage has often been mentioned for what has been billed from the start as a hi-tech Games.

Which means – yay! – we need a new HDMI standard for all our AV connections. Now, 2.1 doesn’t sound like a massive upgrade over the existing 2.0, but there are some big numbers to ponder.

First up is the classic: bandwidth. Ye olde HDMI 1.4 had a throughput of 10.2Gbps, then HDMI 2.0 jumped to 18Gbps. Now, with the seemingly incremental change to HDMI 2.1, we’re getting a huge increase to 48Gbps. Need something relatable to illustrate