DECEMBER 2019 PCWorld 101DisplayPort’s bandwidth has increased
significantly over the years.manufacturers ranging from AMD to ZIPS
Corporation—nearly all of which also belong to
the HDMI Forum. You’ve likely heard the name
VESA in relationship to video before. Most TV
manufacturers, for instance, adhere to the
organization’s wall-mount standard.
DisplayPort debuted in 2006 as part of an
effort to replace two older standards used
primarily for computer displays: VGA (Video
Graphics Array, an analog interface first
introduced in 1987) and DVI (Digital Video
Interface, introduced in 1999). DisplayPort is a
royalty-free product, but that wasn’t enough
to overcome HDMI’s four-year momentum.
Computers, with their shorter technology
cycles and often greater display needs, were
another matter.
Fun fact: Of the six companies
responsible for the creation of HDMI, only
Hitachi and Philips are not also member
companies of VESA.
HDMI & DISPLAYPORT
CAPABILITIES
HDMI, recently revised to version 2.1, is
capable of supporting bit rates up to 48Gbps
(go.pcworld.com/48gp). VESA even more
recently announced DisplayPort 2.0 (go.
pcworld.com/dsp2), which can handle raw
throughput up to 80Gbps. At the time of this
writing, however, DisplayPort 2.0 had not
been implemented in any devices; and HDMI
2.1, which makes many of its features
optional, has been fully adopted in relatively
few real-world products. Current Samsung 8K
TVs (go.pcworld.com/sm8k), for example,
use HDMI 2.1’s increased video bandwidth,
but they don’t support eARC for audio
transport (go.pcworld.com/earc). LG’s new
8K OLED implements both. This scenario is
unlikely to change for a while.
As you can see from the images here,
HDMI and DisplayPort both have widened
their pipes tremendously over the years.