The Video Electronics Standards Association today announced that it has released version 2.0 of the DisplayPort audio/video standard. DP 2.0 is the first major update to the DisplayPort standard since March 2016, and provides up to a 3X increase in data bandwidth performance compared to the previous version of DisplayPort (DP 1.4a), as well as new capabilities to address the future performance requirements of traditional displays. These include beyond 8K resolutions, higher refresh rates and high dynamic range (HDR) support at higher resolutions, improved support for multiple display configurations, as well as improved user experience with augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) displays, including support for 4K-and-beyond VR resolutions.
The fact that standards like HDMI and DisplayPort have version numbers all with the same kind of plug always bothered me. It’s not always clear exactly which standards devices support, which can lead to some unfortunate surprises. I wish there was an easier way to figure this sort of stuff out.
Even in the same version, there are significant differences between devices. The version just provides the ability to carry streams at a given bandwidth.
The TVs make it even more complicated, for example,
– only one the inputs on my Samsung TV supports HDR
– and one other can be used for ARC (audio return channel)
So I would be out of luck if I wanted to connect a receiver to do both HDR and ARC at the same time.
Monitors might have both HDMI and DP ports with different capabilities as well. And sometimes the cables / adapter combinations restrict the signals even on the same set of ports (MacBooks will restrict some modes even if the cable and the display are perfectly fine with them. You’d need to add in an extra dongle to fool the OS).
Welcome to 21st century of confusion…
I’m trying to figure out a situation where HDR and ARC would be useful to be on the same cable. ARC is for situations where your TV has a built-in receiver, say, for an antennae, and you want to send audio over a HDMI cable to an audio receiver. You don’t use an HDMI cable to feed a built-in receiver.
If you have a cable box, game console, or bluray player that supports HDR, having the ARC on the same port would only send audio back to the cable box, game console, or bluray player.
Haven’t we started to move to USB-C from DisplayPort a while ago?
USB-C can provide DP as an alternate mode, but mDP is still rather prevalent, and even regular DP connectors are still pretty common.
Discrete video cards on desktops don’t offer USB-C connections. Not all laptops have USB-C yet either.
If you’re a gamer, you need displayport.
The real issue isn’t the connection, but rather the lack of labeling. Devices and cables should have clear labeling of what generation/spec they support.
No… USB-C can only handle DP 1.3, or if it is a ThunderBolt 3 port, DP 1.2.. Meanwhile a real DP port can handle DP 1.4 and soon 2.0.
Also USB-C has that drawback that you never really know if this particular port will work as a DisplayPort, where with the DisplayPort you are sure ir will always work as a DisplayPort
> Also USB-C has that drawback that you never really know if…
There is an icon for that
https://www.displayport.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/devices-stack.jpg
That’s just the DisplayPort icon.