HDMI Used To Simplify Our Home Theaters, Now It's Adding Confusion
This month, I tried to upgrade my home theater setup with an LG C1 OLED television and an HDMI 2.1 receiver. Tried. In doing so, I discovered what a nightmare HDMI 2.1's definition of «compatibility» is. When HDMI arrived on the scene almost 20 years ago, it seemed like a godsend: Instead of having to plug in five cables to get a 480p image with stereo audio, you could just plug in one cable. It was universal, had a directional configuration to make sure you couldn't plug it in upside down, and it just worked. Two decades later, though, HDMI is alive and well but has somehow become needlessly confusing. Instead of a simple spec with complex cables, we're now saddled with one simple cable and a truly baffling set of specs. Listen ye to my cautionary tale and beware the dark woods of HDMI.
HDMI 2.1 is the latest version of the High-Definition Multimedia Interface connector first unveiled in 2002. The initial HDMI 2.1 spec represented a big jump forward for the connector, allowing a bunch of new features. The HDMI 1.0-to-1.2a jump offered a 4.95 Gbps transmission rate. 1.3 bumped that up to 10.2 Gbps, and 2.0 brought it to 18.0 Gbps. It takes a lot of bandwidth to facilitate some of the modern advancements we've seen, such as 120 frames per second at 4K resolution; HDMI 2.1 is a huge leap forward that enables this, offering support for up to 48 Gbps. The more features you want to pass through that cable, the more bandwidth you need.
Along with that 48 Gbps bandwidth, HDMI 2.1 brings a variety of features. Some are for general use, but a bunch are specifically focused on gaming. General features include the introduction of the enhanced Audio Return Channel, or eARC, which offers easier connection between HDMI displays and
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