Cables are a fact of life in out modern world. Every time wireless technology gets better someone invents a new thing that makes cables either necessary or superior. The problem with cables is we have soooooo many of them. Ethernet, USB (A, B, Micro, Mini, C), VGA, DVI, DisplayPort HDMI, power … you get the point.
What’s worse is when companies use either a non-standard or proprietary cable. One of the many visions for USB was to provide a single channel that could replace many of these cables with a single cable, or at least a common plug. Thanks to an announcement from the HDMI licencing LLC (the group responsible for the HDMI standard) we are now one step closer to that goal.
A new standard for HDMI over USB type C connectors using an HDMI Alternate Mode will allow HDMI connectivity up to 1.4b, which includes support for resolutions up to 4K, Audio Return Channel (ARC), 3D, HDMI Ethernet Channel, and Consumer Electronic Control (CEC). At present, the standard supports cables with a USB C connector on one end and an HDMI connector on the other, no dongles or adapters required.
Now that we have the standard we just need to wait for both cable manufacturers to release the new USB C to HDMI cables and device manufacturers to implement the standard on devices. With this announcement, we may well see USB C start to show up in a whole range of device such as video cameras.
This is a great movie but I’d like to see the HDMI foundation adopt USB C to USB C HDMI transmission. The more cables we can remove from the landscape whilst maintain features and innovation the better.
Are you looking forward to a simpler cable future? Let us know which cables you want to eliminate.
Wonder why its limited to 1.4b and not 2.0a
The conspiracy theorist in me says they wouldn’t want to let the latest hotness out of their own end to end standard
Maybe. Though by the time devices supported it you’d think hdmi would have moved on anyway. But I guess this stops say tv makers not licensing the socket and just going hdmi over usb-c instead.