HDMI 2.0 was recently announced as the next generation of the HDMI standard. The competing DisplayPort standard wants to take things much further with DisplayPort 1.3 that will support up to 8K resolution, according to a report by BSN.

DisplayPort 1.3 to support 8K & better 4K
The new HDMI 2.0 standard supports 4K, but is not very ambitious. The 4-year old DisplayPort 1.2 standard already supports most of the same features, including 4K resolution. DisplayPort 1.2 is also the basis for the Thunderbolt standard. And with DisplayPort 1.3 you can expect much, much more, according to sources in the industry.


DisplayPort is the alternative to HDMI, but it has yet to reach mass adoption

The goal of DisplayPort 1.3 is to support 8K resolution, possibly with light compression (HDMI can use color channel compression). The bandwidth of DisplayPort 1.3 is said to reach 8.1 Gbps per channel or 32.4 Gbps in total. For comparison, HDMI 2.0 caps out at 18 Gbps.  Besides 8K support (7680 × 4320 and 8192 × 4320), it will enable users to power two 4K displays with a single cable, and it will also add support for modes such as 4K@120 Hz and 3D in 4K resolution. It will, like DisplayPort 1.2, also support color depths higher than 8-bit, such as 10-bit and 12-bit per primary color. In other words; amazing picture quality.

It is not known if DP 1.3 will implement the same connector as today’s DP 1.2, but the working group hopes to add data connectivity (like USB and Thunderbolt) and power options that can deliver power to, or charge, connected devices.

The current DisplayPort 1.2 standard is not very widespread, but some graphics card manufacturers and PC monitor makers have started adding DisplayPort to products in recent years. Apple has also supported DisplayPort for years and created the Thunderbolt standard that is based on DisplayPort together with Intel. Panasonic recently added DisplayPort 1.2 to its first 4K TV, WT600.

DisplayPort 1.3 is expected to be announced in Q2 2014, but will probably not make it into devices until 2015. 

- Source: BSN