The image is from a stock photo.
The standards are not good. It's a frustrating mess, with a lack of support among TV manufacturers, cable makers, and devices that make setting up a PS5 or Xbox Series X difficult.
The latest revision to the HDMI specification stack, called HDMI 2.1a, is the HDMI Forum's attempt to make everything better and simpler.
... I am kidding, of course. It will make things more complicated. What did you think about the new standard?
What did you think would happen?
The good news is that HDMI 2.1a is an upcoming revision to the HDMI 2.1 stack and adds a new feature called Source-Based Tone Mapping. Some of the tone mapping that your TV or monitor is doing can be offload to your computer or set-top box by the new feature, known as "Sbbm".
It is not a new standard to replace the old ones. It is intended to help existing HDR setup work better by letting the content source better optimize the content it passes to the display or by removing the need to have the user manually calibrate their screens for the specific display. When there is a mix of content types, like for streamers, displaying each area of content could be a use case.
It will be possible for set-top box, gaming companies, and TV manufacturers to add support through updates to the HDMI 2.1a specification, according to the HDMI Forum. Users won't get new features until they buy a new TV that supports HDMI 2.1a, which is precisely zero of them, given the usual trajectory of TV spec updates.
The good news is that the optional feature of the SBMTM will be something that manufacturers can support, but not something like 10K resolution or 120Hz refresh rates.
The HDMI Licensing Administrator and the HDMI Forum run the standards as a set that contains all the previous standards. According to the HDMI Licensing Administrator, all new HDMI ports should be lumped into the HDMI 2.1 branding, despite not using any of the new features included in the new 2.1 standard.
All new ports will be labeled HDMI 2.1a once the standard is released, but they won't have to offer the new features. The argument of the HDMI Forum is that its standards have always worked and that optional features allow manufacturers to have flexibility in what they offer. The group says that companies are required to list what features their hardware supports so that it's clear to customers what their hardware is capable of.
The argument doesn't hold up. If you have to dig into a spec sheet to figure out if the specific refresh rate feature you want is supported on a new TV, why bother?
Customers are expected to check out specific features.
Most manufacturers aren't following the HDMI licensing recommendations for port labeling according to a report. At least for now, TV companies have for the most part still listed HDMI 2.0 ports as "HDMI 2.0" and reserved the HDMI 2.1 labeling for ports that actually support the newer features. Under the rules of the organization that licenses out the standard, these companies don't have to do this, despite the fact that it's more helpful to customers. There is a chance that companies will start to market HDMI 2.1 ports that don't offer 2.1 features.
The upcoming HDMI 2.1a standard and its new feature set are the same as the rest of HDMI 2.1 and its feature set, but with a potentially helpful new feature that could make the content you watch and play look better, but that will likely require buying new hardware and cables. The only way to make sure that you get the features you want is to read the fine print, and that is when the TV announcements are about to arrive.
