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DisplayPort 1.3 announced w/ support for upcoming 5K displays, enhanced 4K performance

The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) announced today that it’s introducing the latest DisplayPort technology that brings support for upcoming 5K monitors and more. DisplayPort 1.3 for audio and video increases the standard to a maximum link bandwidth of 32.4 Gbps and as a result supports 5K displays with resolutions of 5120 x 2880 on a single cable without compression methods. In addition, users will notice enhanced performance for 4K displays in multi-monitor setups over a single DisplayPort connection:

The increased bandwidth enables higher resolution monitors, including recently announced 5K monitors (with pixel resolutions of 5120 x 2880) using a single DisplayPort cable without the use of compression. It will also enable higher resolutions when driving multiple monitors through a single connection using DisplayPorts Multi-Stream feature, such as the use of two 4K UHD monitors, each with a pixel resolution of 3840 x 2160, when using VESA Coordinated Video Timing.

The timing of the announcement is notable as a new crop of 5K displays are about to hit market and 4K displays become more affordable. Dell recently announced its first 5K monitor coming soon to consumers, while Apple is rumoured to be working on either a new iMac and or monitor that is expected to sport 5K resolution. Here’s what else you can expect from DisplayPort 1.3:

It further refines protocols that enable DisplayPort to share a single cable with other data types. With its higher 8.1 Gbps per-lane link rate, DisplayPort 1.3 can support a single UHD monitor with 60Hz refresh and 24-bit color over two lanes, while assigning the remaining two lanes to increase capacity for alternate data types, such as SuperSpeed USB data, as allowed in DockPort. DisplayPort is the A/V transport standard used by DockPort, Thunderbolt and other wired and wireless multi-function interface standards… DisplayPort 1.3 adds support for HDCP 2.2 and HDMI 2.0 with CEC (Consumer Electronics Control), which enhances DisplayPort’s utility for television applications, including 4K video with copy protection. The new standard adds support for the 4:2:0 pixel structure, a video format commonly used on consumer digital television interfaces, which enables support for future 8K x 4K displays.

We’d expect to see new DisplayPort to DisplayPort 1.3 cables that will work nicely for powering new 4K and 5K displays over a Thunderbolt input on newer Macs. The new standard will continue, however, to support conversion to VGA, DVI and HDMI. The DisplayPort 1.3 standard is available now for companies interested in building products with it.

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Comments

  1. Bruno Fernandes (@Linkb8) - 10 years ago

    4x the total number of pixels of the current 27″ Cinema display? Make it so. Stat. It’s the only reason I’d have to buy another display.

    • scottwilkins - 10 years ago

      That’s not what “4K” stands for in this…. It stands for the 4096 x 2160 resolution with “4K” pixels along the top. The Apple 27″ Cinema is actually more of a “3K” display.

      • Adam Zey (@guspaz) - 10 years ago

        He never said anything about 4K. The new 5K monitors are 4x the resolution of the 2560×1440 cinema display monitors.

  2. Karan Arya - 10 years ago

    5k at 24 bit colour . It would have been much better if it supported 32 bit !

    • scottwilkins - 10 years ago

      Why? You’re eyes can’t see more than 24 bits color. Plus 24 bits allows for 8 bits on each color channel making the data push MUCH easier.

      • Matthias Hutter - 10 years ago

        That’s not true. As you increase color gamut and dynamic range, banding will be more and more visible. There is also the issue of quantisation errors during processing.

        For displays we want something like 12 bit, with a perceptual electro optical transfer function instead of typical gamma curves.

        For transmitting data, something higher bit floating point data, like openEXR.

      • Daniel L. Lau - 10 years ago

        At the pixels per inch of the 4 and 5k displays, dithering the 12 bits per pixel down to 8 is more than adequate to eliminate any banding visible in when displaying 8 bit color. Just like with 4K TVs, the problem is going to come down to where do you get the content at that bit depth.

  3. coinaphrase - 10 years ago

    Glad to see it’s official. I’m watching to see if this means there’s enough lead time to show up in shipping products by “end of year”.

  4. DisplayPort 1.3 won’t come to Macs until Thunderbolt 3 next year. And that Dell monitor is launching this year, which is already known to use 2 DP 1.2 ports.

  5. scottwilkins - 10 years ago

    I’d be excited, except I so hate display port… It’s an ill-be-gotten standard with way too many problems.

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.