HDMI 2.2 Officially Announced with 96Gbps Bandwidth at CES 2025
The HDMI Forum has officially announced the new HDMI 2.2 specification at CES 2025. In a press release this morning, the trade association confirmed that the new specification will significantly increase total bandwidth to a new high of 96Gbps.
“Higher resolutions and refresh rates will be supported, and more high-quality options will be offered,” the HDMI Forum said in its release. An example HDMI 2.2 cable (below) outlines some of those options, including 4K at up to 480Hz, 8K at up to 240Hz, and 10K at 120Hz.
Specifications of HDMI 2.2
Current HDMI cables can already handle 4K at 120Hz, so most people won’t see much reason to upgrade for years to come. But with many TVs now offering 4K resolution at up to 144Hz, and consumers moving to larger screens , the HDMI Forum sees reason enough to continue pushing the new standard.
There's at least one more useful aspect of this spec for everyone: HDMI 2.2 includes “a Latency Indicating Protocol (LIP) to improve audio and video synchronization, especially for multi-hop system configurations such as those with audio-video receivers or soundbars.”
According to The Verge, HDMI 2.1 and eARC largely solved those pesky audio/video sync issues, but they can still be an annoyance depending on your setup. HDMI 2.2 clearly goes a long way toward keeping things streamlined and avoiding this headache in the past.
HDMI 2.2 will be released in the first half of this year and will be widely available "to all HDMI 2.x users." Your TV and peripherals will need to support the spec to unlock that new bandwidth, so we're just at the beginning of what will undoubtedly be a long road before the standard becomes ubiquitous.
