CES 2022: HDMI 2.1 switches to 2.1a and further complicates the standard

Towards an enrichment of the HDMI standard
for a good cause or simply to confuse users even more?

HDMI standards have for years been a mess without a name that completely loses newbies, and even regulars regularly get confused between the specifics displayed, the recommended standards and integration by manufacturers.

HDMI 2.1a to improve HDMI 2.1

Fortunately, the HDMI Licensing Administrator has decided to make things transparent, limpid and accessible even to the less enlightened of users thanks … to the introduction of a new feature!

No, of course, you can imagine, we’re kidding. Finally, not quite since as a prelude to CES 2022 which will be held – face-to-face or not – next week in Las Vegas, the organization has decided to revise the HDMI 2.1 standard.

Called “2.1”, its main purpose is to add support for Source-Base Tone Mapping or SBTM, a new feature designed to improve HDR rendering.

Responsible for the source device

Note that this is not a new standard intended to replace HDR, but to provide an improvement. To try to keep it simple, let’s say that the SBTM delegates part of the management of the content to the source device, the one that broadcasts said content.

It is therefore no longer the screen or the television that does all the work since, for example, HDR tone mapping is processed by the source device before the signal is sent to the screen. Theoretically, this should make it possible to obtain an image with a more precise calibration, but also to reduce the latency and to obtain more “fair” tones.

As nothing is ever easy with HDMI, however, this is not without its problems. So, there it is rather logical, it is first strictly essential that all the devices from one end of the chain to the other be SBTM compatible. Firmware updates are planned, but will all manufacturers play the game?

New name, but optional function

Even more annoying and we are being repeated more or less each time, the SBTM is not a requirement for HDMI 2.1a certification. The devices can be … or not and the mention must be visible … but it is not certain. It is also useful to specify that HDMI 2.1 should cease to exist on the data sheets with the deployment of HDMI 2.1a, as 2.0 had also given way to 2.1.

Haven’t you understood everything? This is not surprising, and we can bet that for a few more years we will see buyers a little disconcerted by these abstruse specifications.

Source: TFTCentral