Great post from Jeff Benjamin about the emerging 8K standard from VESA (They created the DisplayPort standard) and HDMI.
One particular point of interest:
One of the biggest takeaways is that HBR3 enables support of 4K at 60Hz using only two DisplayPort lanes. This means that DisplayPort Alt Mode via the USB-C interface can provide full 4K resolution at 60Hz, and still have two high-speed lanes remaining for SuperSpeed USB operation.
Why is this of note? Take the recently released LG UltraFine 4K Display, for example. That display takes advantage of DisplayPort Alt Mode, but the remaining downstream USB ports are forced to use antiquated USB 2.0 due to the lack of bandwidth. HBR3 would solve such an issue.
And:
To be fair, this isn’t exactly new, as DisplayPort 1.3, which was ratified in September 2014, also includes HBR3. VESA thereafter rolled HBR3 into DisplayPort 1.4. Unfortunately the Thunderbolt 3-enabled MacBook Pros and the 12-inch MacBook still rely on the HBR2-laden DisplayPort 1.2 for external display connectivity.
Fascinating stuff.
While I bought into the initial promise of having a single connector, I’m now starting to wonder. Instead of having a bunch of different cable types with different connectors that helped identify purpose, we’ve now got a bunch of different cable types that use the same connector, but no obvious indicator of what devices and cables work together. If you try to use your MacBook Pro’s power cable to connect a thunderbolt 3 (or even a high speed USB 3.1 device), it won’t work (even though the connector ends suggest it should). You can plug a MacBook (non-pro) into an LG Ultrafine 4K, but it won’t work with an LG Ultrafine 5K. 2 or 3 years from now, it sounds like there could be a lot more video standards. I predict a lot of customer confusion over this. Heck, I predict a lot of Apple Store employee confusion over this.