HDMI 2.2

Everything you need to know about the new TV connection: consider the bar raised for AV cables...

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Most people give very little thought to how they connect their TVs. As a rule, they plug the cable into the relevant socket and then forget about it. But these cables and connections are capable of some pretty amazing things, and one in particular is about to be upgraded in a big way.

HDMI 2.2 was announced at CES in January this year. It will replace HDMI 2.1 and promises better picture quality, among its other abilities.

So when will we see devices that use HDMI 2.2? How is it better than HDMI 2.1? And what else will HDMI 2.2 be used for besides TVs and projectors? Let's dive into the detail...

What is HDMI 2.2?

It's the next standard of HDMI cables and ports - the main way of connecting AV components such as Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, soundbars, AV receivers and streaming devices to a television.

HDMI stands for High Definition Multimedia Interface. The current standard is HDMI 2.1, which was announced in 2017. Given that it is seven years old, it's pretty staggering that a lot of TVs with four HDMI ports have only two HDMI 2.1s - the other two are usually HDMI 2.0, which dates from 2013. This is a bugbear of ours and we have written about it again and again.

Why does it matter?

So why have we got a bee in our bonnet over the lack of HDMI 2.1 ports on modern TVs? Because of how limited it leaves them.