VESA announces DisplayPort 1.4 standard with support for 8K displays.
The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) has finalised and published the DisplayPort 1.4 standard. The latest version, includes a number of new features and specifications that may lead some to miss DisplayPort 1.3 entirely.
DisplayPort 1.4 retains the same High Bit Rate 3 (HBR3) physical interface as its predecessor but utilises Display Stream Compression (DSC) technology. DSC version 1.2 enables up to a 3:1 compression ratio that's said to be visually lossless according to VESA testing.
As such, DisplayPort 1.4 can drive 8K displays at 60Hz and 4K displays at up to 120Hz – both with HDR "deep colour." The new standard also supports 32 audio channels, 1,536kHz sample rate and inclusion of "all known" audio formats.
VESA further notes that the 1.4 standard features forward error correction and HDR meta transport in addition to the expanded audio support. Importantly, the latest standard will work over both DisplayPort and USB Type-C connections.
It will be some time before devices actually implement the new standard. DisplayPort 1.3 was announced in September of 2014 but as multiple publications note, there still are not any products on the market that utilise it. Because of this, manufacturers could skip DisplayPort 1.3 entirely and jump to the latest standard.