HDMI 2.2 HDMI 2.2 (96 Gbps Ultra96)

What HDMI 2.2 is

HDMI 2.2 was announced by the HDMI Forum on January 6, 2025, with the final specification released on June 25, 2025, succeeding HDMI 2.1 as the next major HDMI specification. The headline change is bandwidth: the maximum allowed bit rate is doubled to 96 Gbit/s, up from the 48 Gbit/s ceiling of HDMI 2.1.

To carry that bandwidth end-to-end, the spec introduces a new Ultra96 HDMI Cable. It supports up to 96 Gbps and is the only cable certified to support all HDMI 2.2 Specification applications. The name Ultra96 doubles as a feature label that manufacturers may apply to products supporting a maximum of 64, 80, or 96 Gbps in compliance with HDMI 2.2.

Alongside the bandwidth jump, HDMI 2.2 adds the Latency Indication Protocol (LIP), a new mechanism for reporting per-device latency between source, sink, and intermediate devices, specifically targeting multi-hop chains where a TV passes audio out to an AV receiver or soundbar.

How HDMI 2.2 reaches 96 Gbps

HDMI 2.2 continues the Fixed Rate Link (FRL) signaling architecture introduced with HDMI 2.1. It retains four data channels ("lanes") with the existing 16b/18b encoding scheme; the per-lane signaling rate is increased to deliver the new 96 Gbps aggregate. This is an important correction to early speculation: the lane count stays at four, and the bandwidth gain comes from faster signaling on each lane rather than from adding more lanes. Note: HDMI Forum and HDMI.org have not published the per-lane Gbps figure for HDMI 2.2 in their public materials.

Encoding overhead is the reason the marketing number and the usable number diverge. Because FRL's 16b/18b line code carries 16 payload bits in every 18 transmitted bits — about 88.8% efficiency — HDMI 2.2's 96 Gbps raw bandwidth yields roughly 85 Gbps of effective video payload. That is meaningfully more headroom than HDMI 2.1's ~42 Gbps of effective payload, but it is less than the 96 Gbps figure suggests.

HDMI 2.2 also continues to support VESA Display Stream Compression v1.2a (DSC 1.2a). DSC remains required to reach the headline 10K, 12K, and 16K modes; the new 96 Gbps bandwidth simply expands the set of formats that can run uncompressed.

What 96 Gbps and LIP enable

The practical payoff of doubling bandwidth is uncompressed video at higher resolutions and refresh rates than HDMI 2.1 could carry without DSC. HDMI 2.2 enables uncompressed full-chroma formats including 8K@60 4:4:4 and 4K@240 4:4:4 at 10-bit and 12-bit color depth — modes that previously required compression under HDMI 2.1's 48 Gbps ceiling.

At the top of the spec, with DSC engaged, HDMI 2.2 supports headline resolutions up to 12K @ 120 Hz and 16K @ 60 Hz. These exist as forward headroom rather than shipping use cases — no consumer source devices or displays exist for these modes as of 2026; they are in the spec to provide future capacity.

The other major capability addition is on the synchronization side. Latency Indication Protocol (LIP) is a new mechanism for reporting per-device latency between source, sink, and intermediate devices, and is specifically targeted at multi-hop system configurations such as a TV passing audio out to an AV receiver or soundbar, where existing AV-sync methods can drift. The benefit is most visible in living-room chains where the source connects to a TV first and the audio is then routed back out — a common arrangement that has historically been a source of lip-sync drift.

For comparison against the contemporary PC-side standard: HDMI 2.2's 96 Gbps maximum bandwidth exceeds DisplayPort 2.1's 80 Gbps UHBR20 ceiling. This is the first time a finalized HDMI specification has carried more raw bandwidth than the contemporary DisplayPort standard.

Cables, compatibility, and rollout in 2026

The Ultra96 HDMI Cable is part of the HDMI Cable Certification Program. Like the Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable before it, every model and length must be individually tested and certified, and certified cables must display the official Certification Label with an authentication QR code. For buyers, that label — not the marketing copy on the box — is the only reliable indicator that a given cable has been tested to carry the full bandwidth.

HDMI 2.2 is backward compatible with earlier versions of the HDMI specification and is available to all existing HDMI 2.1 Adopters. Existing HDMI features such as eARC, VRR, ALLM, FRL, and DSC carry forward. Note: primary HDMI 2.2 release materials do not describe specific functional upgrades to VRR, ALLM, or QFT relative to HDMI 2.1, and these features should be treated as carried forward unchanged absent a primary source.

Existing cables are not obsoleted. Ultra High Speed HDMI Cables remain applicable for HDMI 2.2 system configurations that operate at up to 48 Gbps maximum bandwidth. Only the new Ultra96 cable is required to reach the full 96 Gbps and the highest-bandwidth modes.

Despite the June 2025 spec release, both the HDMI Forum and trade press noted at launch that "it will take some time for both cables and logic to support the new standard". The first wave of HDMI 2.2 capable silicon and certified Ultra96 cables follows the spec by months to years, mirroring the multi-year rollout pattern HDMI 2.1 followed after its 2017 release. Note: no retrieved source identifies a specific first shipping HDMI 2.2 TV, AVR, GPU, or game console.