Ultra96 HDMI Cable HDMI 2.2 Ultra96 Certified Cable (96 Gbps)

What the Ultra96 HDMI cable is

Ultra96 is the cable tier the HDMI Forum created for HDMI 2.2, announced June 25, 2025. The Forum states that the Ultra96 HDMI Cable supports up to 96 Gbps and all HDMI 2.2 applications. The existing Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable remains applicable only to system configurations of up to 48 Gbps. Both tiers live inside the HDMI Cable Certification Program: each model and each length is tested and certified separately, and certified cables carry a Certification Label.

The name does double duty. The HDMI Forum encourages manufacturers to use "Ultra96" as a feature name for products that top out at 64 Gbps, 80 Gbps, or 96 Gbps, and any product using the name needs the Ultra96 cable. That means a TV or AVR advertising Ultra96 may run at 64 Gbps, not 96. Read the bandwidth tier in the spec sheet, not the logo.

How the 96 Gbps link works

HDMI 2.1 moved video onto a Fixed Rate Link (see Fixed Rate Link) with 16b/18b encoding, which spends 18 bits of line rate to carry 16 bits of data. That leaves about 88.8% of the headline figure as payload, so a 48 Gbps link delivers roughly 42.6 Gbit/s of video and audio data (48 x 0.888). Wikipedia's data-rate table lists 84.0 Gbit/s of payload in its HDMI 2.2 column. The Forum lists 12K at 120 Hz and 16K at 60 Hz as ceilings, plus uncompressed 8K at 60 Hz and 4K at 240 Hz in 4:4:4 at 10-bit and 12-bit color. Press summaries disagree on which of those modes still lean on Display Stream Compression, so treat the Forum release as the reference.

Length is the practical catch. At CES 2025, heise reported that the HDMI Forum and HDMI Licensing Administrator did not expect passive Ultra96 cables longer than 3.66 m (12 ft). Longer runs will need active or fiber designs, covered in active vs passive HDMI cable and fiber optic HDMI cable.

Context from the competition: heise notes DisplayPort 2.1 reaches 80 Gbit/s in its fastest mode but is mostly limited to PC monitors, while HDMI 2.2 puts 96 Gbps into living-room gear. Digital Trends adds that with DSC enabled, HDMI 2.2 should handle monitors at 4K and 480 Hz or 8K above 120 Hz, and that DSC 1.2 was already part of HDMI 2.1. The three tiers (64, 80, and 96 Gbps) exist so that a mid-range display does not need the full 96 Gbps silicon to carry the Ultra96 name.

Ultra96 vs Ultra High Speed: the math

Wikipedia's timing tables show why 48 Gbps runs out. Uncompressed 4K at 240 Hz in 8-bit RGB needs 54.84 Gbit/s; at 10-bit HDR it needs 68.56 Gbit/s. Uncompressed 8K at 60 Hz in 8-bit needs 49.65 Gbit/s. All three exceed the roughly 42.6 Gbit/s a 48 Gbps link can carry, so HDMI 2.1 devices handle them with DSC. A 96 Gbps link at 84.0 Gbit/s of payload clears the first three without compression. It does not clear everything: 8K at 120 Hz needs 102.2 Gbit/s, so even HDMI 2.2 hands that mode to DSC.

For reference, the HDMI Licensing Administrator rates Premium High Speed cables for configurations up to 18 Gbps. The tiers stack cleanly: Premium High Speed, 18 Gbps; Ultra High Speed, 48 Gbps; Ultra96, 96 Gbps. Cables are backward compatible, and each link runs at the speed of the slowest device in the chain, so an Ultra96 cable plugged into an HDMI 2.1 TV still delivers HDMI 2.1 speeds and nothing more.

Certification is the check that matters. The HDMI Forum requires each model length to be tested and certified, and certified cables display a Certification Label. A 1 m and a 3 m cable from the same brand are separate certifications, so check the length you are actually buying.

What exists today

The cable arrived before the hardware. A hwbusters report dated September 15, 2026 describes Silkland's H96 range, sold in 2 m and 3 m lengths from $32.99, as the first Ultra96-certified cable range sold to consumers, with ELECOM's Japan-certified cable due in shops in mid-November. The same report says no shipping GPU, console, or television speaks HDMI 2.2, and that the working industry assumption is source and display devices landing in 2027. Channelnews reports the same 2027 window for the first TVs, monitors, and AV products, with chip vendors already sampling parts. None of the sources I found names a shipping TV or AVR with an Ultra96 port, so this entry names no supporting devices.

Common confusions

An Ultra96 cable does not upgrade an existing setup. Every source and display negotiates whatever its own ports support, and a pricier cable does not add bandwidth the silicon lacks. If your gear is HDMI 2.1, a certified Ultra High Speed cable already carries every mode it can output, including 4K at 120 Hz.

The one place to spend early is inside a wall. Cables pulled through studs are expensive to replace, and the 3.66 m passive ceiling means long in-wall runs probably want conduit and a pull string rather than a bet on any one cable. The wiring tradeoffs are in the HDMI cable guide and the HDMI cable tool.