What They Say
HDMI has introduced HDMI 2.1a which adds a single feature, “Source-Based Tone Mapping” which is a way for source and sink devices to communicate on optimum tone mapping. There are other minor ‘tweaks’ and bug fixes.
SBTM allows a source device to find out the capability of the final display and can then optimise the signal to match the display. HDMI Licensing said that the main initial use case is PC and in gaming. The technology allows the optimisation of multi-window graphics for a particular display. The system uses existing hardware, so could be enabled by firmware upgrades in some cases.
What We Think
This news was released now as HDMI will not be at CES. We had planned a detailed dive on the tone mapping for next week but holidays mean that we will not be able to get answers to our questions until later. (BR)
