Re:DisplayPort and 4K
by Matthias247 on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @01:07AM
(#22353850)
Thunderbolt is much more than an just a display link. You can think of it as something as PCI Express, plus some USB and displayport compatibility. It can technically support everything, but might require custom drivers. I don't expect it to become a mainstream solution for "just pushing down some pixels from A to B" due to its additional complexity and cost.
I haven't followed USB4 too much. I expect it to again have multiple "levels" like USB had before. And whether some or all of those will be high definition video capable it to be seen. For USB-C video was just a mere alternate mode which switched the meaning of the wires inside the cables to displayport. Doing video over the PCI Express subsystem of thunderbolt is a different story.
TB3 can embed displayport, even 1.4 with latest versions (allowing for 8k video, though if I remember correctly, it was 60Hz using only one of the "fake" techniques like compression or interlacing, not sure exactly which). The hard bit is finding which chipset a particular device uses and if it will do 8k (more recent ones) or not.
If 8k is supported, so is 5k, which is kinda getting mainstream.
USB4 will definitely be high definition video compatible, that much we know.
From reading this[0] it looks like USB4 and TB3 will be broadly compatible, modulo the usual sort of tiresome licensing and compatibility BS our industry loves to burden us with. Pity.
I had gotten the vague impression that Thunderbolt 3 is in line to be adopted more-or-less whole-cloth as USB4. Is that not accurate?