What you should do with HDMI 1.4 cable, when HDMI 2.0 comes?

Thanks to 4K Ultra HD, the introduction of HDMI 2.0 is tied tightly to the advancement od Ultra HD, or 4K, television. Last year at IFA, Panasonic and Sony launched their latest 4K/Ultra HD television, and they gave HDMI 2.0 a lot of lip service. As a result, even consumers who don’t own those next-gen televisions are starting to ask questions: Will I have to buy new HDMI cables? Is the connector different? How long until my HDMI equipment is obsolete?

HDMI 2.0 is the successor to the HDMI 1.4a/b standard most of us use today, which works well, so why change it? The main difference between HDMI 1.4 (which is what most equipment is now) and 2.0 is an increase in the possible framerates of the 4K signal. HDMI 1.4 can do Ultra HD at 30 frames per second. HDMI 2.0 can do 60 fps. There are no new cables with HDMI 2.0, this is a hardware change, not a cable change. So your current HighSpeed HDMI cables should work just fine.

Besides, HDMI 2.0 changes nothing about the size, shape or wiring of HDMI cables. Should you wind up getting devices that are HDMI 2.0 compliant, your existing cables will work just fine. And since HDMI 2.0 is backward compatible with older HDMI versions, you’ll be able to connect your old Blu-ray player and/or A/V receiver to a newer HDMI 2.0-equipped 4K Ultra HD with absolutely no problem.

If anyone offers you so-called ‘HDMI 2.0cables’, turn and run. It will be either a marketing tactic, or expression of ignorance. Either way it is non-compliant. When the HDMI 2.0 specification was first announced, it was accompanied by this statement “ …Current High Speed cable(category 2 cables) are capable of carrying the increased bandwidth”(HDMI Licensing, LLC)