How can old Ethernet cables can handle transmitting the data needed for 4K 60hz video, but we need new HDMI 2.1 cables to do the same thing?
In: Technology
HDMI 2.1 have a bit rate of 48Gbit/s. Most ethernet cables are used at 1Gbit/s but you do get them to 10Gbit/s. I have worked with 50Gbit/s and even 100Gbit/s ethernet cables but that is not of the type you get in a normal shop. So you are right that there are something extra going on.
Whenever you see 4K 60Hz video being transferred over an ethernet cable it is always compressed. With only a small caveat HDMI is not compressed at all. The reason HDMI is so high bandwidth is so that there is no need for any compression. If you had done compression then it would make the video quality worse and it would increase the cost of the monitor and the video output systems by quite a lot. When the cables are so short as HDMI cables are it is much better and cheaper to just have better quality cables and higher bandwidths then to compress the video signal.
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