If all HDMI cables are basically the same design, pinout, etc. how have they been able to double, quadruple, etc. the bandwidth on them over time?

Question

Going from HDMI 1.4 to 2.1 there is a 5x increase is bandwidth. Is it because the cables themselves were never the issue but it was the connectors/chips in the devices themselves that couldn’t handle it?

I know part of it is the actual quality of the cables themselves and tighter tolerances, more twists in the wires, material purity, etc. but I can’t imagine that alone would be enough to fully account for this.

In: 565

Answer 1

Lots of explaining in this thread. But this question can’t be answered in an ELI5 format.

Best I can tell you for ELI5, is we’re pushing electrons across a wire. And we’ve gotten better at pushing those electrons.