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?

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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.

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There are actually four different standards for HDMI cables. Standard, high speed, premium and ultra. The 5x increase in speed you mention is the difference between high speed cables and ultra high speed cables. In addition to improved cables there is also much improved hardware at both ends to take advantage of the better signal quality. So even if you had ultra high speed cables ten years ago you could not get hardware for HDMI ports to handle those speeds. There were some professional broadcasting standards which were able to do this but that was outside the price range of any consumer.

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