DisplayPort 1.4 Supports 8K, A Resolution So Fine It Can Make You Seasick

A new display connector has been finalized that is capable of supporting screens of such high quality it could give people motion sickness. DisplayPort 1.4 is ready for the world, the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) announced. It supports dizzying resolutions of 8K at 60 frames per second, sixteen times higher quality than a high definition TV.

For comparisons sake, Apple’s 27-inch Retina iMac is 5K resolution, which the company claims is such high quality the human eye cannot see the individual pixels at normal viewing distance. The “K” number refers to the approximate amount of horizontal pixels a screen has, so “5K” would translate to around 5,000 horizontal pixels. The “1080p” high definition format is just 1,920 pixels wide.

Research into 8K screens dates back as far as 2008, when Japan’s NHK broadcaster told the BBC it was working on a standard it called “Super Hi-Vision.” Masuru Kanazawa, a researcher in NHK’s labs, said the standard could make people sick when fast moving images are viewed close up.

DisplayPort 1.4 will also support 4K resolutions at 120 frames per second, double the speed of conventional computer screen rates. The standard will run over the DisplayPort connector and USB-C, the latter being a method that Apple has used to bring video output to the 12-inch MacBook without adding extra ports.

The standard achieves this high quality by compressing the stream, the first version of DisplayPort to do so. The picture quality is claimed by VESA to be “virtually lossless.”

Unfortunately, the DisplayPort 1.3 standard, which was released in 2014 and supports 5K screens, still has yet to find its way into many devices. It may be a while before users start to feel queasy at the sight of their favorite action film in blisteringly high quality.