Display & video signals
Version numbers that decide whether a cable actually does what the box says, how the four kinds of projector light engine actually make colour, the safety classes that govern show lasers, and what a virtual-production or XR stack is actually assembled from.
Display signal versions — HDMI
| Version | Year | Max bandwidth | Headline capability | Notable additions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.4 | 2009 | 10.2 Gbit/s (3× TMDS) | 4K@30Hz, 1080p@120Hz | 3D, ARC, Micro/Mini connectors |
| 2.0 | 2013 | 18 Gbit/s | 4K@60Hz 4:4:4 | HDR (2.0a), up to 32 audio channels |
| 2.1 | 2017 | 48 Gbit/s (FRL, replaces TMDS) | 8K@60Hz, 4K@120Hz | VRR, eARC, ALLM, Display Stream Compression |
The cable is not automatically the generation number on the box. Full HDMI 2.1 bandwidth needs a cable certified Ultra High Speed — an older "high speed" cable will physically fit and often still show an image, just not at the resolution/refresh the source can produce. Pinout on the media reference. Per the HDMI Specification (HDMI Licensing Administrator).
Display signal versions — DisplayPort
| Version | Year | Max raw bandwidth | Headline capability | Notable additions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.2 | 2010 | 21.6 Gbit/s (HBR2) | 4K@60Hz | Multi-Stream Transport — daisy-chain several monitors off one port |
| 1.4 | 2016 | 32.4 Gbit/s (HBR3) | 8K@60Hz with compression | Display Stream Compression 1.2, HDR10 metadata |
| 2.0 / 2.1 | 2019 / 2022 | up to 80 Gbit/s (UHBR20) | up to 16K with compression | UHBR rates shared with USB4/Thunderbolt 4 over USB-C |
Same story as HDMI: the UHBR rates need a cable certified for that data rate (DP40/DP80), not just a DisplayPort-shaped connector. Per the VESA DisplayPort Standard.
Laser safety classes, and how projector light engines work
Laser output is classified by IEC 60825-1: Class 1 is safe under any viewing condition; Class 2 is visible light where the blink reflex is assumed to protect the eye (under 1 mW); Class 3R and 3B are hazardous to look into directly; Class 4 is hazardous to eyes and skin and a fire risk, and is what most entertainment show lasers actually are — which is why show-laser operation typically requires a laser safety officer, a controlled beam path, and (in many jurisdictions) separate authorisation for audience scanning. Laser projectors — the video kind — are classified separately by IEC/EN 62471 into Risk Groups (RG1/RG2/RG3) measured at the output aperture, because a projector's internal laser diodes can be far higher powered than the beam that actually reaches an eye at normal viewing distance.
Inside the projector, two separate design choices get conflated under "laser projector" — the light source, and how colour gets split. They combine either way (laser-phosphor 3-chip DLP is common in large-venue rental gear):
Single-chip DLP
Colour is sequential — the wheel spins fast enough that the eye fuses R/G/B into one image. Cheapest, most compact; some viewers see a "rainbow effect" artifact on fast eye movement.
3-chip DLP
A dichroic/TIR prism splits light into red/green/blue paths hitting their own chip simultaneously. No colour wheel, no rainbow artifact, much higher brightness ceiling — the standard for large-venue and rental-and-staging projection.
Laser phosphor
A blue laser excites a spinning phosphor wheel to generate broad-spectrum light, which is then filtered/split into RGB. Bright and long-lived without a lamp, cheaper than full RGB laser.
Direct RGB laser
Separate red/green/blue laser banks, no phosphor conversion step. Widest colour gamut, no wheel of any kind — premium high-end projection.
"Laser" and "3-chip" describe two different things — a projector's light source and how it splits colour — not one spec. Per IEC 60825-1 and IEC/EN 62471.
XR / VR / AR — what integrating them into a show actually needs
VR is fully synthetic (the audience or performer sees only rendered content); AR overlays rendered content on the real world; MR (mixed reality) blends the two with real-world tracking and occlusion so virtual and physical objects can interact convincingly — XR is the umbrella term for all three, sitting along a continuum from fully real to fully virtual:
After Milgram & Kishino's reality-virtuality continuum (1994).
There is no single dedicated "XR entertainment protocol" the way DMX512 exists for lighting; live integration (often called virtual production when it drives an LED volume or a broadcast camera) is an assembly of protocols already on this site:
| Need | Typically provided by |
|---|---|
| A shared clock across real and virtual systems | Timecode — LTC / MTC |
| Triggering and parameter control of the real-time engine | OSC, sometimes MIDI |
| Camera or performer position tracking driving the render | Dedicated tracking protocols (e.g. FreeD for camera tracking) feeding Unreal/Unity |
| Moving video between the render engine and the rest of the show | NDI, SDI |
| Keeping physical lighting in sync with the virtual environment | sACN / Art-Net |
That gap — no unifying standard, just a stack of adjacent ones held together by timecode and a render engine's own plugin ecosystem — is itself worth knowing before scoping an XR-integrated show: budget for integration work, not just hardware.
Open an issue — this page is hand-authored reference content rather than data pulled from the dataset, so corrections go straight to a pull request against this file.