CES 2015: Super MHL wants to be the dominant display cable in your home cinema

If you’re connecting things up to a display right now, chances are you’re using either HDMI or DisplayPort cables to do so. Those two really dominate the display cable space at the moment, but a challenger has appeared at CES in the form of Super MHL.

At the moment regular MHL, or Mobile High-Definition Link, is generally used to connect smartphones to larger displays. Not really suitable for taking on the competition then. Super MHL, on the other hand, trumps both HMDI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.3 in terms of what it can do. It can carry 8K resolution video at 120 frames per second, 4:2:0 pixels and 32-bit colour, 40W of power, and even surround sound systems like Dolby Atmos and DTS-UHD.

Oh and the connections are reversible, meaning it doesn’t actually matter if you can’t see what you’re doing when you’re trying to plug the cables in.

As great as it sounds, don’t expect to be able to switch over to Super MHL immediately. For one thing you’re actually going to have to wait for devices to actually start carrying the necessary connections, otherwise you won’t be able to plug everything together.

Super MHL is currently on show at CES connected up to Samsung ridiculous 110-inch 8K 3DTV. Sadly we don’t really know when it’ll start appearing on displays that are a little more suited to the average consumer’s budget.

This week we’re bringing you all the latest news, videos and gossip from CES 2015 in Las Vegas. Check out the CES 2015 page to keep up to date and subscribe to our YouTube channel to see hands-on news with our editor Holly Brockwell from the show floor.