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You probably take the DisplayPort on your laptop for granted, but the folks that develop the standard have been working hard to make it perform way better — and the next version will allow you to drive an 8K display with HDR video, if you ever happen to own one.
This will be the first spec bump to the DisplayPort standard since it was updated in 2014. Back then, the upgrade to version 1.3 provided support for running two 4K monitors. Version 1.4 of DisplayPort, however, will bring an extra dose of future-proofing.
The new standard will support 8K monitors and High Dynamic Range content through both DisplayPort or USB-C connectors, allowing you to blast out 8K content at 60Hz in HDR deep colour or 4K footage at 120Hz in HDR deep colour.
To do that, it uses the Video Electronics Standards Association‘s new Display Stream Compression to compresses footage while being visually lossless. Elsewhere, the new standard will allow DisplayPort to carry 32 separate audio channels at sample rates of 1536kHz.
It should be a while before you need anything more impressive, then.