Goodbye, Dongles. USB-C to Soon Output HDMI

Soon, it's going to be a lot easier to connect your laptop, smartphone, or tablet to an external display.

HDMI Licensing has officially announced new support for HDMI Alt Mode in USB-Cdevices. What that means is that compatible devices—and it's up to device manufacturers to dictate this—will be able to output an HDMI signal from their USB-C ports. That frees up device manufacturers from having to include separate HDMI, Mini HDMI, or Micro HDMI connections, and instead just use a universal USB-C port for external displays.

"The HDMI Alt Mode for USB Type-C connector will allow HDMI-enabled source devices to utilize a USB Type-C connector to directly connect to HDMI-enabled displays, and deliver native HDMI signals over a simple cable without the need for protocol and connector adapters or dongles," reads a description on HDMI Licensing's website.

"This enables two of the most popular solutions for connectivity to come together—the small form factor, reversible, and multi-purpose USB Type-C connector being adopted by smartphones, tablets and PC products, and HDMI, which is the leading display interface with an installed base of billions of displays. Almost 290 million HDMI-enabled display devices are expected to ship in 2016, including projectors, monitors and 100 percent of flat panel TVs."

HDMI Licensing doesn't go into great detail about when new USB Type-C to HDMI cables might emerge, as that's the chicken-and-egg scenario of not really needing the new cable type until more products emerge that have been designed output HDMI over USB Type-C. Those could possibly launch next year, depending on manufacturer interest.

As announced, this USB Type-C to HDMI conversion will only support HDMI 1.4b, not HDMI 2.0b. That means that you'll be able to output 4K video from a device to a connected display, but it'll max out at a 30Hz refresh rate. That shouldn't be an issue for most device-to-display setups, but it does mean that those looking to use their laptops with a 4K external display might encounter some input lag issues (and have a horrible time gaming). HDMI 1.4b supports other features like Audio Return Control, 3D (for both 4K and HD streams), and HDMI Ethernet Channel, to name a few.