In a test conducted with a 48-inch LG CX TV, it turned out that the HDMI 2.1 port on the PlayStation 5 is limited to 32 Gb / s, while the Xbox Series X can transfer through a similar port up to 40 Gb / s. In practice, this means that when playing a game at 120Hz, the Sony console will have to switch to Y’CbCr 4: 2: 2 color downsampling (downsampling), while the next-generation Microsoft system will be able to maintain optimal RGB 4 format. : 4: 4.

It’s unclear if this HDMI 2.1 port on the PlayStation 5 is a hardware or software limitation. In the latter case, Sony Interactive Entertainment may well improve the color resolution in a future software update. However, all this will be a problem only if you are playing a game with support for 120 frames per second, of which there are currently only three on the PlayStation 5 – Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, DIRT 5, and Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition. But even in them, the reduced color subsampling leads only to a degradation of the image quality that is hardly noticeable to the eye.

However, there is one aspect in which the PlayStation 5’s HDMI 2.1 implementation seems to be ahead of the Xbox Series X. This is the signaling method used, the Fixed Rate Link (FRL) channel, which was chosen for the HDMI 2.1 specification as a replacement for differential transmission. signal with minimization of the level drops TMDS (Transition Minimized Differential Signaling). For some reason, even when connected to an HDMI 2.1 TV, the Xbox Series X continues to use TMDS when outputting at 60Hz, while the PlayStation 5 uses the newer FRL method. However, this should not make any practical difference, since 4K @ 60fps is fully supported by HDMI 2.0 (where TMDS is used as the signal transmission method).