One of two big standard announcements at CES this year was the new addition of DP80LL active cables, that extends the range of UHBR20 cables from one meter to at least three meters. In fact, the cable that VESA was showing at CES was 3.5 meters long. To be fair, it has already been possible to make longer 80 Gbps DisplayPort cables, but there hasn't been a certification that guarantees that the cables will work. As we know, it's easy for a company to make claims about their cables that often mean very little in practical terms and with a very limited range of DP 2.1 graphics cards and monitors on the market, it has been impossible as a consumer to verify some of the claims. Starting this year however, it seems like DP 2.1 will take off and as such, it's great to see that VESA finally has a certification in place, so consumers can buy the right cables with confidence.

In addition to the new DP80LL cables, VESA was demoing several ClearMR 21000 displays and for those that have forgotten what ClearMR is, it's VESA's certification standard for measuring motion blur. ClearMR 21000 is the highest tier of ClearMR and it's pretty much exclusive to high refresh-rate OLED type displays. The ClearMR 21000 tier was announced at the end of last year, so the monitors on display are some of the very first to receive this certification level. In addition to this, the world's first display to gain VESA DisplayHDR True Black 1000 certification—which was a laptop display—was also shown. It's made by Samsung Display, but beyond that we don't have much in terms of technical details, but it delivers 1000 nits peak brightness and it can deliver 120 percent of the DCI-P3 colour space, which puts it squarely in the professional display category.