Your TV's HDMI ports aren't equal, and manufacturers aren't telling you the whole story

Published Oct 26, 2026, 3:00 PM EDT Gaming has been Samarveer’s greatest passion, and the Literature graduate in him takes immense joy in dissecting games for their themes, messages, and impact. Samarveer holds a deep appreciation of gaming, and considers the platform to be the most immersive and impactful across all media. He can be found engaging with gaming communities online, always ready to debate the finer points of ray tracing or itching to write an 8-page collegiate thesis on any game that impacts him emotionally. It's an age-old problem, and one that's a little too common for comfort — someone you know spends $500, $1000, or even $2000 on a brand-new TV and a console, but the TV refuses to deliver the features listed on the product page. The showroom floor salesperson never stopped talking about 4K resolution, 120Hz refresh rates, variable refresh rate, and even HDMI 2.1 support, but at home, none of those features seem to work. From the outside, nothing appears immediately or obviously broken. Even your streaming apps will work perfectly, your console will behave normally, and you might even think you're getting the specs the TV promised. And yet, there's a pretty good chance that the problem isn't your console, HDMI cable, or even the TV's own processing. It's something far less obvious, and sadly, far more common, which is something manufacturers do a rather terrible job at explaining. Your TV's HDMI ports aren't created equal The four ports have four very different capabilities My friend discovered this the hard way after buying a PlayStation 5 Pro earlier last month. Their decision to buy a $700 at a scalper-raised price of $1100 notwithstanding, the console went pretty nicely with their LG C5 OLED TV they bought earlier this year. The problem, of course, was that YouTube and Netflix on the console happily displayed 4K content, but launching a game immediately dropped the console's output to 1080p. Nothing was really broken, though. That was because the console was connected to the TV's third HDMI port, which could deliver 4K but not at 120Hz (the console's default refresh rate). This was because the first port, the HDMI eARC port, was connected to the soundbar, and the second port went towards an Apple TV 4K. This is the kind of problem that makes people question their own perfectly good hardware. The PS5 Pro supports the features, and the TV advertises them, but a seemingly insignificant connection determines whether those expensive components can deliver the experience you paid for. You'd imagine that every manufacturer labels their capable ports with a 4K120 marking, but that's not the case, either. Plenty of TVs leave you scratching your head when you read the manual. Certain televisions even have HDMI 2.1 ports with different bandwidth limits, meaning the version number alone tells you surprisingly little about what each connection can handle. And then there's the television that technically supports everything you want, just not through the port you've plugged into. Buying a premium television and unlocking a budget-model experience is not something I'd wish for anyone. Why your TV can't do everything through every port Bandwidth is expensive, and eARC complicates everything The real problem is that most TVs have several HDMI ports, but only the first two are truly capable, while the rest share bandwidth and capabilities. On the surface, it's pretty much a cost-cutting method manufacturers use. However, streaming apps like YouTube or Netflix rarely expose this problem, since most video content only runs at 24fps, 30fps, or 60fps. As such, 4K60fps content runs pretty smoothly even in the "wrong" port. Only when you launch a game configured for 4K at 120Hz will a port lacking sufficient bandwidth show itself and force the console to lower its resolution to maintain that high refresh rate, since the connection just can't carry everything simultaneously. The economics are simple to understand, infuriating as they may be. Full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 implementations require capable chipsets and supporting hardware. As such, manufacturers tend to reserve their best connections for a subset of ports instead of equipping all four HDMI ports on a TV with equal capabilities. The bigger problem, however, from a user standpoint, is eARC (enhanced Audio Return Channel). It sends high-quality audio from your TV to a soundbar or receiver, and audiophiles can't live without it (nor should they have to). On some TVs, though, the port that offers the best gaming capabilities (4K120) is also the only one designated for eARC, making it the only port you can connect to your soundbar, and thus forcing you to choose between uncompromised gaming and convenient audio connectivity. Sure, you can route audio through other connections (sometimes), but that means getting extra cables, configuration headaches, or even compromised functionality if the TV or its software doesn't support the workaround. This is a manufactured usability problem Stop making customers decode the specifications I genuinely don't think this is a customer knowledge problem at all, though. If you buy a $1,000 TV, you shouldn't have to do detective work to figure out which of its four ports delivers the advertised experience and which device in my setup goes with which port. And yet, manufacturers routinely hide these distinctions in specification sheets with tiny labels and manuals nobody reads until something goes wrong. Even worse, if your TV is mounted against a wall, those labels become practically useless — a design failure that is all too avoidable, sadly. This isn't a problem limited to console gamers, either. If you're a PC gamer, you could also find yourself unable to achieve 4K at 144Hz. Even home-theater enthusiasts can lose their beloved Dolby Vision compatibility through an inadequately equipped port. Mac mini owners, too, can discover that their display's supposedly capable connection has limitations that nobody warned them about. The problem is that manufacturers know these distinctions matter, but they also know that printing "HDMI 2.1" across a product page is better than "our best features are only in two of the four HDMI ports." The power-user percentage worldwide will always remain a sliver compared to the millions of people who can buy expensive TVs without specialist knowledge. If a TV can't deliver its headline specifications through every port, it should disclose that limitation prominently before checkout. Manufacturers aren't going to become completely honest any time soon The next time you're shopping for a television, don't stop at the refresh rate, panel technology, or whatever impressive acronym the marketing department has decided to plaster across the box. Look at the number of HDMI ports that can actually deliver the full experience you expect from your devices, because that is the specification that deserves the most attention, depending on how many things you plan to plug into the TV. A new TV should simplify a user's entertainment setup, but far too often, it ends up costing people an entire weekend of troubleshooting as they try to connect a console, soundbar, and streaming box. Manufacturers can do better, and reviewers should be far more aggressive about calling out these limitations before recommending a television to millions of buyers. However, that's far too optimistic. Until that changes, treat the HDMI port count as a primary buying criterion instead of an afterthought. After all, there's little point paying for features that your television makes unnecessarily difficult to use.