Fuck hdmi
HDMI requires a license cost, DisplayPort is free.
What advantage does HDMI hold over DisplayPort?
No real technical advantage; it’s just owned by the same shitbags that dominate the TV market, so it’s the only way to connect to a lot of consumer living-room displays
Display port to HDMI cables are pretty good
My guess is TV compatibility. The steam machine is intended as a living room PC, connected to your TV. Most TVs only have HDMI, no DP.
HDMI has always sucked. I used DVI for the longest time, because HDMI couldn’t push enough pixels to a 1920x1200 display (topped out at 1080p for the longest time). Then jumped straight to display port when I finally got a 4k monitor.
HDMI was always 4-5 years behind other contemporary protocols, and for your trouble, you also got a stack of proprietary bullshit to go with it.
My understanding is it’s not even a licensing issue. The HDMI consortium won’t let you include features from 2.1 and 2.2 in an open source driver. it sounds like Valve would be willing to pay, but they’d have to include a closed source driver for the video card.
That’s still a licensing issue: you’re not allowed to license from the HDMI consortium and then freely sublicense to all your users, which is what open source requires. Hopefully this eventually concludes in the end of relevance for HDMI and we can have a freer, and just better ecosystem in general.
I don’t see “relevance for HDMI” ending anytime soon. Tell me how easy it is to find a TV with DP inputs. Nearly 99% of consumer gear uses HDMI.
It’s easy to find a TV with USB-C input, though not universal. That still uses the DP protocol, and cables with different connectors on opposite ends are both cheaper and more common than those with HDMI as a result. Also, this is only even an issue if HDMI 2.0 isn’t fast enough for you, so old devices aren’t a concern.
The only down side is DP Alt mode is optional and must be enabled and supported by the internal controller and system. In order to do that, you might as well just go full DP at that point and somehow I don’t think the manufacturers are gonna spend more money on that. Most likely the USB-C port only supports a mass storage class device.
I’m not sure where I got this idea, but I thought it was because Display Port doesn’t carry audio, and a single-cable solution was more appealing.
But apparently Display Port also supports audio, just none of my devices seem to recognize it…?
Apparently the only advantage of HDMI is ARC (Audio Return Channel), allowing devices to send audio back to the video source, which might be useful in some home theater setups.
I ruined my audio ports on my computer and now run my speakers through my monitor using DP, it works great!
And cec. Idk what arc is but I use cec daily.
ARC lets you connect your speakers to your TV via HDMI, while also letting your TV control the speakers via CEC. The downside is that it takes up an HDMI port, and they only put like 2 of them on modern TVs.
I’m pretty sure Display Port supports CEC (pin 14)
Wow I always assumed the same thing lol
Ohh TIL, thanks! I could count the times I needed the TV to send audio back to the home theater, like if I want to watch open channels or something.
I think we could live without it, just plug an audio cable or something, fuck hdmi.
The HDCP encryption is why it’s used.
Conglomerate like Sony pushes it with their business in selling TV and collateral interest in media DRM for their services.
Other TV OEM companies follow Sony&co. lead because… uhm… “Oh! They make customers… spend money” broadly shake hands in air
HDCP?
I don’t think you can send audio over DisplayPort
Funny, I have done it for years at home, I guess I am just confused
Somebody replied to other comment, but it seems like hdmi allows audio to be sent back, like, if you wanted your screen to send audio to the computer… which would be weird in most PC scenarios, but not so much on TVs.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/HDMI-2.1-OSS-Rejected
It’s pretty weird that this organization that exists only to extract rents from people who want to use hdmi remains unwilling to do so even for a customer as large as Valve. I wonder who has given them the motivation for it, and how much it cost them.
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They’re not fucking with AMD and Valve just because they spontaneously developed an irrational hatred of partly-open platforms. Somebody has persuaded them that they have a financial incentive to do it.
I haveb’t looked into this particular group, but usually it’s patents. Someone owns a patent for the tech required to implement the standard, and they “license” it out to anyone who wants to implement that standard. Obviously, they won’t agree to terms that hurt their ability to collect rent on their patent. Qualcomm is famously guilty of this in the modem space.
Does that seem stupid, to adopt an industry standard that requires patented technology to implement? That’s because it is, and were we a sane society we would invalidate any patents that become an industry standard, but we’re a bunch of idiots with a billionaire cuck fetish.
It’s wild how much we flock around such shitty standards all the time, generation after generation.
We don’t flock to it, they are forced upon us. Finding TVs that support DP is almost impossible.
One of the biggest problems is that shitty standards use the money they get from licensing the standard to push the standard. Good open standards often don’t have a marketing budget to play with. On top of that, shitty standards can make unrealistic promises to gain an advantage. Like HDMI does with DRM. “If every device uses this standard, piracy will be a thing of the past!”
Yes, that is what I meant, the ‘we’ used like an alien might observe us.
Theoretically we could stop buying TVs, but practically we are forced into it by supply.
And yes, licencing a standard beyond dev should be just illegal, it hurts (almost) everyone.
We don’t flock to it, they are forced upon us. Finding TVs that support DP is almost impossible.
Nothing is forced on anyone. If people refused to buy them they would be forced to add other ports.
However as someone who considers themselves fairly techy and doesn’t comply with such shitfuckery, I only learned about this last week.
Moving forward I just won’t be buying any TVs at all.
Edit: God fucking forbid any of you actually do anything, or even better, refrain from doing anything, besides bitch and moan on the internet.
This ethical position is such crap in the modern era and if you take it you simply aren’t going to be contributing to this conversation much longer. Unless you go full stallman and get a specific laptop from 15 years ago with very specific hardware that you can flash and install very specific software onto it you have to make peace with the fact that as a modern consumer the landscape has fucked you.
Your choices are to moderate how fucked yoh get in terms of anticonsumer bullshit because the market is stacked against you and the illusion of choice is always there. HDMI is a great example, smartphone platforms outside of android and ios is another. Are their options outside of these walled gardens? Technically but they’re generally much worse and often cost more than a comparable model.
It’s just you can refuse to buy an iphone, you can refuse to buy an android, but you can’t really refuse to buy a smartphone in the modern era. You can refuse to buy a tv but you can’t really refuse to buy a display of some kind. You might think you beat the system if you just get a laptop or computer monitor I guess but not really, monitors increasingly don’t have DP and frankly the whole “vote with your wallet” thing is stupid anyway. Consumers are idiots who will continually vote to fuck themselves. We need regulatory oversight.
the whole “vote with your wallet” thing is stupid anyway
Voting with your wallet is literally the only way things will ever improve.
See how well that has worked over the past 40 years? I mean don’t buy shit you don’t support obviously but don’t expect a personal boycott or even advocating heavily for others to the same to have any kind of impact whatsoever.
It’s because the average consumer is dumb but this isn’t an indictment of the average consumer, necessarily. The average consumer doesn’t want to have to do research on every fucking thing they buy to find out the nefarious bullshit about it. Oh the tv doesn’t support open connection standards, oh my phone is a walled garden built for data collection, oh this smart lightbulb is a privacy nightmare with bullshit tos and also has security issues, etc. They just want to go on amazon or to home depot or whatever and buy shit that looks like it will do what they need for a price point they can afford.
That’s where regulatory oversight comes in: given the above and a consistent lack of consumer ability to enforce standards we need political oversight to pick up the slack. This is a unified arm where a consumer frustration can turn into action much more quickly, even if sales continue because of market fuckery (eg tvs still selling because you can only buy hdmi TVs). But unfortunately we live in a country where the tech industry has performed a near and total regulatory capture and has no fear that regulatory oversight will ever occur, and they’re probably right, at least for now.
So you’re wrong that it’s the only way, and I would argue it’s the most ineffective and inefficient way. It just feels like it’s the only way because of our failed state political situation where even a regulatory concern that should be a slam dunk like right to repair often either fails or only passes in a greatly neutered state because the local politicians thought Microsoft and Apple made some great points about preventing local jobs so that tech billionaires could continue to make even more money
See how well that has worked over the past 40 years?
…extremely well? Can you provide an example of the contrary?
don’t expect a personal boycott or even advocating heavily for others to the same to have any kind of impact whatsoever.
…of course a single person boycotting a product does nothing. People educating themselves about the products they buy and making conscious decisions to buy consumer-friendly products when buying shit (especially expensive shit) does.
They just want to go on amazon or to home depot or whatever and buy shit that looks like it will do what they need for a price point they can afford.
Plenty of people know and just don’t care. I know because I have these types of conversations all the time.
That’s where regulatory oversight comes in
See how well that has worked over the past 2000 years?
As end consumers we individually have no power to affect the types of products that are offered. What am I supposed to do? Find me a TV that supports DisplayPort
we individually have no power
Individually, no. Collectively? Yes.
What am I supposed to do?
Don’t buy a TV? They are increasingly shitty products anyway.
Now if you could just convince the rest of the country to not have a TV in every room of their houses.
You wouldn’t have to. Even a small fraction would create a market vacuum for a competitor.
Nobody is gonna watch a vacuum buddy not even a fancy dyson.
Hehe
BFGs with display port do exist as a viable replacement for a TV, but they’re expensive and kinda niche.
DisplayPort for the win
Sincerely! As someone who dislikes DisplayPort, moves like that makes me want to use it over HDMI.
Hmm, that’s a new one for me. Why the dislike for DisplayPort?
I had many problems with it in the past. It has been behaving well with me in the last 1-2 years though
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It exists. It’s Display Port.
At the time, there were too many standards. But looking back from today, we see that standardization does eventually occur, it just takes time.
It already comes with DP 1.4. enough for me
I’m not sure why people are so upset.
It’s a little annoying sure, but don’t these work?
