- cross-posted to:
- steam@programming.dev
- steam@lemmy.ml
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- steam@programming.dev
- steam@lemmy.ml
- technology@lemmy.world
I do not really have a body for this. I was not aware that this is a thing and still feel like this is bs, but maybe there is an actual explanation for HDMI Forum’s decision that I am missing.
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I really hope we’ll see TVs with DisplayPort one day.
I think I’d like DisplayPort over a USB-C connector. It seems like this might be an easier sell too, since the general non-techy populace is already used to everything going to USB-C (thanks EU). Maybe one day we can actually just use the same cable for everything. I realize that not all USB-C cables are equal, but maybe if TVs used USB-C, we’d see more cables supporting power, data, and video.
Display port over USB-C is totally a thing. With things like USB-PD USB seem to be getting dangerously close to becoming the standard for everything. The cables are a wreck though and are way too hard for a layperson to tell apart.
I’m a very technical person and I can’t tell them apart.
Is there a symbol?
It’s pretty simple and straightforward, all you have to so is buy the cable and a professional cable tester to see what specs it’s actually in compliance with
Don’t worry, I’m sure when USB 4 releases, they’ll retroactively change the names of USB 3.2 Gen 1 and USB 3.2 Gen 2 to “USB 4.3 Gen 0.01” and “USB 4.3 Gen 0.02” respectively. Then USB 4 will actually be named “USB 4.4 Gen 5” just because.
And none of the cables will be labeled, nor will they simultaneously support high power delivery and full data speed. We’ll need to wait for “USB 4.4 Gen 4” for that, which is when the old standard will get renamed to “USB 4.4 Gen 3.5” instead.
“USB4” (not USB 4.0) released in 2019 and “USB4 Version 2.0” (not USB 4.1) released in 2022.
These days a ~10€ gadget can tell you about the electricity going through a USB connection and what the cable is capable of. I don’t like the idea of basically requiring this to get that knowledge, but considering the limited space on the USB-C plugs I’m not sure anything is likely to improve about their labeling.
That’s good enough for me, what they called and wee where can I get one?
An example I randomly picked:
Nope! That’s part of the fun sadly. At least if you’re technical you’ll know that not all type-c cables are the same.
I mentioned this in another thread but “DP Alt” (DP over USB-C) is not a default feature of the USB spec and is an optional extension that needs to be added via additional hardware and supported by the device. At that point you’re basically adding in DP with just a different port.
To that end, it’s still the same thing that TV manufacturers just aren’t adding in DP support regardless of connector.
Isn’t usb-c able to carry Thunderbolt, which subsumed DisplayPort at some point? I thought Thunderbolt and DisplayPort were thus merged into whatever the usb standard was at the time.
Thunderbolt is a proprietary specification by Intel and Apple, while Displayport is an open standard developed by VESA.
USB connector hardware can meet the Thunderbolt or Displayport specifications, but must conform. Most do not.
My monitor (tv) supports usb c and I like it! The flexibility was nice during my single battle station move
Why even buy 'em, tho? They’re basically shitty monitors with spyware for brains.
Well if you want anything over 35 inches a TV is your only option. They don’t really make monitors bigger than that.
Because we don’t all live in dorm rooms sitting at desks watching TV. Some of us need something besides a 32-in.
well its not the only option, its the only consumer ended option.
the corporate option is large format display/digital signage screens
If you actually give a fuck about image quality beyond size and brightness, digital signage also isn’t really an option. You won’t find many commercial oled displays, for example.
Best option for home entertainment, imo, is still a consumer TV, that you just never connect to the internet and use a set top box with, instead.Assuming they don’t start using meshnet to spy on you anyways.
Up The (soldering) Irons!
Don’t give them any ideas
That’s actually already a thing potentially, TV and even appliance makers have been fielding using meshnet tech to spy on users regardless of if they’re connected to the web or not for a while now.
Too late, TVs have apparently been known to connect to open WiFi networks if they find any.
of course, I’m not suggesting anyone should use them. im just saying they exist. the companies that make the good screens are all part of the HDMI forum, which defeats the reason why display port wont be offered at these screen sizes effectively.
basically no comoany is going to deny using HDMI unlrss a new upcoming screen company either develops propietary displayport tech, or the VESA foundation spins up monitor production.
unironically the only company i can remotely see doing said action is apple.
It’s a ‘why not both’ thing.
We need a good jailbreak for smart TVs and a TV-oriented Linux distro with Plasma Bigscreen to install on the jailbroken smart TVs
My experience is that digital signage displays are still HDMI-only.
many are hdmi only, but there are several that have display port as well. I see a lot since I work in lease return/e-waste recycling.
Projectors have improved dramatically over the years. Any white wall can easily become a 100+inch display that’s good enough for movies.
Are there a lot of 65" PC monitors?
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about the same specs as my TV, but 10" less and 4x its price
It looks to be $1200 on Amazon. Decent for OLED.
I got my 42 inch lgc2 for $990 a few years ago.
Technically those menu boards at restaurants.
Not that many it seems… Ignoring extremely pricey ones, I could find the Lenovo ThinkVision E65 LFD for what converts to 1200 USD in a local shop. And even that is not really price competitive.
Just don’t connect it to the internet.
There are a few. Samsung, hi sense and lg have them on some
Digital signage
Unaffordable to a consumer.
Bullshit they’re all over ebay for reasonable prices
They are exist but it Chinese dark horses manufacturera liki kiwi
That’s why HDMI needs to die and display port needs to take over. The TV industry is too big for that to happen of course. They make a shit ton of money off of HDMI
but maybe there is an actual explanation for HDMI Forum’s decision that I am missing.
Licensing money.
Which could be paid by Valve in this case, especially since no one is expecting the Steam Box thing to be cheap.
If the license holder isn’t willing to accept the money, it doesn’t matter if Valve is willing to pay it.
Everyone has a price. Maybe a superyacht or two from Gabe’s fleet?
It’s not about liquid money. It’s about “preventing piracy” by blocking anything that could allow people to use certain features via FOSS systems.
I was thinking more along the lines of, "let people pirate. Here’s a megayacht’.
Well, Android TVs can be “hacked” and those have HDMIs. Not a good point
Tell me you don’t understand software development without telling me you don’t understand software development.
The license holder is attaching additional terms and conditions that are incompatible with publicly disclosing the driver source code.
It still boggles my mind things can be licensed/copyrighted without being forced to disclose source code. The lack of transparency we’re okay with in society is absolutely unsustainable.
Stallman is not a great person but he saw this coming decades ago
This wouldn’t work to scale. If Valve paid to license the spec for the Linux kernel, it would have to pay for every person who downloaded the driver, which is far more than the amount of people who buy the Steam Cube.
Unless of course you’re suggesting that the kernel driver for the new spec become closed source.
OK. Fine. Then it’s going to be reverse engineered and everyone will use it anyways and they’ll get nothing.
It’s not, people will just convert DP to HDMI and call it a day
Unfortunately, I am — or rather, I am suggesting that Valve be granted a license they can use.
I like open source, but not so much that I’d prefer hardware that already exists be held back a feature because others can’t benefit for free.
I’d prefer a workaround.
If it ever gets open sourced, anybody will just use it without paying.
Can we just do display port then?
displayport is starting to appear on some higher end tvs
Can you name or link some models? I’d like to consider my options but haven’t found any yet.
Off the top of my head, Hisense does dp over usbc on the u8q series of TVs.
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Sounds good to me
AMD should remove the HDMI port from all of their GPUs as a nice F.U. to the HDMI forum. They shouldn’t be paying the licensing fees if they are not allowed to make full use of the hardware.
That’d be suicide.
There would be uproar, but like the audio jack on phones people would come around. All it would take is one big enough company to pull it off, and the rest would follow.
Just bought a new phone that has an audio jack. Some of us refuse to “come around”. They can fit a stylus and an audio jack in this thing. Why did they remove the audio jack again? Not enough room? Bullshit
tbh I looked at audio jacks in internals, and they do usually have double the footprint on a pcb than what you see outside of it, at least on low end consumer devices:
That’s not to say that they couldn’t put anything more compact in a highend device like a smart phone.
Okay but I have a usbc slot, speakers, stylus, and an audio jack all on the bottom of my new phone. It’s bullshit that they needed the room as evidenced by this 2025 phone.
It can also use an sdcard. Greedy fucking corporations just wanting you to repurchase stuff you already have.
There are sane reasons to ditch an audio port. Like, physical connectors are fragile. Why use something that’s so often broken, when you don’t need to? Why include circuitry for something that you don’t need? At this point, physical audio ports are there for backwards compatibility. I’m not saying wired headphones are bad - I have wired headphones - but phones are the least useful place for them.
None of those reasons are the reasons that were stated for removing it from devices by the manufacturers.
The point isn’t whether it’s needed or not. It’s not about space or features. The point is that a major player made a design decision and bucked the system. And while there may still be some phones with audio jacks, the majority of mainstream phones don’t. That major player is still successful, and other companies followed suit.
Can we agree this is what should happen to HDMI. No?
Can I ask what phone did you buy? Only if you confortable to share it ofc. I am looking for a new one. I loved my Samsung Note9. Everything was great, it had stylus, jack, battery life, oled screen, decent cameras. The only thing missing is andoid OS update support. It still better than most middle range phones…
For now, but DP and specially DP over USB-C is becoming gradually more popular for computer hardware, someone paying 400 euros for a GPU doesn’t mind paying 10 bucks extra on an adapter if they have an HDMI monitor. But most monitors nowadays come with DP anyway.
The problem is not with monitors, but rather TVs, which are not using DP (almost?) at all
Adapter
No, because electronics aren’t alive
🤦♂️
maybe there is an actual explanation for HDMI Forum’s decision that I am missing.
HDMI has never been an open standard (to the best of my understanding anyway). You’ve always needed to be an adopter or a member of HDMI forum to get the latest (or future) specs. So it’s not like they’ve just rejected a new idea. The rejection is fully consistent with their entire history of keeping the latest versions on lockdown.
Standards organizations like HDMI Forum look like a monolith from the outside (like “they should explain their thinking here”) but really they are loosely coupled amalgamations of hundreds of companies, all of whom are working hard to make sure that (a) their patents are (and remain) essential, and that (b) nothing mandatory in a new version of the standard threatens their business. Think of it more like the UN General Assembly than a unified group of participants. Their likely isn’t a unified thinking other than that many Forum members are also participants in the patent licensing pool, so giving away something for which they collect royalties is just not a normal thought. Like… they’re not gonna give something away without getting something in return.
I was a member of HDMI Forum for a brief while. Standards bodies like tihs are a bit of a weird world where motivations are often quite opaque.
HDMI has never been an open standard (to the best of my understanding anyway). You’ve always needed to be an adopter or a member of HDMI forum to get the latest (or future) specs. So it’s not like they’ve just rejected a new idea.
Okay not publishing the spec is still the same, but something else is new nonetheless.
AMD is an adopter*, they have the spec and they implemented a driver for 2.1 intended to be open sourced in Linux. But they were still blocked from publishing it. For HDMI 1.4 that wasn’t an issue yet from what I’ve found (though it’s always hard to search for non-existence). Open source implementations of HDMI 1.4, even in hardware description languages, seem to exist.
*you can search for “ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES” here to confirm for yourself
I may have misread or misunderstood the article, but it seemed as though Steam wanted to open source their 2.1 implementation, which would effectively publish the 2.1 specification. I’m pretty sure their agreements with HDMI Forum and HDMI.org prohibit that.
Translation: Nothing’s happening until someone needs to get bribed.
/s
Is this really your point or are you being sarcastic? Pick one
Left to the imagination of the reader
Thanks for sharing these insights.
Fuck you HDMI Forum
If you want change you got to direct your comments to the HDMI forum. Here we can talk about it forever and if they never see anything they won’t change. I sent the following email to: admin@hdmiforum.org
Dear HDMI Forum,
I was recently saw the news that the HDMI forum was blocking open source implementations of the HDMI 2.1 specifications and I want to express that I really believe this is a bad idea. I hope the HDMI Forum will consider allowing it. I can’t say I understand what the concern is or the reason for blocking it but I really doubt that whatever issue is envisioned will actually come to fruition, instead I believe that allowing open source implementations will be beneficial for adoption of the standard and since if I understand correctly the licensing fees are based on hardware sold so having open source code will of course not exempt anyone from HDMI licensing rules.
Thank you so much for your consideration,
(Name)
Maybe it’s not perfect (I already wished I worded one sentence better) but I think what matters most is just trying your best and using your voice whenever you can. Be sure to send your email too, the more they receive hopefully the higher the chances that this works but of course be sure to use your own wording, I just put that here for an example.
I’m at the point where I think it would be easier to switch to display port
I can’t find TVs with display port, probably because of “big HDMI”. :(
Fun fact: DisplayPort can carry hdmi signals. So you can connect a cheap cable with DP on one end and HDMI on the other. The only catch is it goes DP->HDMI, not the other way around.
Hilariously this is the easiest way to get HDMI-CEC support on a (Linux) PC
That’s very good to know… I need to do some cable shopping.
Also beware using such cables with early problematic DP1.2 implementations. The display can behave strangely sometimes.
💸 (and control) is the reason.
Yes, this isn’t new but it’s resurfacing thanks to the Steam Machine. Basically (off my memory), part of your title is accurate: AMD did create a FOSS driver with HDMI 2.1 which does not violate HDMI forum requirements, but the HDMI forum still vetoed it. I don’t know if it would necessarily “disclose the specification” as the first part of your title suggests, but I didn’t dig into the details enough to say for certain.
Basically a dick move by HDMI. Maybe Valve can push their weight on this, we’ll see.
I quoted the link. I do not have more insights.
Time to kill HDMI with USB 4/TB bring those cost way down.
Display Port would be better suited to do all of those things.
Usb-c supports DisplayPort! Long live open standards!
Except DisplayPort has high data transfer speed requirements and many cables that fit the nice reversible ports do not support it.
Source: me testing every cable at home to find one that supports DP + PD
We really do need better cable identification standards for usb-c. Like electrical and cat cables have had this better addressed for a while now.
are USB-C ports that do display using displayport standards to do it anyway?
Yes, they do. You just need a fitting cable, which supports the bandwidth.
Normalize USB-c with screws and we have a deal.
HDMI does not have screws.
Yeah, it’s a pretty bad connector.
With cinema camera accessories, we have these “locking” USB C plugs. They have these notches that help stay in the port. I say it’s about 2.5x more firm and doesn’t wiggle much.
Like the old USB micros sort of?
I think the micro B had hooks on them? Are you talking about that? The USB C plugs I’m referring to had these dimples on the skinny side and the bumps are in the port.
Yeah that’s what I’m thinking of.
But are we talking the type with a single screw above the port or two screws either side of the port?
let’s make usb and displayport open-source drivers. seriously!
How good and capable are DP to HDMI adapters?
It depends on the adapter, but from the ones I’ve encountered they are limited to 30fps at 4k.
Be a damn shame if someone leaked the driver.
Or even better, drop HDMI support in favor of displayport
I’m wondering if Valve might just include a DP to HDMI cable for the Steam Machine - since it includes DP.
Not sure it’s economically viable for device makers to drop HDMI altogether since TVs will never do that
HDMI -> DP might be viable, since DP is ‘simpler’.
Supporting HDMI means supporting a whole pile of bullshit, however - lots of handshakes. The ‘HDMI splitters’ that you can get on eg. Alibaba (which also defeat HDCP) are active, powered things, and tend to get a bit expensive for high resolution / refresh.
Steam Machine is already been closely inspected for price. Adding a fifty dollar dongle into the package is probably out of the question, especially a ‘spec non-compliant’ one.
If they sell 2 variants of the Steam Machine, they could remove HDMI from one , and just put it in the more expensive variant, to reflect the extra headaches and cost that comes from HDMI.
That’d encourage people to get screens with DisplayPort. Many computer screens have DP.
Be a shame if it leaked on the internet.
I’m going to guess it would require kernel support, but certainly graphics card driver support. AMD and Intel not so difficult, just patch and recompile; NVIDIA’s binary blob ha ha fat chance. Stick it in a repo somewhere outside of the zone of copyright control, add it to your package manager, boom, done.
I bet it’s not even much code. A struct or two that map the contents of the 2.1 handshake, and an extension to a switch statement that says what to do if it comes down the wire.
nvidia has HDMI 2.1 last I checked.
They can do it because their driver (even nvidia “open”) is a proprietary blob
nouveau? Switch between drivers if you wanna use HDMI 2.1 or proprietary nvidia when you wanna game! It won’t make any sense, but it will piss off the right people :D
It probably already has been, and Steam likely already has the specification. They just can’t open source an HDMI 2.1 implementation without consequences.
I wish we just fuck HDMI group and switch to open standard display port but we are not control of TV manufactures cause they are who crested HDMI group
