The HDMI Forum, responsible for the HDMI specification, continues to stonewall open source. Valve’s Steam Machine theoretically supports HDMI 2.1, but the mini-PC is software-limited to HDMI 2.0. As a result, more than 60 frames per second at 4K resolution are only possible with limitations.
HDMI Forum has fewer than 80 members and membership fee is 15,000 USD/year. Valve could spin up 80 companies, have them join the forum for a low low price of 1.2M USD and outvote remaining members to open source the entire spec.
This is hilariously plausible. Someone SCUBA down to Gabe and give him the idea.
dives to 50 feet, removes tube from mouth to shout to Gabe, and fucking drowns
FWIW (and I know it’s not the joke…) it’s perfectly fine to remove the mouth piece while scuba diving. In fact it’s part of basic training. You should be able to remove the mouth piece and take another one, your octopus or the one of your buddy, in case there is an incident.
No… the real question for a good diver is how the heck you’re going to say HDMI 2.1 with hand signs! /s
You breathe through an octopus? Don’t they need that oxygen themselves?
Just have to ask nicely. 🐙
(for people confused https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_regulator#Octopus )
You really going to be the “akshullay” person about hyperbole?
tips fedora
hahah yeah okay, you win, well played
hyperbole
Is that the the upper tier to Superbole?
rofl, I hate billionaires but this would be peak trolling
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I fucking hate this phrase. You have the choice to not participate and be a normal human instead of a sociopath.
Hate the players because they perpetuate the game.
It’s even more pathetic than that. They aren’t just expressing their will to play the game, they are asking for approval despite it. It’s similar to the “nothing personal” disclaimer which is usually followed by something with significant personal disruption.
Most honestly expressed, they’d be, “I’m doing/about to do something that impacts you negatively, please don’t retaliate against me because I don’t like it when negative things happen to me.”
Edit: just noticed the commenter you replied to reversed the original saying and agrees with you.
No players, no game
What does this even mean in this context
I’m pretty sure the saying goes, “don’t hate the player, hate the game.” Which implies that you shouldn’t be blaming the bad actors but the bad system that causes it to be that way.
Which is asinine both here and in its original use. If there weren’t bad actors the system wouldn’t be broken. The players make the game.
I can easily hate both of them
Does it have to be companies? Could individual people just have 15k, and join? We just need 81 new members.
Unfortunately it not only has to be companies, but unless you are a producer of products that are HDMI certified already your membership will be denied. It would take a lot of fuckery to make that many corporations and not have all of their membership applications be denied. Also I’m not sure that it’s even a voting democracy in the traditional sense even if you could.
Don’t you just need to setup a run of HDMI devices and have 80 companies invest together as a group for manufacturing, then have each company put their own sticker on it.
While doing that for 80 companies is not feasible I doubt all 80 members are opposed. Valve and AMD could talk to video card, monitor, laptop and handheld makers to pad the membership enough.
As for the democracy question a quick skim of their bylaws suggests it’s close enough.
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Are people just forgetting it has a displayport also? Just ignore HDMI, they got greedy, onto the rubbish pile they go.
The people who block HDMI for Linux are also the people who make TVs and other media stuff. So you may not be able to use displayport or hdmi just because some rich people decided so to make more profit.
This is what I said the other day about this issue. Good luck finding a decent tv with display port! Those fuckers are rare and expensive!
They are called monitors, and yeah expensive but then you don’t get a “Smart TV” with tracking and bullshit.
Nor do you get TV tuners. While most geeks probably couldn’t care less, any associated family do prefer to watch Great British Bake-off as it airs.
My country just disabled radio and tv over coax wire and provider send ip-TV boxes.
This allows to have now faster internet, which I like.You could get an external digital tuners and a hdmi switch to switch between pc and the TV.
My grandmother still has an ancient tv with one of those tuner boxes she bought for her tv when analog went off the air.
I would use an Apple TV or a Chromecast in that case. Most TV providers that I know offer their own mediabox anyway, so no need for TV Tuners anymore.
Just told my elderly aunt to not buy a smart tv today!
But do they make 40ish+ monitors?
They do, but they much more expensive than a smart TV, even though they have less components… Because a Smart TV is sold for less because its providing the vendor access to you as a product to all of their 3rd party partners.
I will add that you can also still get Westinghouse dumb TVs with included DVD player and USB video player, 3x HDMI and a tuner, but 1080p and Max 36"
This is big! Where can I buy one for my aunt‽ She needs a dumb TV that integrates with the Westinghouse infrastructure.
This is the one I’ve gotten two of for kids playroom and bedroom… They work great, old school simple tech.
https://www.amazon.ca/Westinghouse-Parental-Controls-Non-Smart-Monitor/dp/B09QXYZB3Y
It doesn’t matter if you get one. They are the cheapest and best image quality TVs available, and many like Samsung’s let you set them up without connecting to Wi-Fi.
Yeah, is a fucking sad state of affairs. I actually paid extra for my dumb TV, but then hooked up a jailbroken firestick so I guess I’m a hypocrite.
I understand why, but you didn’t have to. Many smart TVs let you set them up without Wi-Fi and just use the HDMI ports.
Samsung, LG, and Google TV models do, but Roku and Fire TV do not.
Basically no modern TV has displayport except for few that come with USB-C
DisplayPort to HDMI adapters are quite cheap and don’t add latency.
Aside from practicality, might there be something that gets lost if you do this? (e.g. worse frame rate, quality or sth. else)
No, DisplayPort, DVI-D and HDMI use fundamentally the same protocol, HDMI just adds DRM which requires active adapters when one plugs in a HDMI source into a DisplayPort sink. DisplayPort to HDMI conversions are completely lossless and don’t add latency AFAIK.
Oh wow, all that hassle just for some DRM, as if that would prevent anything… Thanks for clarifying 👍
Yes, but forget about VRR unless you want to flash a custom firmware and with that the adapter is finky as hell. I use one for 2 years now. It kinda works
It might be possible to get into output wirelessly, it has a dedicated radio for video output so presumably if you just stuck an adaptor into your TV you could just cast to it. Could be quite a nice setup if you wanted it to be able to connect to both your computer in the study and your TV in the living room.
The problem is that many TVs have HDMI, but no DP.
Then buy a DP to HDMI 2.1 dongle
No problem for me, but many consumers don’t think that far.
What we want is a solution for customers who don’t understand the benefit of DP and won’t buy an adapter when there’s already HDMI ports on both devices.
Wouldn’t an HDMI to DP cable work then?
It probably would, but that is already to complicated for most people.
Not if Valve packed it in with the Steam Machine.
That would be a nice idea, indeed.
That’s not really how it works given that so many devices have HDMI ports.
If we expect to make hardware devices that are generally compatible with interfaces non-technical users use, then excluding an entire class of common modern interface spec isn’t a great choice.
It’ll be fine for now but as the specs bump up inversion and HDMI changes over time is just going to get worse
but as the specs bump
Eh, 4k is already at the point of diminishing returns. There are 8k displays for a while now, but nobody buys them.
Rather, create 5k, please.
I wish game devs knew how to optimize for storage better. Let me install HD instead of 4k games if I choose. I do the same thing for anime series because HD barely takes up any space at all.
Weell, except some series, where every 20 min HD piece is 1 GB.
10bit colours?
No, bad transcoding settings while ripping. Lycoris Recoil is especially bad, 1.5 GB per episode while 300 MB mpeg is usual. Ah, to note that the lossless encoding they use on DVDs is over 6 GB per episode.
VRR? HDMI-CEC?
Ok but I need a pretty expensive active adaptor for my tv?
no. I have a DP to HDMI cable that cost me like $20. it does great.
I have a DP to HDMI cable… it still won’t do HDMI 2.1. No 4k120 without DSC… no VRR…
Not everything you don’t like is a bot. I learned something new today that DP supports audio and feel a bit foolish for not knowing that before now, though I stand by my personal experience with the connector. Between work and home, it’s always the DP that flicker at the slightest tap.
Does it have VGA?
Two considerations: Displayport doesn’t support audio, and there is no connector on the planet more frustrating and unreliable than DisplayPort. It’s like a joke how sensitive it is to the lightest bump. HDMI just works.
DisplayPort absolutely does support audio
DisplayPort supports a wide range of audio formats, including multi-channel audio like 7.1 surround sound, ensuring compatibility with various multimedia applications and delivering a robust audio experience directly aligned with the video output.
https://www.anker.com/blogs/hubs-and-docks/do-display-ports-support-audio
You seem knowledgeable, Mr. Vandelay. Perhaps you deal with imports and exports… if so on the topic of audio on DisplayPort, are you aware of any Receivers that will split the signal to send audio to speakers and video to your projector or monitor (TV but there are few)?
Serious question about the receiver if you do know of any - it’s come up in the last week while seeing the Valve HDMI news on Lemmy. I found some projectors that have DP, but no receivers and hoping someone here can!
should be able to with hdmi arc, not sure 100% tho but it seems like you could tell the projector where to send the audio, i know you can with tvs and hdmi arc. worst case scenario you do dp in to the projector and hope valve has stereo or optical out to go into reciever
Yes, I have recognised, that if a speaker is connected on the HDMI-ARC port, it will play audio from other input sources to TV still on those speakers. But in my setup, other input sources are HDMI as well…
I know that there are some complicated configurations that you could use to get the audio feed from display port to your receiver, like running it through a splitter that will strip out the audio and send it to your receiver separately. I’m pretty sure there are no mainstream AV receivers that will do what you want because the market is split between home theatre and PC, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, and manufacturers need to be convinced there’s a market for it.
In that situation, I would connect the output device, in this case a PC, directly to the TV/monitor with DP, and run optical audio from either the TV or the output device to receiver.
You lose some of the integrated control that HDMI-CEC gives you, so get a good universal remote that can adapt to this set up and get one-button source switching back.
I’ve considered this - I would like multiple sources on my receiver though, so this as you say requires at least a universal or 2 remotes to swap back to the reciever. My projector (current one) only has 2 HDMI Ports. Perhaps in the future this can be my setup.
I run a USB DAC off my pc, then have RCA cables going to my speakers. Usually the DAC built in to a PC or TV is terrible compared to a dedicated one
Didn’t know the HDMI cartel could afford bots / useful idiots
They must have found one in the bargain bin.
it’s gold plated
I’m not sure where you’re getting your information, but displayport absolutely supports audio. In most of the same formats that HDMI does as well.
Also, I’ve only ever had issues with HDMI plugs. All the displayport plugs I’ve used had positive locks on them and have been the most reliable plugs I’ve ever had to use aside from BNC connections.
You could perhaps have instead gone with “you don’t find displayport on cheap consumer displays,” because that’s an accurate statement. That’s a huge part of why this is a big deal.
My cat literally loves hiding behind my display port connected monitor, bumps into it all the time, it has never disconnected or stopped working. Your cable might suck.
Where did you hear that? I use DP to connect to my monitor and I can play sound through it.
Ground your shit. Or your cable’s bad
I have an HDMI cable somewhere that stops working temporarily when there are changes in temperature, air pressure or planetary alignment.
This is not an HDMI vs DisplayPort issue.
Displayport is better anyways.
Yup. Especially since “smart TVs” that are WiFi connected can spy on your HDMI connection. Samsung, LG and Visio were caught doing it.
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/is-your-tv-spying-on-you-how-to-check
After all the shit I’ve seen and heard about the creepy shit smart TV manufacturers get up to I am never ever connecting a smart TV to the internet in my home.
I didn’t connect my free Roku TV to the new wifi, and suddenly the remote works like shit. Turns out, it’s a wifi remote that would rather not use infrared and the infrared receiver has been slightly blocked this whole time.
The way to set it up without connecting it to wifi is very hidden. I had to look it up after because I couldn’t figure it out. I fucking hate smart tvs.
I hate the Wi-Fi remote thing. My TV has a Wi-Fi remote and it runs off of AA battery and they last about 4 days and then run out. If I hadn’t replaced them with rechargeable ones they would have probably had to open a new landfill site just for my old batteries.
My roku has an internal rechargeable battery and lasts months. But what’s infuriating is I read up further and found it doesn’t actually use my wifi network. It’s direct to the TV. So why wouldn’t it work without internet? Insane.
if they can do that, how come they can’t do the same with displayport?
It’s $1.2M to gain majority share on the HDMI board, but it sure would be nice if someone gave $1.2M to one of the engineers with access to that cryptographic DRM keys for the binary to “apparently get hacked” and have the keys magically appear online.
Wouldn’t make it legal to use them anyway and a big company like steam couldn’t get away with it.
It would still be great for the open source community working on personal projects and such
I bet we would start to see chinese adapters showing up on the market with DisplayPort to HDMI2.1 though.
Oh yeah, and and they would mostly be terrible, except one brand no one has ever heard of but, it’s apparently a big name in China, and called something like Zloks would inexplicably be the king of that particular niche product.
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You can/should write your congressman (or equivalent in your country). Just the threat that if OSS can’t use HDMI congress will open up the laws will get action. In a democracy voters have more power than big money when they care and vote like it.
That’s cute.
Hahaahahhaaa omg, you’re adorable.
Could work in the EU.
https://hdmiforum.org/members/
AMD is part of the forum but can’t get them to accept their own open source driver. I guess we can’t complain or shame all of them in one. I wonder who voted reject vs accept.
Sad.
Then AMD needs to apply more leverage or start an awareness campaign with as much shit PR for every business supporting them.
Fewer than 80 members. 15k/year membership fee and very lax joining requirements. $1.2M gets you majority allowing you do to whatever even with 100% of current members opposing :P
How hilarious would it be if the AMD board member was the one who veto’d the driver 😅
AMD has had the code ready to include in their open source driver for a while and has been trying to get HDMI Forum to let them release it for a long time https://www.phoronix.com/news/HDMI-2.1-OSS-Rejected
Wild to see DisplayLink among the companies here.
I was confused by seeing DisplayLink there, but couldn’t fully place them, and Wikipedia made me think they may be using HDMI and have an interest in keeping it inaccessible to sell their products and services.
Knowbe your enemy, they say.But jokes aside, I believe DisplayLink’s focus is primarily on the client<->docking station part, with docking station<->monitor usually still being HDMI/DP (same with direct client<->monitor links). So they still have to interface with it some way or another.
I recently watched a video about HDMI. I didn’t hate HDMI but now I kinda do.
Unfortunately most standards bodies are pretty much this stupid though. Blu-ray, DVD, USB, hell even codecs like H265 and MP3 have governing bodies that are mostly enterprises enforcing their collective power on standards. That’s good in ways because it means they all have to decide on a standard that’ll work wihh to pretty much anything, but bad because they can also enforce bullying like HDCP onto consumers.
That sucks
I wish I could buy hardware without HMDI at all so they got no money from me.
As much as I agree I think it would have been a bad move for them to do that. The devices success is already highly dependant on its price, which is still in flux as far as I understand, there is no reason for them to make the decision even more difficult.
It’s got DP as well though so it’s not all that bad. We really should be pushing manufacturers over to DP anyway.
It’s literally the same feature set.
HDMI, what’s that ?
sent from my DisplayPort monitor
You wrote that didn’t you
But why does the HDMI fourm not want a open source 2.1-compliant implementation? Is it DRM related? I feel like it’s DRM related.
Its fully DRM related.
My guess is if it’s open source it’s more easily cracked.
Likely moreso that they’re facing pressure from other competitors in the industry that see Steam and open source in general as a threat to their business model. The HDMI forum is made up of industry leaders, and naturally Microsoft and Sony are there.
They’ve been refusing open HDMI 2.1 since 2017. I don’t think that being afraid of Linux becoming the dominant gaming platform plays a role here; it’s more likely that they’re afraid people might find new ways to get at protected content.
Ive never had using HDMI prevent me from enjoying pirated media, so Ive always been confused about what sort of drm a TV is looking for.
It’s more of a barrier for people who are pirating media, not the ones consuming that pirated media.
Don’t they mostly download it directly from streaming platforms these days, skipping the display and its connector altogether…?
Isn’t getting at protected content pretty trivial anyway? At least that’s my impression from how easy it is to find basically anything.
But why does the HDMI forum not want a open source 2.1-compliant implementation?
To my knowledge they’ve never officially said but you can be sure that it has to do with Content Protection and that means DRM. An Open Source HDMI 2.1+ driver would make pirating much simpler, probably trivial and they don’t want that.
It’s possible anyway of course but there are a couple of hardware hoops to jump through and that’s enough to keep most people from doing it.
Because that would open source certain implementations they want to hold captive.
It also enforces closed source drivers which can be shipped with spyware/crapware, further extending profits for companies… companies that happen to make up the HDMI Forum.
They charge a fee for access to the spec and maintain who can claim their products are HDMI compliant and require compliance testing on those products.
An open source implementation would make that spec public and strip a lot of control they hold.
Part of being open source is subsequent licensing. This would allow any others to piggyback and avoid the fee.
The HDMI forum can go fuck itself
Not all software available on Linux is open source. NVIDIA drivers for example. Hell, most of the games on Steam are closed source.
So, is it just a matter of principle on Valve and AMD’s part that they only want to ship with fully open source drivers?
I’m not technically knowledgeable enough to understand why you can’t just make the HDMI 2.1 part of the driver code closed source and the rest of the graphics drivers open?
Modern specs are complicated. I vaguely remember something about a cryptographic key the driver needs to be signed with to successfully complete the handshake to enable all display options between the computer and display.
Not entirely unwarranted either, an unexpected amount of voltage on an unexpected pin because the driver / hardware is misconfigured damaging your TV would suck. (Still sounds like the Forum is being a dick about it though.)
unless you’re a NES. which then a voltage spike gets the DRM permanantly out of the way forever.
Are your electric plugs closed source lmaoi
Recent Nvidia drivers are open source
No they are not. The kernel module is open, which is not the driver. You’ve been lied to
I suppose I misunderstood
While infuriating, I think people who care about features limited to hdmi 2.1 are people having monitors with display port and people who use the box as console on “normal tv” are happy with 4k60
But I hate, that there is no wide supported open video protocol…
Can the HDMI standard not be implemented in hardware somehow, and then the open source software just talks to that hardware?
It seems ridiculous that you can make a device that works fine under HDMI 2.1 but you can’t access it with open source code.
That’s the problem. Open source software doesn’t work with the NDA. Nvidia does it with an embedded processor and closed firmware, Intel does it with an embedded Displayport to HDMI converter, AMD does it in the driver. Steam uses AMD chips and open source drivers so they can’t get it to work.
Evil, greedy little bastards…
They are clearly in the pockets of Microsoft.
