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HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

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Re: HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

#121

Post by ignaloidas »

shmerl wrote: post #14
kelnos wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does it though? Does it really? Of course not. It's just protectionism and rent-seeking. > I don't understand this move from HDMI Forum. They're handing a win to DisplayPort. I don't think so, at least at this point. Most people don't have hardware that requires HDMI 2.1 in order to get full use out of them, and of those who do, not all of them use Linux and/or care about open source drivers. Sure, that situation m…

May be it can change if USB 4 will sneak in and supplant HDMI in those devices, since it can route both HDMI and DP.

It cannot route HDMI, partly because HDMI is built upon antiquated principles and doesn't really fit besides more modern protocol designs. USB4 would need to get entirely redesigned for tunneling native HDMI.

Having a DP to HDMI converter on one end though, that's easy.

Re: HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

#122

Post by miki123211 »

rini17 wrote: post #81
account42 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually these monopolies are enforced by the state via IP laws. Without IP laws any upstart could reverse engineer the protocols and provide an implementation with less limitations. But of course free market enthusiasts like to ignore that part and only rant against the government when it protects consumers from companies.

Yes, if there were no IP anyone could cheaply make a single-digit-nanometer-node custom ASIC to provide the alternative 4K-capable video hardware implementation. /s

Anyone? No, probably not. Some enterprising company in Shenzhen, who would sell the thing for $.25 a piece due to fierce competition driving prices down to cost of materials? Now that's more likely.

Re: HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

#124

Post by mindslight »

obirunda wrote: post #46
trilbyglens wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works exactly as a free market is designed to. The strong and coercive win. That's what market dynamics are really about. Monopolies form easily and naturally unless regulation stops them.

Monopolies form easily? That's funny, you should try and start one, seems quite profitable. Seriously though, this is an oft repeated fallacy, and frankly irrelevant to the discussion. IP laws are the actual culprit in facilitating the apparatus of the state for the creation of monopolies. Most people seem to embrace this double-think that IP laws are good while monopolies are bad. You simply don't get monopolies wit…

Without imaginary property, AMD would have signed a similar contract - they would rather focus on their own products rather than reverse engineering the HDMI standards to create their own implementation. At which point AMD would be in the same position, unable to reverse engineer HDMI or adopt solutions from other companies who did.

Imaginary property laws most certainly encourage and facilitate monopolies and collusion, but they are not necessary to the dynamic. Such laws are essentially just the norms of business that companies would be insisting on from other businesses anyway, for which it's much more lucrative to assent and go along with rather than attempt to defect and go against them.

Another example of this effect is the DMCA - the tech giants aren't merely following its process verbatim, but rather have used it as basis for their own takedown processes with electively expanded scope - eg why we see takedown notices pertaining to "circumvention" code, or the complete unaccountability of Content ID. Google and Microsoft aren't significantly hurting themselves by extralegally shutting down a tiny contingent of their customers, meanwhile the goodwill they garner from other corporations (and possible legal expenses they save) is immense. The loser is of course individual freedom.

Re: HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

#125

Post by dathinab »

arghwhat wrote: post #65
kelnos wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does it though? Does it really? Of course not. It's just protectionism and rent-seeking. > I don't understand this move from HDMI Forum. They're handing a win to DisplayPort. I don't think so, at least at this point. Most people don't have hardware that requires HDMI 2.1 in order to get full use out of them, and of those who do, not all of them use Linux and/or care about open source drivers. Sure, that situation m…

> At any rate, for some reason DisplayPort has just not caught on all that much. DisplayPort won everything, except not becoming the physical connector for home cinema. Heck, even within those HDMI-exposing devices, DP won. The vast majority of display drivers speak eDP. Few things actually implement HDMI, and instead rely on DisplayPort to HDMI converters - that's true whether you're looking at a Nintendo Switch or…

> The only real thing holding onto DisplayPort is eARC and some minor CEC features for AV receiver/soundbar use. Introducing some dedicated audio port would not only be a huge upgrade (some successor to toslink with more bandwidth and remote control support), but would also remove the pressure to use HDMI.

USB-C

I mean think about it

USB-C/DP alternative mode is good enough as upstream for most use cases (including consoles)and has some additional future feature potential, and still has some USB bandwidth left usable for various things including CEC

for eARC-like use-cases (i.e. sometimes audio+video upstream, sometimes audio downstream) you have a few choices (one needs to be standardized):

- always create a DP alt mod channel upstream, use audio over USB for downstream, technically that already can work today but getting audio latency synchronization and similar right might require some more work

- switch the DP alt mode connection direction or have some audio only alt mode, which either requires a extension of the DP alt mode standard, or a reconnect. But I think the first solution is just fine

as an added benefit stuff like sharing input devices became easier and things like Roku TV sticks can safe on some royalties ... which is part of where the issue is there is a huge overlap between big TV makers and HDMI share holders, I mean have you ever wondered why most TVs don't even have a single DP port even through that would be trivial to add?

which is also why I think there is no eARC like standard for USB-C/DP alt mode, it only matters for TVs and TVs don't have DP support

honestly I believe the only reasons why TVs haven't (very slowly) started to migrate to USB-C/DP alt mode is that most of their producers make money with HDMI

and lastly there is some trend to PCIe everything in both consumer and server hardware. In the consumer segment it had been somewhat limited to the "luxury" segment, i.e. Thunderbolt. But with USB4 it slowly ends up in more and more places. So who knows PCIe based video might just replace both of them (and go over USB-C)

Re: HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

#127

Post by treis »

arghwhat wrote: post #115
superhuzza wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>home cinema is pretty much purely an enthusiast thing these days (the casual user won't plug anything into their smart TV) Except a gaming console, a laptop, a roku, apple TV... Every single person I know has some external media source plugged into their TV, even my tech illiterate mother.

You’d be surprised by the number of users who are satisfied with the built-in media experience. I’d say it’s most likely a large majority. Google TV is common, but people with an Android-powered TV are not the main target for those until the TV gets old and out of date. Apple users on Samsung TV’s might also get far with the built in AirPlay support. Heck, even within enthusiasts there is a strong push to use the bui…

I'm in this crowd. The TV apps work well enough and it's one less remote. The only thing I use the attached Chromecast for is to (rarely) mirror my phone screen.

Re: HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

#128

Post by xnyanta »

sgjohnson wrote: post #119

I feel like the only thing HDMI has going for itself is ARC. DisplayPort is superior in every other way imaginable. Except for the fact that almost no TV supports it. Low-end monitors also don't usually have them, but as far as computer monitors go, I'm not interested in the low-end ones. As for TVs - just give me a dumb screen with ports. I'm going to attach Apple TV to it anyway.

So true, I picked up the Samsung G80SD "Smart Monitor" and the deciding factor was literally just that it supports eARC, allowing me to use my Sonos Beam soundbar with my computer and supporting compressed audio formats like Dolby Atmos.

To make things even worse, this monitor supports sending back the ARC audio over DisplayPort, but only in stereo. If I use HDMI between the monitor and the computer, I get all of audio channels.

Re: HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

#129

Post by xnyanta »

globular-toast wrote: post #77
ThatPlayer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's quite that simple. DP is still missing HDMI features like ARC and CEC, which are important for TVs. Even on my personal computer setup, I use the HDMI 2.1 ports on my monitor/GPU over the DP 1.4 ports because the DP port just doesn't have the bandwidth for 2560x1440 @ 240hz with 10-bit colour. That requires ~30 Gbit/s, more than DP1.4's ~26 Gbit/s. Neither my monitor nor my GPU support DP2.0 which…

ARC and CEC are only necessary because of this stupid situation where TVs are like displays with shitty media centres built in. ARC is only a tiny bit more convenient anyway; it's not that hard to run an audio cable back from the TV to an audio receiver and you'll be hiding the cable anyway so it matters not the slightest what it looks like. In 2002 there was XBMC (later renamed to Kodi). Microsoft even had Windows X…

>it's not that hard to run an audio cable back from the TV to an audio receiver

Wait until you find out that many consumer sound bars (Sonos comes to mind) only support the latest and greatest digital audio formats over eARC.

Re: HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

#130

Post by RegnisGnaw »

vzaliva wrote: post #33

There was a post here on HN some time ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36681814 ), basically explaining that HDMI is terrible and DisplayPort is a much better technical solution. So, perhaps people should favour DP instead of HDMI and gradually switch?

How do I switch? My TVs only have HDMI, should I spend another 5K+ to buy DP TVs?
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