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sounds 3 days ago

I'm switching to DisplayPort

jauntywundrkind 3 days ago | parent [-]

That HDMI Forum does not allow TVs to be sold with DisplayPort is a massive reason I think they deserve to have their building surrounded by angry people with pitchforks and torches. Anti-competitive abusers, doing awful things to prevent a better world.

DisplayPort actually makes sense as a digital protocol, where-as HDMI inherits all the insane baggage of the analog past & just sucks. HDMI is so awful.

bobdvb 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

No, they don't put DP on because every $ of hardware they fit to the TV needs to provide value. DP requires a large board component that may need manual handling, circuit traces (+ decoupling) and silicon on the chip to interface. It then requires software support in the stack and that needs testing/validation.

The percentage of people who will actually use DP to connect their TV vs HDMI is tiny. Even people who do have DisplayPort on their monitors will often times connect it with HDMI just because it's the more familiar connector. I spent a decade working in that area and we literally were debating about spending cents on devices that retailed for hundreds, or thousands. The secondary problem that drives that is that ~90% of TVs sold use the same family of chips from MStar, so even if you wanted to go off-track and make something special, you can only do it from off-the-shelf silicon unless you pay a fortune for your own spin of the silicon. If you want to do that then you better commit to buying >1m chips or they won't get out of bed.

HDMI forum was founded by mostly TV manufacturers, they're not interested in constraining the market in that way. It's all just been market consolidation and making TVs cheaper through tighter integration.

noname120 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> That HDMI Forum does not allow TVs to be sold with DisplayPort

Wait what?! This would be jaw-dropping anticompetitive behavior. Could you source this statement?

somat 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Oh wow, that explains a lot, I sort of always figured it was just market momentum that meant you never see tv's with a display port. sort of like

... we need a digital video link

VESA develops DVI

... market gap for tv's identified

hdmif develops HDMI which is DVI with an audio channel

... while technically a minor feature that audio link was the killer feature for digital tv's and led to hdmi being the popular choice for tv's

VESA develops displayport a packet(vs streaming for DVI and hdmi) based digital link, it's packet nature allows for several interesting features including sending audio, and multiple screens.

... no tv's use it, while display port is better than hdmi it is not better enough to make a difference to the end user and so hdmi remains normal for tv's, you can find a few computer monitor with DP but you have to seek them out.

I will have to see if there is some sort of stupid "additional licensing cost" if a tv is produced with displayport, that would explain so much. I don't claim that there are no tv's with DP but I certainly have never seen one.