> Standards are different. The purpose of the standard is that Alice wants her output device to be compatible with everyone else's input device and Bob wants his input device to be compatible with everyone else's output device.

I do think there's value and a lot of work in coming up with a standard that manufacturers agree on. It's a huge coordination problem, based on the idea of unlinking a standard's success with the success of, say, a hardware competitor. It's real work! And like.... HDMI is an invention, right? If that isn't then what is?

"we should have drivers for the hardware that relies on this tech" just feels like an obvious win to me though. The (short-term) ideal here is just the forum being like "yes it's good if HDMI 2.1 works on linux" and that being the end of the story

I don't have much love for things that mean that like VGA info online all being "we reverse engineered this!!!" so they're not my friends but I wouldn't succeed much at standards coordination

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AnthonyMouse 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I do think there's value and a lot of work in coming up with a standard that manufacturers agree on. It's a huge coordination problem, based on the idea of unlinking a standard's success with the success of, say, a hardware competitor. It's real work!

It's work they would be doing anyway because they all benefit from it, which is why it isn't a coordination problem. The known and effective coordination solution is a standards body. Everyone sends their representative in to hash out how the standard should work. They all have the incentive to do it because they all want a good standard to exist.

Moreover, the cost of developing the standard is a minor part of the total costs of being in the industry, so nobody has to worry about exactly proportioning a cost which is only a rounding error to begin with and the far larger problem is companies trying to force everyone else to license their patents by making them part of the standard, or using a standard-essential patent to impose NDAs etc.

> And like.... HDMI is an invention, right? If that isn't then what is?

It's not really a single invention, but that's not the point anyway.

Patenting something which is intrinsically necessary for interoperability is cheating, because the normal limit on what royalties or terms you can impose for using an invention is its value over the prior art or some alternative invention, whereas once it's required for interoperability you're now exceeding the value of what you actually invented by unjustly leveraging the value of interoperating with the overall system and network effect.

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rtpg 2 days ago | parent [-]

> It's work they would be doing anyway because they all benefit from it, which is why it isn't a coordination problem

HDMI: tech is shared between you and competitors, but you don't get to collect all the licensing fees for yourself

Some bespoke interface: you can make the bet that your tech is so good that you get to have control over it _and_ you get to license it out and collect all the fees

in the standards case, the standards body will still charge licensing fees but there's an idea that it's all fair play.

Apple had its lightning cable for its iPhones. It collaborated with a standards body for USB-C stuff. Why did it make different decisions there? Because there _are_ tradeoffs involved!

(See also Sony spending years churning through tech that it tried to unilaterally standardize)

	▲	AnthonyMouse 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> HDMI: tech is shared between you and competitors, but you don't get to collect all the licensing fees for yourself > Some bespoke interface: you can make the bet that your tech is so good that you get to have control over it _and_ you get to license it out and collect all the fees Except that these are alternatives to each other. If it's your bespoke thing then there are no licensing fees because nobody else is using it. Moreover, then nobody else is using it and then nobody wants your thing because it doesn't work with any of their other stuff. Meanwhile it's not about whether something is a formal standard or not. The government simply shouldn't grant or enforce patents on interoperability interfaces, in the same way and for the same reason that it shouldn't be possible to enforce a copyright over an API.

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kasabali 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> HDMI is an invention, right?

DVI was an invention.

HDMI just added DRM on top of it.

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samplatt 2 days ago | parent [-]

That's definitely a thing that happened, but it's minimising so much other important work that it's misrepresenting the whole thing.

Do you know how much bandwidth six channels of uncompressed audio needs? Home theaters would be a HUGE hassle without a single cable doing all that work for you.

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crote 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

ADAT Lightpipe supports up to 8 audio channels at 48 kHz and 24 bits - all using standard off-the-shelf Toslink cables and transceivers. MADI can do significantly more.

Let's not pretend surround sound is a nearly-impossible problem only HDMI could possibly solve.

	▲	samplatt 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I... think you might be proving my point for me? The ability to have a single cable that can do video AND a bunch of audio channels at once is amazing for the average joe. Don't get me wrong, I use optical in my setup at home & I'd love to have more studio & scientific gear just for the hell of it, but I'm the minority. I'm not trying to defend the HDMI forum or the greedy arsehole giants behind them. The DRM inbuilt to HDMI and the prohibitive licensing of the filters (like atmos) is a dick move and means everything is way more expensive than it needs to be. Was just pointing out that parent's comment was reductive.

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zephen 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Do you know how much bandwidth six channels of uncompressed audio needs?

Yeah.

Half the bandwidth of USB 1.0.

Or, in terms of more A/V kinds of things, about two percent of original firewire.