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Valve: HDMI Forum Continues to Block HDMI 2.1 for Linux (www.heise.de)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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.

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[–] 331 points 8 months ago (12 children)

Console manufacturers all just need to switch to displayport to encourage tv manufacturers to do the same. No one's going to not buy a ps6 or steam machine because they have to use a little dp-hdmi adapter, but they might be a little more likely to choose a tv that doesn't need an adapter over one that does

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  • [–] 57 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    What about shipping an adaptor? DP to HDMI for the transition?

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  • [–] 17 points 8 months ago (15 children)

    Can dp even translate to HDMI with a "dumb" adapter?

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  • [–] 21 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    yes, i have a dp to hdmi 2.1 cable that cost like 35€. it works fine except each time i get up from my chair the screen flashes white. and no VRR.

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  • [–] 21 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    it works fine except each time i get up from my chair the screen flashes white

    Wha... how? What?

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  • [–] 30 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    ESD. the air is extremely dry here

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    There are a lot of passive adapters out there that seem like black magic at first.

    Obviously has drawbacks, but you can also do displayport/hdmi to VGA passively.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I have a 25ft HDMI cable that works fine for everything except sometimes when I open a new tab in Firefox, the screen temporarily goes blank/no-signal for a couple seconds. Also sometimes when the dryer turns on.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 child)

    Can't be a passive adapter or else that would mean DisplayPort and HDMI have to protocol compatible. If they were then we wouldn't have this issue. Apparently I was wrong.

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  • [–] 13 points 8 months ago

    Nope. DisplayPort can adapt to HDMI or DVI passively. It won’t support the proprietary bullshit like HDCP, but it will be able to display video just fine. Pin 13 on DP is specifically used to detect adapters, so the output device can automatically change to using an HDMI protocol if it detects an HDMI adapter. This technically requires a dual-mode DP port to automatically adapt, but the vast majority of DP connectors produced in the past several years are dual-mode.

    But going the other direction (HDMI to DP) requires an active adapter, to strip out all of the proprietary HDMI-only bullshit.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I agree with the sentiment but we're dealing with a chicken and egg problem. If no TVs have DisplayPort, who would buy a console that can't be used with their TV?

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Not really. Both could start shipping both connectors, except if I'm unaware of some licensing issue over that?

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    If I'm a TV manufacturer, I have less incentive to have both connector types because it increases cost and complexity while only appealing to a very small subset of users. It will take leadership at those companies to take a bit of a leap of faith that the effort is valuable as a long term plan because it will take other manufacturers to make the ecosystem. Couple that with the fact that leadership at companies tend to not be enthusiasts or technically inclined and it makes it difficult, but not impossible. I really hope we can move electronics towards DisplayPort just so it's an open standard instead of the HDMI for-profit model.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago* (1 child)

    Ah, the Apple strategy of forcing a standard.

    EDIT: By that I mean when Apple started putting USB (1.0) on their Macs back in the day to encourage more USB accessories. Not their proprietary (what was the old iPod connector called?) or lightning BS.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago* (5 children)

    You’re thinking of firewire, and that was not proprietary. Sony came up with that. I had a mini disc player with a firewire port. And thunderbolt, which is what they use now, is an evolution on firewire made by Apple, Sony, and Intel.

    Both firewire and thunderbolt are superior to USB.

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  • [+] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago*

    I have an old iMac that I use as a Plex server, and it has a firewire 800 port and a thunderbolt 1 port, both of which I use for a couple of very old external drive enclosures. Sure as hell beats USB 2.0.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    The first time I ever used a firewire port, I thought it was black magic compared to usb. It was INSANELY faster and super consistent speed. It was the same level of wow as the first time I used an SSD vs HDD.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago*

    Compared to the top speed of USB 2.0, firewire 400 was actually faster in that regard (due to a consistent transfer rate rather than a variable one), and I’ll explain where the true performance came in to play, and how thunderbolt also has this amazing feature:

    When usb connections begin to data transfer, they started at 0 Kb and slowly speed up to the maximum transfer rate. Then it slows down before completion. FireWire (and is successor, Thunderbolt) maintain a consistent data transfer speed. It begins at that transfer rate, and ends at that transfer rate. This is especially good if you’re moving around a large amount of small files.

    Also, firewire 400 already beat out USB 2.0’s 382 Mb/s transfer rate. Firework 800 more than doubled it, and thunderbolt 1 started at 1.5 GB a second. We’re at thunderbolt 5 now, and I stopped keeping track of the data rates because they were so blazingly fast.

    One drawback, however, is that firewire cables, and subsequently thunderbolt cables, are both extremely expensive and not very durable. They contain a lot more twisted copper wires, and tend to wear out faster. USB cables are nearly indestructible.

    Additionally, firewire (and thunderbolt) are also a networking protocol. You can create an ad-hoc LAN just with firewire or thunderbolt cable cables. This is natively built into macOS, but, on Linux, it requires some sorcery to make it work. With a Mac, and an emergency, you can boot your Mac with a damaged hard to drive remote remotely from another functional Mac just by using a thunderbolt cable (or a firewire cable). It’s a neat trick, and has saved my ass more times than I can count.

    One final awesome feature of thunderbolt 2+ is that a natively carries DisplayPort signals since switching to the USB 3 plug standard.

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