Fuck hdmi
this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2025
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HDMI requires a license cost, DisplayPort is free.
What advantage does HDMI hold over DisplayPort?
No real technical advantage; it's just owned by the same shitbags that dominate the TV market, so it's the only way to connect to a lot of consumer living-room displays
This is the problem. I would switch to DP instantly but my TV only has HDMI ports.
There are DisplayPort to HDMI converters available
Latency, desync, probably can’t do full 4k/120… just because something exists doesn’t mean it’s a viable solution.
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Display port to HDMI cables are pretty good
Active ones aren’t cheap, though.
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My guess is TV compatibility. The steam machine is intended as a living room PC, connected to your TV. Most TVs only have HDMI, no DP.
HDMI has always sucked. I used DVI for the longest time, because HDMI couldn't push enough pixels to a 1920x1200 display (topped out at 1080p for the longest time). Then jumped straight to display port when I finally got a 4k monitor.
HDMI was always 4-5 years behind other contemporary protocols, and for your trouble, you also got a stack of proprietary bullshit to go with it.
My understanding is it’s not even a licensing issue. The HDMI consortium won’t let you include features from 2.1 and 2.2 in an open source driver. it sounds like Valve would be willing to pay, but they’d have to include a closed source driver for the video card.
That's still a licensing issue: you're not allowed to license from the HDMI consortium and then freely sublicense to all your users, which is what open source requires. Hopefully this eventually concludes in the end of relevance for HDMI and we can have a freer, and just better ecosystem in general.
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I’m not sure where I got this idea, but I thought it was because Display Port doesn’t carry audio, and a single-cable solution was more appealing.
But apparently Display Port also supports audio, just none of my devices seem to recognize it…?
Apparently the only advantage of HDMI is ARC (Audio Return Channel), allowing devices to send audio back to the video source, which might be useful in some home theater setups.
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Omg is this seriously it??
Yeah pretty much. Display port is just as good but there aren't really a lot of TVs on the market with display port because the people who own the HDMI standard are in that industry.
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https://www.phoronix.com/news/HDMI-2.1-OSS-Rejected
It's pretty weird that this organization that exists only to extract rents from people who want to use hdmi remains unwilling to do so even for a customer as large as Valve. I wonder who has given them the motivation for it, and how much it cost them.
Their motivation is staying away from open platforms, and protecting their members' IP rights. Gotta thwart those pirates.
AMD is nearly 100x the size of Valve, and they couldn't get HDMI 2.1 approval on Linux. Nvidia somewhat has it with their proprietary drivers, but not nouveau.
They're not fucking with AMD and Valve just because they spontaneously developed an irrational hatred of partly-open platforms. Somebody has persuaded them that they have a financial incentive to do it.
The movie studios. As the person above said, the HDMI consortium (owned by movie studios) is focused on protecting their members IP rights from pirates. HDMI has built in DRM, that could be removed from an open source driver.
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It's wild how much we flock around such shitty standards all the time, generation after generation.
We don't flock to it, they are forced upon us. Finding TVs that support DP is almost impossible.
One of the biggest problems is that shitty standards use the money they get from licensing the standard to push the standard. Good open standards often don't have a marketing budget to play with. On top of that, shitty standards can make unrealistic promises to gain an advantage. Like HDMI does with DRM. "If every device uses this standard, piracy will be a thing of the past!"
Yes, that is what I meant, the 'we' used like an alien might observe us.
Theoretically we could stop buying TVs, but practically we are forced into it by supply.
And yes, licencing a standard beyond dev should be just illegal, it hurts (almost) everyone.
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Displayport needs to start showing up on TVs and eventually get standards for stuff like eARC and HDMI CEC
TV OEMs are apparently part of the HDMI forum and therefore complicit.
We need EU regulation if we want to have this.
I remember when HDMI came out and then DP.
I wish I knew what was actually going on at the time with regards to licensing, I just knew they both worked and didn't really pay much attention to things. Sometimes I'd use DP sometimes HDMI.
If I'd known, I definitely would have made a more concerted effort to support DP when it could have made a bigger difference.
"We need to develop a one universal standard that covers everyone's use cases."
At least one person got the joke. 😁
It exists. It’s Display Port.
The use case of "make a shit ton of money licensing a proprietary standard" is kind of mutually exclusive with other use cases. It would be hard to cover.
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There's a huge rabbit hole with HDMI certification...
Like, display port is better in everyway, but people make a shit ton of money off putting "HDMI certified" on products, so that's still the default.
It already comes with DP 1.4. enough for me
Well Valve should sell an optional DisplayPort adapter then, right?
The Steam Machine is supposed to be plug and play, and not getting VRR on your TV is a huge compromise.
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