from Hacker News

HDMI Forum does not allow an open source implementation of the HDMI 2.1 spec

by Thomashuet on 3/1/24, 7:02 AM with 163 comments

  • by fsflover on 3/1/24, 8:58 AM

  • by redox99 on 3/1/24, 11:24 AM

    Luckily with mid and high end monitors, DisplayPort is the standard. I don't understand why TVs don't come with even a single DisplayPort though. Maybe they are paid off by the HDMI forum?

  • by dark-star on 3/1/24, 8:54 AM

    If I understand it correctly, you can do that, but you cannot call it "HDMI compliant" or otherwise use the HDMI trademark.

  • by DeathArrow on 3/1/24, 9:50 AM

    The question is why do we use proprietary formats and specifications such as HDMI, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, Lightning.

    Aren't we able to create and use open standards?

  • by missjellyfish on 3/1/24, 12:21 PM

    Someone needs to reverse engineer and publish the spec ASAP. This is ridicolous.

  • by fransje26 on 3/1/24, 9:54 AM

    So, DisplayPort it is then..

  • by anthk on 3/1/24, 9:49 AM

    The computer related companies should have given the middle finger to the media Mafiaa long ago and tell them to STFU if they ever wanted their content to be displayed in a computer with PC based standards and not MPEG.

    Once you get a libre OS you can dump the content of the BUS or fake whatever HDMI hardware out there to get pristine audio and video frames. Also, the current Hollywood movies are very subpar compared to what we had in the 90's, so who cares.

    My SO has an Amazon Prime account and yet they want to show adverts in middle of a media she already paid to be displayed without ads in theory. So, you are paying them twice. Thus, I don't consider Bittorrent piracy when you legally paid for a service but the streamers can break out the rules anytime.

  • by emersion on 3/1/24, 11:13 AM

    A possible workaround for users is to use an active HDMI adapter, e.g. a USB-C dock or DisplayPort → HDMI converter.

  • by drpossum on 3/1/24, 10:10 AM

    Ars Technica has to be the most careless tech news outlet and I stopped reading them long ago because of how much they just get factually wrong because of woefully inexperienced writers and to grab attention.

    Their first sentence is "Any Linux user trying to send the highest-resolution images to a display at the fastest frame rate is out of luck for the foreseeable future, at least when it comes to an HDMI connection" but that's plainly not true. Hardware with closed source drivers, such as the standard nvidia ones do support those because they don't have this legal limitation. Then they even end it with that possibility of closed source AMD and didn't bother even asking themselves if anyone else has done this.

  • by javier_e06 on 3/1/24, 12:42 PM

    I was like: Is Google in the HDMI Board? No, neither Microsoft.

    https://hdmiforum.org/about/hdmi-forum-board-directors/

    I see people from Apple Panasonic Sony Nvidia Samsung etc.

    Hardware companies. Maybe you have to buy your way in the club.

  • by hdmileaksignal on 3/2/24, 6:33 PM

    FWIU HDMI leaks signal whereas DP DisplayPort is designed to reduce emanations, anyway. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36681814#36685387

    Almost anti-competitive that the HDMI 2.1 spec people won't allow an open implementation.

    That they don't even allow open implementation should have been a red flag to all of us that HDMI 2.1 has not been subjected to sufficient review.

    Have any of you sufficiently reviewed an actual implementation of this spec? Only with black-box testing because it's closed source?

  • by pedrocr on 3/1/24, 11:59 AM

    On a somewhat related note, it's very surprising how hard it is to get DisplayPort out of a USB-C connection. Although DP is natively there all the cheap adapters tend to be HDMI even though that requires extra hardware to create the complex HDMI signalling out of the DP native output. So although monitors tend to have DP inputs and now everything has DP outputs in the form of USB-C it's actually hard to connect the two.

  • by tener on 3/1/24, 9:32 AM

    What is stopping AMD from distributing a closed source binary blob along with selling the access to proprietary source code for $1?

  • by MountainMan1312 on 3/1/24, 7:35 AM

    > you can't make an open source HDMI 2.1 driver because some people said so

    I don't understand. Fuck whatever committee said whatever crap. Open source is open source. Just make the damn driver and give the suits 2 middle fingers.

  • by lousken on 3/3/24, 8:44 PM

    it's time to call HDMI legacy, just like DSUB and DVI DP and/or USB-C + DP alt mode is the way

  • by CalRobert on 3/1/24, 8:52 AM

    I still miss DVI.