Alex Deucher:
The HDMI Forum has rejected our proposal unfortunately. At this time an open source HDMI 2.1 implementation is not possible without running afoul of the HDMI Forum requirements.
Since we now have confirmation that an open implementation is legally impossible I would consider the HDMI forum to be a cartel and not a standarts comitee. Therefore it should be dismantled by anti-trust authorities asap.
DP is very much not free. VESA themselves is happy to tell you that DisplayPort is excluded from their list of free standards, and the leaked copies of old standards are stamped with a “distribution to non-members is prohibited” notice on every page.
I’m not sure where that misconception came from, but it really needs to stop at some point. The best thing to say about VESA is they’re slightly less bad than the HDMI Forum. But only by so little.
Because DisplayPort is run by VESA, who better understand the appeal of an open standard.
That’s not the point of my comment, the point is that whatever hdmi is, it’s got very healthy competition, so there’s no real reason for anti-trust stuff
Display Port has a standing in Computer Displays but is basically unheard of in Home Entertainment.
Doesn’t mean displayport can’t be used there.
If the tv maker wanted to not pay licensing fees, they could put a displayport on the thing. But they don’t. Their call.
The HDMI licensing BS makes it rather useless. At least most monitors and GPUs have DisplayPort now. It’s mostly just TVs that are still limited to HDMI.
It’s not just limited to PC’s. USB C has a DisplayPort alternate mode and many phones and tablets support it now. I’m rather surprised manufacturers haven’t started putting USB C ports on TV’s for video input yet.
So that means if we ever have an open source NVIDIA driver that matches the proprietary I won’t be able to connect my 4K screen @ 120hz via HDMI (as the only option) because made up rules by an HDMI faction of TV manufacturers say so?
yup, we need brands making TVs with DisplayPort.
UPDATE
Even though AMD might not be able to add support for HDMI 2.1, nouveau certainly will as Nvidia’s open source driver also supports HDMI 2.1 so there is no reason to believe that at least some drivers can’t support HDMI 2.1. It’s quite backwards, but apparently having all the logic inside firmware (like Nvidia does) will probably help us implementing support for HDMI 2.1 🙃"
https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVIDIA-Firmware-Blobs-HDMI-2.1
Why?
HDMI just needs to die. we have displayport anyway.
Hdmi is a proprietary format controlled by companies that sell hdmi equipment. They have no benefit to having an open standard. They pay $15k a year each to keep it closed.
An other commenter here said that displayport is closed as well. Isn’t that true?
It is closed in the sense that all the ISO specs are closed - you have to pay a decent sum of money to see the specs, and you’re not allowed to just copy them and show them to people that haven’t bought access.
They are not closed like HDMI though - if you implement them, copy constants from the specs into the Linux kernel for example, that’s fine. Having actually open standards like Wayland would be a lot better though ofc…
The big reason for HDMI’s non-freeness is the use of on-protocol encryption. They learned from DeCSS, and the forum can’t let it happen again.
I’m sure similar requirements stop DisplayPort and DVI from going open source.
There’s two I believe, HDCP which has been around since the DVI days and only now people bothered to implement, and another form of XOR-based on the actual cable itself done with a secret key, again, its DeCSS all over again but the HDMI Forum has never promoted the secret key.
XOR on the cable is completely fine for encryption, provided the input source sends the key to the chip on the cable. That really wouldn’t be hard to implement, though it would certainly negate the intended purpose here (stopping copyright violations) since it wouldn’t prevent recording boxes. However, it would provide encryption and prevent listeners on the wire from seeing the data in transit, which should be the point here.
Cables shouldn’t be where copyright protection is enforced, that should be done at the point of sale. If you don’t trust your customers, don’t sell to them. As Gabe Newell said, piracy is a service problem, if you provide a good service at a good price, you don’t need to enforce copyright protections since it’s easier and less risky to just use your service.
