Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features

Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by magila on Sunday December 03, 2017 @11:54PM (#15841528)

The real reason why both continue to be developed in parallel is industry politics. HDMI is the product of consumer electronics companies while DisplayPort is from PC hardware manufacturers. For various reasons these two groups rarely cooperate. One big point of contention is royalties. The consumer electronics companies like standards they can charge royalties for, while PC companies like royalty free standards.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by shmerl on Monday December 04, 2017 @12:13AM (#15841604)

Since DP is royalty free, why wouldn't most consumer electronics companies push for it as well? Only minority would demand royalties, while majority would be forced to pay them. So why not ditch the patent encumbered standard if majority would benefit from it?

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by magila on Monday December 04, 2017 @12:27AM (#15841646)

The consumer electrons industry is dominated by a handful of companies. Those companies also happen to be the ones who own the patents on HDMI. They control enough of the market that the smaller players are forced to pay up to be able to interop with the dominant companies' products.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by tormeh on Sunday December 03, 2017 @07:27PM (#15840545)

HDMI is longer distance while DP is higher bandwidth. So based on typical cable length you get HDMI for TVs and projectors, and DP for monitors.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by wmf on Sunday December 03, 2017 @08:08PM (#15840729)

HDMI (2002) is older and was already the standard for consumer A/V when DisplayPort was created (2006).

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by shmerl on Sunday December 03, 2017 @08:50PM (#15840891)

That's not a reason to continue using it in new devices, isn't it? COM/LPT ports were there before USB too, yet they were replaced.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by wmf on Sunday December 03, 2017 @10:41PM (#15841305)

The hassle of changing the connector is not worth the benefit of consolidating the protocols.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by fra on Sunday December 03, 2017 @10:24PM (#15841247)

HDMI is more expensive: you must pay royalties to use HDMI tech, whereas DP is free.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by shmerl on Monday December 04, 2017 @08:56AM (#15843789)

That's a reason not to use HDMI.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by fra on Monday December 04, 2017 @02:50PM (#15846835)

Right -- sorry I should have been more explicit :)

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by Double_a_92 on Monday December 04, 2017 @05:24AM (#15842871)

Does anybody know why DP cables are so incredibly expensive? It's like 20$ + shipping.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by undersuit on Monday December 04, 2017 @02:34PM (#15846715)

Monoprice is selling 10' DP cables for $5 and 10' HDMI cables for $6. Maybe you need to find a new place to buy cables. Amazon Basics has a 10' DP cable for $12.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by TazeTSchnitzel on Sunday December 03, 2017 @07:24PM (#15840531)

Well, for one thing, it supports higher bandwidth right now.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by shmerl on Sunday December 03, 2017 @07:41PM (#15840614)

Only this new one does. DP 1.4 supports 32.4 Gbit/s. HDMI 2.0 supports less.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by paulmd on Sunday December 03, 2017 @08:18PM (#15840772)

You're incorrect. DisplayPort 1.3 has supported 32.4 Gbit/s transfer rates for several years now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#1.3

The only thing that DP1.4 adds (in terms of bandwidth) is compression over the top. The native bitrate is actually the same.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by PascLeRasc on Monday December 04, 2017 @12:12AM (#15841600)

DisplayPort doesn't carry audio.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by KozmoNau7 on Monday December 04, 2017 @05:54AM (#15842977)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Technical_specific...

"Optional 8-channel audio with sampling rates up to 24 bit 192 kHz, encapsulation of audio compression formats (including Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio from v1.2)"

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by shmerl on Monday December 04, 2017 @12:14AM (#15841606)

It does.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by frik on Monday December 04, 2017 @12:58AM (#15841783)

DisplayPort might be cheap, as it's royalty free, but one has to buy a cable dongle to convert it, as displays rarely feature a DisplayPort.

None of my business monitors, TV nor projectors have DisplayPort, but every notebook, discrete graphic card came with a DisplayPort - so they first thing is to buy another dongle to convert DisplayPort to HDMI or DVI.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by zaarn on Monday December 04, 2017 @03:20AM (#15842434)

I have two monitors and a TV with DisplayPort, personal anecdotes/small sample doesn't count for much, usually.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by imtringued on Monday December 04, 2017 @04:20AM (#15842646)

Except you only need a passive cable because display port supports both HDMI 1.4 and single link DVI.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by mschuster91 on Sunday December 03, 2017 @07:37PM (#15840593)

Because native plain DisplayPort is only available on HP and some other Windows laptops (not sure about the state of the desktop GPU market), and it's rare as input.

The rest of the market - consumer Windows laptops, Apple pre-USB-C-crap-series laptops, gaming consoles, cable TV boxes, other home theater stuff on source side, as well as TVs and projectors on the sink side - speaks HDMI only.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by paulmd on Sunday December 03, 2017 @08:15PM (#15840761)

DisplayPort is widely available on business-class laptops, gaming laptops, all modern discrete graphics cards, all modern integrated video chipsets (although not all motherboards/devices will actually provide a port), etc.

You're actually diametrically opposite of reality here: the only devices which do not widely support DisplayPort are cheap crap intended for the low-end consumer market, and stuff exclusively targeted at the living room market like consoles and media-stick PCs.

Even something as pedestrian as my old Thinkpad from 2010 supports it.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by snarfy on Sunday December 03, 2017 @08:10PM (#15840735)

Every modern desktop graphics card has display port connectors. A common configuration is 3 display port + 1 hdmi, making hdmi the legacy connector. My five year old laptop has display port. It's not as rare as you think.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by chungy on Sunday December 03, 2017 @07:43PM (#15840620)

At least on desktop GPUs, you tend to get a lot more DisplayPorts than HDMI. You're lucky to get more than a single HDMI port, but three or more DPs are common.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by shmerl on Sunday December 03, 2017 @07:38PM (#15840598)

Question is why (all these devices would prefer HDMI).

Anyway, Thunderbolt ports route DisplayPort.

> not sure about the state of the desktop GPU market

High end cards support DP for a long time already.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by zeelman on Sunday December 03, 2017 @07:53PM (#15840670)

> Apple pre-USB-C-crap-series laptops

Totally incorrect. Before USB-C, there was Thunderbolt 1&2, which was over a Mini-DisplayPort connector.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by sitkack on Sunday December 03, 2017 @07:58PM (#15840694)

Display port connector, but only PCIe signaling, no other protocols implemented.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by DiabloD3 on Sunday December 03, 2017 @08:03PM (#15840709)

Except for Displayport. Seeing, as you know, half of HN has MBPs they plug into DP'd desktop monitors, including me.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by sitkack on Monday December 04, 2017 @12:43AM (#15841724)

No, the ports on the Macbook are PCIe + Displayport. The Apple displays are PCIe only. The parent was specifically talking about Thunderbolt. You aren't using anything Thunderbolt when you plug into a DP monitor.

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Re:Upcoming HDMI 2.1 Features by DiabloD3 on Monday December 04, 2017 @04:51PM (#15847887)

I've plugged non-Thunderbolt laptops into Apple Cinema displays as well.

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