AMD Intentionally Crippled Their HDMI Adapters

[Kivada]

Maybe some sort of hdcp requirement?

That would be my guess, but what exactly are they checking for? What is in the officially supported adaptor that isn't in the cheap ones?

Who's got one of each to autopsy?

[Kivada]

What now AMD fanboys? Even RMS recommends NVIDIA hardware, because at least the nouveau driver is really open!

http://stallman.org/to-4chan.html

Nvidia does the same thing. Nice try Trolololol.

[bridgman]

That would be my guess, but what exactly are they checking for? What is in the officially supported adaptor that isn't in the cheap ones?

"Known good" audio connections AFAIK. There were also licencing tie-ins but it was a "kill two birds with one stone" solution.

[Kivada]

"Known good" audio connections AFAIK. There were also licencing tie-ins but it was a "kill two birds with one stone" solution.

So, what is in the official ones? a small chip? an extra pin?

[DanL]

The article is completely misleading. Nothing was crippled.

The title is misleading/inaccurate, but the driver was definitely crippled to not use non-AMD/ATI adapters.

I don't know exactly why AMD required their own special adapters to use HDMI over DVI ports for older asics, but I do know that a lot of cheap crappy video adapters don't work. I can't tell you the number of driver "bugs" I've dealt that were due to cheap DVI or DP adapters that were broken or missing pins.

That's not a good reason to assume that all video adapters are broken.

[MWisBest]

I didn't even think DVI supported an audio output in the first place, and this is a common assumption among many people other than myself, so this was news to me in the first place...

I can see multiple reasons for AMD doing this, that I believe most if not all have been mentioned in this thread at one point but not summed up in a single post:

1. HDCP requirements. This is one of the major reasons I can see for this happening, as although I think DVI can support HDCP it isn't a guarantee. My TV for example, doesn't support passing through a surround sound audio source via its TOSLINK audio-out even though it's the same signal that has to go through it; it'll end up downmixing it to stereo audio instead. While some TVs don't have this issue, my TV's manufacturer (Toshiba) confirmed that the issue was HDCP compliance, and TVs that don't do the downmixing are violating HDCP which is a big no-no... so with AMD having their specific adapter it probably reassures them that they can pass the signal through without some sort of HDCP violation I presume.
2. HDMI requirements. With AMD playing a role in DisplayPort's development, a potential huge rival to HDMI with it being royalty- and patent-free, HDMI might be keeping a closer eye on AMD, and if they slip up somehow with HDMI compliance and whatnot there's probably another chance for lawsuits as with HDCP.
3. Ensuring things "work". With AMD making sure their adapter is being used they can know that things will work as they expect.

Now, while I'm sure there are other ways they could have made sure all the points above are met and aren't an issue, the way they did things makes sense to me. There definitely are better ways to do this, however with this way being implemented in their drivers rather than in pure hardware it allows them to change it with just a driver update if they think of a better system for it in the future. Maybe it was forgotten about as it probably didn't receive much attention until now as well, and this could serve as a nice reminder to AMD. Something they could maybe do is allow people to get an extra adapter (with the customer probably having to pay at least part of the shipping cost, shipping ain't cheap) if they provide a serial number or something from their GPU.

[MartinN]

put your money where your mouth is

All - love the complaints, please consider donating at least $25 (my contribution) to Open Source GPU on Kickstarter

[Luke]

Maybe small cards should be offered without HDMI and one more DVI port then?

It is not clear from this article if AMD/ATI even had a choice in locking the audio out to a specific adapter. While VGA and DisplayPort are provided as royalty-free open standards, HDMI is a tightly controlled licensed standard. Not only does producing a product with HDMI require paying yearly royalty fees, but my understanding is part of the license allows the HDMI consortium to demand to be able to certify the products to verify they conform with the strict requirements of the specification. In theory, this allows the consortium to protect the HDMI brand by being able to revoke the license of any product which may cause damage or operate poorly with the other HDMI devices it is connected to. In practice, it is my belief that HDMI certification process may differ between companies that submit the product and that "politics" might come into play as part of the certification process. For example, AMD is one of the companies that assisted in the creation of the DisplayPort draft specifications which could be considered to be a competing standard. It would not surprise me if the HDMI consortium decided to lean on AMD a little harder than other companies which license the HDMI standard.

So the big question I have is this: Did AMD initiate on their own having a specific DVI/HDMI adapter be verified by the driver or was it at the "recommendation" of the HDMI consortium to insure standards compliance (including voltage levels and other things which may differ between quality of adapters)?

Given the HDMI consortium has attempted to claim passive DisplayPort to HDMI adapters to be "illegal,"[1] it is my opinion that HDMI could have also applied pressure on AMD. It is underhanded of AMD to put in such a restriction and then not disclose it anyplace in the product documentation. But the Phoronix article seems to imply that AMD put the restriction in by their own policy. I would like it if AMD was given a chance to respond to find out if any third parties had resulted in this policy of crippling. Does the title of the article fairly represent the situation if confirming a certified adapter was the only way AMD/ATI was permitted to ship the product as HDMI compliant?

References:
[1] http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388289,00.asp

With that kind of stuff going on, I would prefer that makers not support HDMI and refuse to support Blu-Ray. That won't happen, but Mesa obviously can refuse to check for such things and support cracking these restrctions. I suppose if the TPP and TTIP drade deals both went through, the resulting spread of software patents and DCMA style shit could force the Mesa project to host in an offshore sanctuary state not a signatory to any trade deal including the US due to this. I would be very disgusted if any open-source software project ever let themselves be bullied by one of these license/DRM consortiums and didn't at least move an "unstripped" version to a safe foreign repo.

As for my own use, I own only analog monitors, no Blu-ray drives, and I refuse to replace working monitors over what kind of cable they use. Sound goes to an old-school analog-only stereo with two speakers, not five. For what I do HDMI and HDCP are ignored, I wish I could get back whatever the cost of the unused HDMI license AMD paid and passed on when they made my video card.

[agd5f]

As for my own use, I own only analog monitors, no Blu-ray drives, and I refuse to replace working monitors over what kind of cable they use. Sound goes to an old-school analog-only stereo with two speakers, not five. For what I do HDMI and HDCP are ignored, I wish I could get back whatever the cost of the unused HDMI license AMD paid and passed on when they made my video card.

IANAL, but it's my understanding is that it is the actual board manufacturer (sapphire, diamond, etc.) that chooses to be HDMI compliant or not, not the asic vendor. The asic vendor provides an HDMI compatible chip and the board manufacturer chooses whether or not to utilize those capabilities in their board.

[Luke]

Board makers put HDMI on all the small cards

IANAL, but it's my understanding is that it is the actual board manufacturer (sapphire, diamond, etc.) that chooses to be HDMI compliant or not, not the asic vendor. The asic vendor provides an HDMI compatible chip and the board manufacturer chooses whether or not to utilize those capabilities in their board.

Due to the HTPC market, board makers put HDMI on all of these small cards. Either another DVI or another VGA output-or even a DP output-would be much more useful to me, and I cannot simply cut the unused HDMI connector from the board and return it for a license fee refund. Hell, I probably could not get any kind of refund without connecting the hardware to my name and address anyway, something I am very careful never to do.

Do the board makers or AMD pay the license fee? If only AMD has to pay, the only reason for a "delete" option would be to make space on the backplane for another connector or for more exhaust grate, like on the big cards that rarely have HDMI. For what I do, only reason to play with HDMI would be curiosity, or to crack the restrictions for the sake of cracking them with no practical use(which I would always attempt).