HDMI Forum Rejects Open-Source HDMI 2.1 Driver Support Sought By AMD

[Theriverlethe]

People can start realizing that they are computers and not a religion, forget about trying to stuff their ideological beliefs down everyone's throats and just write software that allows people to use the hardware theu paid good money for to the fullest extent.

How about AMD have their open source driver if they feel that strongly about it and then have a more feature rich closed source driver that expands on the open source capabilities and allows people to make full use of the graphics card.

You could start realizing that you probably wandered into the wrong forum.

[Theriverlethe]

Brought to you by the people who introduced an encryption standard (HDCP) that was broken years before it reached the public. I remember running a program to decrypt Bluray so I could watch them on my non-HDCP compliant 1920x1200 monitor.

[damentz]

AMD should stick it to the HDMI Forum by dropping HDMI support for all of their high-end GPUs. Standard DisplayPort and USB-C ports only. Then, sell an official DisplayPort -> HDMI adapter for people who want "legacy" HDMI support.

Pros:
* AMD doesn't have to pay for HDMI licensing for as many devices. This means that AMD cards can be even more price competitive.
* Licensing costs would instead be factored into the costs of the adapter.
* The workings of the adapter can be closed. It handles the necessary encryption, etc. No need to pollute the free software drivers with that crap.
* Most customers won't care about HDMI anymore, and AMD will be the innovator to push for the removal of an unnecessary "legacy" port, as Apple has done numerous times before.
* Those that do need HDMI have an option to buy an external box. Since it only affects high-end devices where HDMI 2.1+ would otherwise be used , paying an extra $30 or whatever for an adapter won't be too big of a deal to most people affected.

Cons:
AMD would have to make an adapter (or just direct customers to a company that manufacturers one).

Ya I totally agree. I'm using a Club 3D active adapter to get 4k 120hz to a TV through a DP port. Works great!

[NeoMorpheus]

AMD should stick it to the HDMI Forum by dropping HDMI support for all of their high-end GPUs. Standard DisplayPort and USB-C ports only. Then, sell an official DisplayPort -> HDMI adapter for people who want "legacy" HDMI support.

Pros:
* AMD doesn't have to pay for HDMI licensing for as many devices. This means that AMD cards can be even more price competitive.
* Licensing costs would instead be factored into the costs of the adapter.
* The workings of the adapter can be closed. It handles the necessary encryption, etc. No need to pollute the free software drivers with that crap.
* Most customers won't care about HDMI anymore, and AMD will be the innovator to push for the removal of an unnecessary "legacy" port, as Apple has done numerous times before.
* Those that do need HDMI have an option to buy an external box. Since it only affects high-end devices where HDMI 2.1+ would otherwise be used , paying an extra $30 or whatever for an adapter won't be too big of a deal to most people affected.

Cons:
AMD would have to make an adapter (or just direct customers to a company that manufacturers one).

All that sounds perfect and I would back AMD all the way.

But sadly, we are surrounded by morons, that blindly worship Ngreedia, whom would right away start saying all kinds of stupid things against AMD because it doesn't have a HDMI port.

Then today’s “reviewers “ whom are really influencers that can be bought with a free 4090, would push the proprietary anti-consumer crap that its HDMI (as they do with all ngreedia proprietary crap like cuda and dlss) as a plus against purchasing anything from AMD.

we are truly screwed, unless the European union intervine and force tv manufacturers to also include DP or USB-C ports with their tvs.

By the way, funny enough, AMD reference models already have such DP and USB-C ports.

[Theriverlethe]

Doesn't Intel just circumvent this by building a DP adapter into their HDMI ports?

[gremlinherder]

DisplayPort already exists. And (apparently) it supports audio. The only thing DP is missing compared to HDMI is CEC, which isn't really required for PCs.

For PCs, DP is the better solution, especially if you want multiple monitors connected to a single card (Mini-DP is much smaller than HDMI, and Mini-HDMI wasn't really used anywhere).

Would be nice if DP was available on TVs, receivers, consoles, etc. But that ship has sailed.

DP for computers, HDMI for home AV.

It doesn't have exactly the same feature set, but DDC/CI works over displayport. I use ddcutil regularly to switch the brightness of my monitor rather than using the OSD and fiddly buttons. It's one of the main reasons I switched from using HDMI to DP, since they're otherwise identical on my GPU and monitor.

Based on the output of ` ddcutil capabilities --show-table ` it seems to support everything I can do using my monitor's OSD. e.g. `ddcutil setvcp 10 20` will set my screen brightness to 20. There are GUIs for doing this on macos/windows too, no idea why it isn't built into the OS.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

HDMI is kinda dead anyway; the HDMI Alt Mode (over USB) for example will not be developed any further.

Except for every TV on the planet. And AV receivers. And most monitors these days are DP + HDMI. Don't get me wrong, I very badly want DP to incorporate the few TV related features that are unique to HDMI and kill it off. But saying HDMI is kinda dead is pretty silly.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

Do the i915 or Xe Intel drivers for Arc GPUs fully support HDMI 2.1? That would have been good info to include in the article. If so, how? The secret sauce is part of the firmware? Add this to the craptastic codec situation for AMD on many big distros and things are looking a little better over in Intel GPU land.

[TheLexMachine]

Doesn't Intel just circumvent this by building a DP adapter into their HDMI ports?

Their GPUs have multiple digital display outputs called DDIs, which are then connected to physical interfaces or signal conversion circuits, such as DP/eDP, HDMI, converted HDMI, and USB-C. The upcoming ARC GPUs will have up to five outputs.

[F.Ultra]

If a patent holder licenses their technology to one party they must license it to anyone willing to pay the licensing fees.

Only if the patent is a SEP (Standard Essential Patent) and only in the EU, in the US this is still under a "may" clause. Every other single patent is licensed solely on the discretion of the patent holder. Now the HDMI patents are ofc SEPs.

I am very sad to see people so quick to ask for closed binary blobs as a solution. It would be much better to have a 3rd party patch not made by AMD that enables it anyway, this is Linux, this is meant to be the whole point of having an open OS.

Every single user of that 3d party patch would be liable for patent infringement though. Now it's unlikely that the HDMI consortium would sue individuals for patent infringement but it would still make it impossible for distros to include by default. Hosting the patch would also be difficult.