HDMI Forum Closing Public Specification Access Is Hurting Open-Source GPU Drivers

[CommunityMember]

I think the reason is simple - they don't care about anything but collecting patent fees. Open specification doesn't bring them any money, so they don't care.

Open specifications can still require licensing fees to actually implement due to patent encumbrances in numerous jurisdictions. Perhaps the best remembered is MPEG2, which even had a public sample code implementation.

[dimko]

Boycott HDMI

[dimko]

As someone who's just bought their first FreeSync screen, I was really surprised and saddened when I discovered this the other day. It's a ridiculous situation. My RX 480 has 4 DP outputs and just 1 HDMI and I gather I can at least use a passive adapter to make this work but I haven't tried it yet.

Be carefull about passive adapter. if tv is above 1080p some those adapters will not output more than 1080p

[ozeszty]

CEC, ARC and eARC is what's comming to mind. Other than that, I don't think so.

Those are just another streams to be supported next to existing ones, what's stopping VESA from implementing them in newer version? Patents? Backstage deals (like with lack of DisplayPorts in TVs)?

It would be cool if the whole thing ended up with DP 1.4b and 2.0a supporting CEC, ARC, eARC and whatnot. A couple of years and we'd finally have new devices with DP.

[Chewi]

Going over or removing? Either way that's some water, a scraper, a stud finder, a drill, and up to a few hours. Sans the mount, we're talking $50 worth of crap at Lowes that you can return when you're done using...unless you step it up and rent a wallpaper steamer. Personally, long-term, I'm leery about mold and whatnot when using steamers on walls. You just don't know if steam will seep into some micro-crack and soak your insulation.

I'm gonna be painting the entire inside of my house sometime this year and that few days is gonna suck. The work itself is easy and I enjoy painting, it's moving all the damn furniture back and forth that I dread doing. Some of it's really heavy. Is that your biggest problem too? The moving of the things to do the work and not the work itself.

Don't remember where I saw them, but I've come across AMD FreeSync HDMI 2.0 posts before too...but it was always about Windows and never Linux. Hopefully you'll get lucky with an adapter.

Haha, I'm not averse to a bit of work but I want it to look good. If I mess it up, it'll annoy me for years. I did mount the last TV but my walls are awkward (no-fines concrete) so it took two stressful attempts and even then, I only just managed to make it straight. I also value my time more than the cost of getting someone else to do it.

[Chewi]

Be carefull about passive adapter. if tv is above 1080p some those adapters will not output more than 1080p

Good to know, thanks. I have an adapter already that I can try but I've only used it for 1080p up till now.

[wswartzendruber]

Good. It'll make it (HDMI) die more quickly.

[xcom]

I don't understand the article.
So far HDMI spec was open, but from now it's closed ?

HDMI can't be reversed engineered ? It's not legal?

[ezekrb5]

I don't understand the article.
So far HDMI spec was open, but from now it's closed ?

HDMI can't be reversed engineered ? It's not legal?

It has always been closed. If you want to use HDMI on linux you need to run it with a binary blob (which is why we have diferent kernels, the fully FOSS ones and the standar kernel that has plenty of blobs). Displayport is a more capable conector which is fully open source. However most TV and display companies have deals with the HDMI corporation, so they use that connector, and many people get mad at DP saying it's garbage because none of their devices have it, even on this thread there are people saying HDMI is the best choice because their TVs are HDMI...

This article is about the spec documentation, the HDMI spec (not the code or the blobs, just the full long spec-sheet) was always detailed, but they took it down and you need to contact the HDMI guys with valid proper reasons and the might send it to you by mail. This means any developer trying to do anything with HDMI doesn't have proper access, while companies that pay the license get the documentation included.

I understand why devices like the raspberry pi use HDMI, so more people can adopt them, but honestly they should just go DP and have users buy an adapter cable if needed...

[Venemo]

Displayport also supports HDCP.

Thanks, I didn't know that. I stand corrected, then.