The HDMI Forum, responsible for the HDMI specification, continues to stonewall open source. Valve’s Steam Machine theoretically supports HDMI 2.1, but the mini-PC is software-limited to HDMI 2.0. As a result, more than 60 frames per second at 4K resolution are only possible with limitations.
Console manufacturers all just need to switch to displayport to encourage tv manufacturers to do the same. No one’s going to not buy a ps6 or steam machine because they have to use a little dp-hdmi adapter, but they might be a little more likely to choose a tv that doesn’t need an adapter over one that does
Sony would probably create a proprietary standard before they’d switch to displayport.
Good point!
I agree with the sentiment but we’re dealing with a chicken and egg problem. If no TVs have DisplayPort, who would buy a console that can’t be used with their TV?
TVs are starting to come with DisplayPort already in the form of USB-C alt mode.
Not really. Both could start shipping both connectors, except if I’m unaware of some licensing issue over that?
If I’m a TV manufacturer, I have less incentive to have both connector types because it increases cost and complexity while only appealing to a very small subset of users. It will take leadership at those companies to take a bit of a leap of faith that the effort is valuable as a long term plan because it will take other manufacturers to make the ecosystem. Couple that with the fact that leadership at companies tend to not be enthusiasts or technically inclined and it makes it difficult, but not impossible. I really hope we can move electronics towards DisplayPort just so it’s an open standard instead of the HDMI for-profit model.
As long as the manufacturers are competing against each other, that’s never going to happen.
The “gamer” consumer demographic has some of the most whiny, entitled vocal minorities. They’re going to endlessly complain about the next generation of console needing a special cable/dongle to connect to their TV, one of the manufacturers are going to fold, and then the other one is going to walk back the lack of HDMI because they don’t want to lose sales to their competitor.
I mean we don’t use coax/channel 3 any longer. Just do it.
Well how do YOU connect your NES up to your TV then???
I have actually been looking at modding an NES with HDMI (and other goodies) as a small project. There are various kits out there.
That was something they could actually market to the consumer as a necessary upgrade, though.
Going from HDMI 2.1 to DisplayPort 2.1a doesn’t offer anything other than higher bandwidth, and not even high-end PCs are capable of pushing resolutions at high enough framerates for that bandwidth to have been the limiting factor for games.
Because of that lack of perceptible benefit to them, the optics of replacing HDMI on consumer devices that are meant to be connected to TVs isn’t going to be good. Even if it’s an objectively better standard from a technical perspective, it will just come across to consumers as an unnecessary change meant to push their TVs towards planned obsolescence.
They’re going to complain about it, the media will pick up on the story and try to turn it into a scandal, and then legislators and regulators will step in and make decisions based on limited understanding of the technical reasons. By that point, one of the console manufacturers will have been pressured into backing down and promise to keep HDMI in their next-gen console, and the other ones will have followed suit because they don’t want to lose sales over it.
The only way console manufacturers are going to stay united in kicking HDMI to the curb is if the organization behind HDMI pulls a Unity move and starts charging royalties to the manufacturers for every time a consumer plugs the console into a TV.