Hot take: Industry should abandon HDMI.
DisplayPort is better in every single case (licensing, bandwidth, physical connection).

Every single time I need to use HDMI, I have some kind of issue. One of my monitors is connected using HDMI and I had to add aliases to my shell called "fucking-lg-on" and "fucking-lg-off" that writes values to i2c device (DDC) to tell the monitor to suspend.
Otherwise when kscreenlocker sends DPMS standby, monitor keeps disconnecting and re-connecting itself which sooner or later crashes my wayland session.... and that's just one example.

I've had issues with HDMI as far back as I can remember (likely circa 2014 when I finally could afford swapping burnt-out CRT from 1999 with 1080p LCD monitor).

DisplayPort however? Zero, nada.

Then of course there's HDMI Forum which I personally hate with burning passion (for obvious reasons).

I genuinely wonder *why* manufacturers of monitors and TVs stick with HDMI when DP is superior in every single way.

@elly There’s a very good reason. Please search “HDMI Forum Founders”.

@asie @elly *yells at sony... and its friends*

@elly I 100% agree, also using hdmi through _any_ adapter means that it will be randomly disconnecting at best, much better luck with dp.

@elly There was a time when I was advocating for DP a lot, but honestly my recent experience is exactly the opposite to what you describe. If I take a random monitor and plug it to a random computer over HDMI, it just works. On the contrary, it a plug a monitor to an already running computer, there is 2:3 chance it won't wake up. And even if I reboot the computer, there is 1:10 chance it won't ever connect.

I am the only one to experience this?

@elly the only inconvenience I've noticed with DP in ca 5 years only using it (and being desktop-centric) is probably that monitors aren't detected when powered down (due to AUX link being more demanding than an i2c eeprom in HDMI monitors). But that's really a nitpick, and once your DE is capable of restoring window positions etc you don't care.

Prob there're more media stuff HDMI can do while DP cannot (or just doesn't, aux channel can fit it all if everyone wanted), e.g. CEC, Ethernet channel (ever seen an impl of that? I've not), ARC. But nothing a computer screen would need.

And also nowadays it seems DP is just easier to implement on newer process nodes because it has lower signal voltages (probably the reason quite some platforms produce HDMI out of DSI or (e)DP).

@elly to answer the question of why the industry sticks to it, probably network effect?

There is an existing network of people and devices that support HDMI, with many people relying on it, so I guess it doesn't make sense to phase it out overnight

on that note, I am very glad that my devices support DisplayPort :]

@elly genuine curiosity, does DisplayPort do audio? Also, does it do ethernet and CEC?

@ulveon @elly the no audio thing was only for the very first version of DP that was wayy long ago

@elly marketshare

@elly funny enough, my experience is the opposite. The amount of times I spray contact cleaner into a DisplayPort connector is ridiculous.

But yeah, the reason HDMI is still in use is probably CEC and eARC, right? Well, and personally the connector just works better for me. (Less slack, no lock needed, easier to plug in) Might just be a manufacturing quality thing, but maybe being proprietary helps there.

@freeplay @ulveon @elly https://archive.org/details/VESADisplayPortStandardV1.0 as you can see here on page 14, the DisplayPort 1.0 Standard states "This DisplayPort specification defines a scalable digital display interface with optional audio and content protection capability", meaning that audio was there from the get-go

@elly isn't CEC-over-HDMI-encapsulated-in-DP still kind of wonky and not that well supported?

@elly I think it's the network effect of everything being HDMI and coming with an HDMI cord. I own exactly two DisplayPort wires, which I use with two monitors and both of which I had to explicitly buy. I have approximately 70,000 HDMI cords. I think they literally self-replicate like tribbles.

@elly Legends use VGA 👌

@cogitoblood modern GPUs don't even have analog outputs, but you could run that even over wet strings and it worked basically in every scenario. You needed good shielding for good picture quality (since analog), but I genuinely ran a VGA monitor using dupont wires on at least few occasions

@elly Does DP do audio? Including something like ARC?

@elly You can even play audio via DisplayPort.

@elly The older thinkpads have displayport while the newer ones have hdmi and I guess its better then having usb c only but having displayport would be best