[arghwhat]

> At any rate, for some reason DisplayPort has just not caught on all that much.

DisplayPort won everything, except not becoming the physical connector for home cinema. Heck, even within those HDMI-exposing devices, DP won.

The vast majority of display drivers speak eDP. Few things actually implement HDMI, and instead rely on DisplayPort to HDMI converters - that's true whether you're looking at a Nintendo Switch or your laptop. Heck, there is no support for HDMI over USB-C - every USB-C to HDMI cable/adapter embeds a HDMI converter chip, as HDMI altmode was abandoned early on.

The only devices I know of with "native" HDMI are the specialized TV and AV receiver SoCs. The rest is DP because no one cares about HDMI.

However, seeing that home cinema is pretty much purely an enthusiast thing these days (the casual user won't plug anything into their smart TV), I wonder if there's a chance of salvation here. The only real thing holding onto DisplayPort is eARC and some minor CEC features for AV receiver/soundbar use. Introducing some dedicated audio port would not only be a huge upgrade (some successor to toslink with more bandwidth and remote control support), but would also remove the pressure to use HDMI.

With that out of the way, the strongest market force there is - profitability - would automatically drive DisplayPort adoption in home cinema, as manufacturers could save not only converter chips, but HDMI royalties too.

[superhuzza]

>home cinema is pretty much purely an enthusiast thing these days (the casual user won't plug anything into their smart TV)

Except a gaming console, a laptop, a roku, apple TV...

Every single person I know has some external media source plugged into their TV, even my tech illiterate mother.

[arghwhat]

You’d be surprised by the number of users who are satisfied with the built-in media experience.

I’d say it’s most likely a large majority. Google TV is common, but people with an Android-powered TV are not the main target for those until the TV gets old and out of date. Apple users on Samsung TV’s might also get far with the built in AirPlay support.

Heck, even within enthusiasts there is a strong push to use the built-in media features as it often handles content better (avoiding mode changes, better frame pacing). Even I only use an external box after being forced due to issues when relying on eARC.

Very few people plug in their laptop to a TV, and laptops are not normally HDMI. Some laptops have a dedicated port with a built-in converter, but all modern laptops are USB-C which only exposes DisplayPort.

[treis]

I'm in this crowd. The TV apps work well enough and it's one less remote. The only thing I use the attached Chromecast for is to (rarely) mirror my phone screen.

[pjc50]

> Introducing some dedicated audio port would not only be a huge upgrade

I'm not sure about that - suddenly there's a cost in board space and BOM, and they're not automatically linked together. Or do you just mean for audio output from TV to soundbar? I feel like USB would suffice for that if anyone could be bothered. Personally I use regular TOSLINK to a stereo amplifier and accept having another remote.

[arghwhat]

Heh, good point, USB 2.0 would absolutely suffice. You'd hardly need more than a standard audio profile either. Some TVs even support this already - recent Samsung models at least.

A specialized port could theoretically have a lower BOM cost through simpler silicon or port design, but USB 2.0 is free at this point so why bother.

> Personally I use regular TOSLINK to a stereo amplifier and accept having another remote.

The problem with TOSLINK is not only the remote scenario (which I do think is absolutely a necessary feature for any kind of adoption), but also lack of bandwidth for uncompressed surround sound.

Large surround setups at home are uncommon these days, but soundbars with virtual surround is common, and some of us still manage to squeeze in a simple 5.1 setup.

[dathinab]

> The only real thing holding onto DisplayPort is eARC and some minor CEC features for AV receiver/soundbar use. Introducing some dedicated audio port would not only be a huge upgrade (some successor to toslink with more bandwidth and remote control support), but would also remove the pressure to use HDMI.

USB-C

I mean think about it

USB-C/DP alternative mode is good enough as upstream for most use cases (including consoles)and has some additional future feature potential, and still has some USB bandwidth left usable for various things including CEC

for eARC-like use-cases (i.e. sometimes audio+video upstream, sometimes audio downstream) you have a few choices (one needs to be standardized):

- always create a DP alt mod channel upstream, use audio over USB for downstream, technically that already can work today but getting audio latency synchronization and similar right might require some more work

- switch the DP alt mode connection direction or have some audio only alt mode, which either requires a extension of the DP alt mode standard, or a reconnect. But I think the first solution is just fine

as an added benefit stuff like sharing input devices became easier and things like Roku TV sticks can safe on some royalties ... which is part of where the issue is there is a huge overlap between big TV makers and HDMI share holders, I mean have you ever wondered why most TVs don't even have a single DP port even through that would be trivial to add?

which is also why I think there is no eARC like standard for USB-C/DP alt mode, it only matters for TVs and TVs don't have DP support

honestly I believe the only reasons why TVs haven't (very slowly) started to migrate to USB-C/DP alt mode is that most of their producers make money with HDMI

and lastly there is some trend to PCIe everything in both consumer and server hardware. In the consumer segment it had been somewhat limited to the "luxury" segment, i.e. Thunderbolt. But with USB4 it slowly ends up in more and more places. So who knows PCIe based video might just replace both of them (and go over USB-C)

[arghwhat]

> and lastly there is some trend to PCIe everything in both consumer and server hardware. In the consumer segment it had been somewhat limited to the "luxury" segment, i.e. Thunderbolt. But with USB4 it slowly ends up in more and more places. So who knows PCIe based video might just replace both of them (and go over USB-C)

Thunderbolt/USB4 is not PCIe. It's a transport layer that can run multiple applications at once, sharing bandwidth based on use. This is opposed to USB-C Alternate Mode, where pins are physically reassigned to a specific application, which uses the pins regardless of whether it needs the bandwidth.

PCIe is then one of the supported applications running on top of the transport.

[dathinab]

I know, but this isn't relevant for the argument, if anything it's in favor of some future protocol replacing HDMI/DP/USB-C+DP alt while using the USB-C connector.

[arghwhat]

I was just pointing out specifically that there is no such thing as PCIe-based video - nor is there any need for that.

Support for USB4/Thunderbolt DP will proliferate, but there is still benefit to a DP altmode as it's free to implement (the host controller just wires its existing DP input lanes directly to the USB-C connector) and allows for super cheap passive adapters.

If USB-C ends up becoming the standard video connector as well, it will most likely be DP altmode as you then only need a cheap USB-C controller to negotiate the mode.

There isn't really any pressure to invent a new protocol. https://xkcd.com/927/