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Valve Responds To Steam Machine's HDMI 2.1 Display Support Controversy [HW support is there, but "The HDMI forum" doesn’t allow with OpenSource drivers] (hothardware.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 21 points 11 months ago (7 children)

My understanding is it’s not even a licensing issue. The HDMI consortium won’t let you include features from 2.1 and 2.2 in an open source driver. it sounds like Valve would be willing to pay, but they’d have to include a closed source driver for the video card.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    That's still a licensing issue: you're not allowed to license from the HDMI consortium and then freely sublicense to all your users, which is what open source requires. Hopefully this eventually concludes in the end of relevance for HDMI and we can have a freer, and just better ecosystem in general.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I don’t see “relevance for HDMI” ending anytime soon. Tell me how easy it is to find a TV with DP inputs. Nearly 99% of consumer gear uses HDMI.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    It's easy to find a TV with USB-C input, though not universal. That still uses the DP protocol, and cables with different connectors on opposite ends are both cheaper and more common than those with HDMI as a result. Also, this is only even an issue if HDMI 2.0 isn't fast enough for you, so old devices aren't a concern.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    The only down side is DP Alt mode is optional and must be enabled and supported by the internal controller and system. In order to do that, you might as well just go full DP at that point and somehow I don’t think the manufacturers are gonna spend more money on that. Most likely the USB-C port only supports a mass storage class device.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Valve should ship it as displayport internally and bundle a free HDMI adapter that they sell in the store, that way it's all open source and the HDMI issue is taken care of in the most flippant way possible.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I think thats actually what Intel did on their A series graphics cards. Only had display port out signals but had a display port to HDMI adapter built into the board.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Yes, but that adds more cost. I don't have any hard data on this, but it feels like their current solution works fine, since anyone using more data than 2160p60, who also won't accept chroma subsampling, probably is already using DP. Maybe this is a direction to pressure the HDMI forum, since unlike AMD, valve's drivers are actually open source on the majority of their users' machines. And if things change in the future, external adapters or proprietary adapters are both solutions.

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