Valve: HDMI Forum Continues to Block HDMI 2.1 for Linux

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Valve-HDMI-Forum-Continues-to-Block-HDMI-2-1-for-Linux-11107440.html

155•OsrsNeedsf2P•1h ago

Comments

jrepinc•1h ago

Looks like Valve also needs to start making SteamTV, just a TV without any "smart" spyware/adware OS. Until then.. this blackfriday I ordered a TV that by miracle even has a DisplayPort input (Hisense 65U8Q). Unfortunately still "smart" TV but at least it does not have US-based OS but European made VIDAA which hopefully provides much less spyware than the US-alternatives, if it properly respects the EU GDPR laws. Hopefully Hisense starts/inspires a bigger movement towards DisplayPort and this HDMI mafia dies as soon as possible.

jsheard•1h ago

They could also potentially sidestep the issue by designing a discrete DisplayPort to HDMI chip into the system, so the HDMI 2.1+ implementation is firewalled from the open source stack. Maybe next time, if the HDMI Forum still hasn't budged by then.

mizzack•58m ago

Intel did this with the ARC A750/770

https://community.intel.com/t5/Graphics/HDMI-2-1-UHD-144Hz-A...

jsheard•53m ago

Yeah, the chip they used isn't ideal though because it converts DP1.4 (32Gbit) to HDMI 2.1 (48Gbit), so the bandwidth is bottlenecked on the input side. Ideally you'd want a chip which takes DP2.1, which I'm not sure exists yet, and the upcoming Steam Machine only supports DP1.4 so it wouldn't have helped in that case anyway.

aydyn•1h ago

Does it really matter that much? Get a $20 roku or google tv stick or whatever you're comfortable with and don't connect the TV OS.

kotaKat•1h ago

The TV manufacturers still make it highly annoying to avoid their integrated bullshit now. The setting to launch an LG WebOS TV into its last input on power-on is buried under 'advanced settings' several menus deep.

They would rather launch you into their home hub full of preinstalled apps even if it's not online...

... and the thing came with Microsoft Copilot installed, and you couldn't uninstall it, either.

The future!

amarant•1h ago

The trick is to not buy a "TV".

Get a really big computer monitor/screen, and put it where you'd normally put your TV.

forbiddenlake•48m ago

This trick unfortunately falls down above a certain size, especially if you want to game at a good fps, and stay in the consumer space (price) rather than the commercial display space. That gigabyte 45 inch is too small to use above your fireplace and view across the living room.

In my case I compromised on needing 4k, and got an lg 65 inch with only HDMI.

intrasight•34m ago

Are projectors the alternative?

pete5x5•34m ago

I have been doing A/V systems professionally for many years and the best system I have found recently is a Sony TV with an Apple TV. No sign-in needed for the TV for basic setup, can be easily set to come on to a particular input, works well with the Apple remote, and functions well with no internet with just a little corner pop-up saying "no internet" when you first turn it on.

You should update the TV when you first unbox it (ideally via ethernet) and then disconnect it. If you don't like Apple TV then your streaming box of choice.

bee_rider•22m ago

Apple + Sony sounds like a pretty nice combo, although unsurprisingly, right? It is a combination of premium brands. (Of course often premium brands are actually garbage in a nice shell, so maybe it is surprisingly not surprisingly bad, haha).

toast0•13m ago

> You should update the TV when you first unbox it (ideally via ethernet) and then disconnect it. If you don't like Apple TV then your streaming box of choice.

Can you update via USB? I know my (couple years old now) Samsung TVs have firmware downloads available so you don't even need to connect the TV to anything.

trvz•32m ago

I don’t own a TV, but would’ve bought a LG just because of webOS if I finally decided to get one. But if it comes with uninstallable Microsoft apps, that changes it.

kotaKat•18m ago

Yeah. I'm actually really mad at that one. They really ruined webOS.

https://old.reddit.com/r/webos/comments/1o886vc/ms_copilot_c...

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/6/24337033/lg-samsung-micros...

jrepinc•13m ago

Yup LG was one of my contenders, but once I found out about this MS junk it was immediately off the list.

ninth_ant•1h ago

My recent-model Samsung TV repeatedly opens a pop-up info window about their AI features while my AppleTV is playing movies and shows.

So I didn’t connect the TV OS and it’s still thrown in my face. It’s not the end of the world to have to find the tv remote and dismiss a popup every few days, but I sure would welcome competition who doesn’t try this sort of nonsense.

ZeroCool2u•28m ago

Imagine a Steam TV with the Steam Box simply built-in. That would be incredibly nice. The worst part of my brand new LG G5 OLED TV is the software itself. I'd pay a good deal more to have Valve responsible for the software running on my TV.

jrepinc•18m ago

And even better make it as open as Steam Deck/Machine and allow to install any GNU/Linux distribution onto it maybe even something with KDE Plasma Bigscreen or something similar if desired.

undersuit•8m ago

You can get TVs with a "PC slot" like the Sharp M431-2. Just need a Steam Slot.

cxr•1h ago

Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46153479>

tclancy•1h ago

Am I understanding correctly that the underlying issue is asking exorbitant prices to see the HDMI Forum’s specs? Feels like you shouldn’t be able to define an industry spec if you want to get paid for it, but maybe that would suppress smaller-scale, niche development.

jsheard•1h ago

No, the issue here is that the HDMI 2.1 NDA is so strict that releasing an open source implementation is forbidden no matter how much you pay them. AMD has access to the specs, they've implemented it in hardware and in their closed source Windows driver, but they're not allowed to add it to their open source Linux driver.

Nvidia does support HDMI 2.1 on Linux since their driver is closed source (but that causes its own problems). Maybe AMD could compromise by releasing a minimal binary blob which only exposes the HDMI 2.1 implementation and nothing else.

cedws•1h ago

Why on earth is a connector standard secret?

TheChaplain•1h ago

How else will you charge people from implementing support for it?

pipo234•27m ago

Well, in video land there is patent pools. For example, you pay nominal fee to download specs from iso/ice 14496-12 to learn the details about BMFF and then pay mpeg-la a couple of dollars per device of it uses an AVC / h264 decoder.

These are open standards, but mpeg-la tries to recoup some of the research costs from "freeloaders".

Open source implementations like ffmpeg are a bit of a grey area,here

littlestymaar•23m ago

That's obviously less bad, but let's not pretend this is great either.

zoeysmithe•1h ago

Why not? Its not an open standard. This is the rent-seeking behavior you get under for-profit capitalist implementations. This is why we push so hard for open standards.

0l•45m ago

Uh, the HDMI forum is non-profit

zoeysmithe•33m ago

Profit/non-profit isn't a big difference. Many non-profits are essentially businesses in practice (money spent/managed, the non-profit just a conduit to the for-profit companies that defacto own it), but just don't issue stock. A non-profit can act like this, and DOES. Non-profits exist in a capitalist context and inherit those norms. Again, this is why we aim for open standards.

Also a non-profit is just that, its not a charity. A charity is an entirely other classification and even those are regularly used and abused like this.

bluGill•22m ago

There is more than stock required to be non-profit. I suspect technically a non-profit could issue stock, though it is probably not something any would ever try.

Non-profit is a business arrangement where making money isn't the goal. There are many different versions of one though: many local clubs are a non-profit and they exist only for the benefit of their members.

interstice•33m ago

Then why do they have all this?

crote•26m ago

That's meaningless, because they delegated licensing to HDMI® Licensing Administrator, Inc. And even if they are somehow a nonprofit: you are also not making any profit when all the money you retrieve via licensing fees is used to pay the royalties of the various patent holders.

Nobody cares if the mailing list where they discuss the upcoming specs is managed by a non-profit, the broader HDMI ecosystem is still a massive money grab.

clhodapp•1h ago

It's not the connector, it's the communication protocol.

It's super lame though. It will be great to watch the downfall of HDMI Forum when their artificial dam against DisplayPort in the living room finally breaks.

MBCook•30m ago

Why would display port ever start taking over in the living room?

bluGill•25m ago

Because the manufactures don't have to pay a license fee and so once someone start using it everyone will follow and then drop hdmi. However so far nobody has cared enough to be first.

clhodapp•24m ago

It's cheaper to implement than HDMI. So if DisplayPort ports are common on displays, devices will start using it (cheapo devices first). If DisplayPort ports are common on devices, displays won't need HDMI anymore. Plus, industry-wide, it's wildly inefficient to have one high-bandwidth video connector for monitors and a different one for TV's when the technical distinction between those is pretty much non-existent and we could scale our engineering effort across a much wider set of devices.

So, after a transition period, cost-saving will eventually lead to DisplayPort taking over.

mschuster91•5m ago

> when the technical distinction between those is pretty much non-existent

I think CEC support is still spotty and ARC (audio return channel) isn't supported at all in DP.

Clamchop•16m ago

USB C is at least one reason that will apply constant pressure.

bee_rider•27m ago

What is the dam against DisplayPort anyway? I never see it on TVs for whatever reason.

Actually it’s a bit odd, in my mind DisplayPort is highly associated with quality. But I don’t actually know if it is the superior connector or if it just seems that way because monitors are usually better than TVs in every metric other than size and brightness.

clhodapp•21m ago

HDMI Forum don't like TV SOC boards that have both kinds of ports and discourage them from being made.

Also, HDMI Forum don't like converter boards that support every advanced feature at once (Variable Refresh Rate, HDR, etc.) and won't license them.

DisplayPort and HDMI kind of leapfrog each other in terms of technical superiority, so neither is definitively technically superior in the long term.

xattt•19m ago

Apparently, the Hisense U8QG has DP-over-USB-C support. This might be the Trojan horse for DP in the living room.

fullstop•14m ago

DRM, I believe

jsheard•5m ago

I don't think so, DisplayPort incorporates the same HDCP encryption standard that HDMI uses.

jsheard•22m ago

> It's not the connector, it's the communication protocol

In particular the link training procedures needed to reliably push 48 Gbit/s over copper are probably very non-trivial, and could be considered "secret sauce".

mschuster91•7m ago

That's done by the PHY layer, there's no need to implement that in software.

ronsor•44m ago

What if a third-party reverse engineers the specifications and releases an open driver, regardless of what the HDMI Forum wishes?

asadm•41m ago

yeah I am curious too. Could I legally just reverse engineer that binary and re-implement it?

EvanAnderson•9m ago

The typical "clean room" process would be to have one group reverse-engineer the original and document it, then have another group of "un-tainted" people implement the spec.

This methodology has been shown to be an effective shield against copyright infringement, but it does not protect you from patent infringement. Presumably the spec is patent-encumbered specifically to prevent this type of "attack".

You also wouldn't have any rights to use any HDMI-related trademarks.

nradov•6m ago

In general to avoid IP legal problems in the USA you can't do all of that yourself. Generally one party has to do all of the reverse engineering and write a specification based on that. Then another party can take that specification and write a "clean room" implementation.

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/how-compaqs-clone-comp...

calgoo•38m ago

Sounds like a good job for all that AI power that is being used for BS. I wonder if we could all crowd source a driver, 100s of claude and google gemini subscriptions working towards breaking the standard and releasing 100s of different implementations that does the same.

therein•24m ago

Yeah right, 100s of Claude and Gemini subscriptions towards breaking the standard... That's how things are done. Not just one guy with a good reverse engineering skillset.

What if you crowd sourced not 100s but 1000s of Claude subscriptions. That's where the power is. You just give them a task and they just finish it for you. That's how things are done now.

Hard problem? Throw 50000s Claude subscriptions and it will kneel in front of you. Unstoppable. 50000s Claude subscriptions not enough, throw 10000000 subscriptions at it and problem solved. That's how it all works, we know this is the way to do things. Everybody knows you take a problem and throw more Claudes at it and that's it.

For example, we can do anything we want, we just need more Claude subscriptions. I couldn't do something the other day, the problem is I didn't have enough Claudes.

We just need an order of magnitude more Claude subscriptions to figure out cold fusion and unify general relativity with quantum interpretation of the world. Can you imagine what 10E10 Claude subscriptions would do with that problem? Problem stands no chance.

It is so annoying people think this is future, that this is analysis. Despicable.

anthk•13m ago

What would you expect from z'ers growing up under closed magical shells doing everything for themselves (smartphone and tablet OSes) and later being utterly lost with the basics of IT.

cubefox•12m ago

Great, now my face hurts from laughing.

pipo234•33m ago

I suppose you could do a clean room reimplantation, but I doubt you could advertise it as HDMI 2.1 compliant without legal repercussions.

littlestymaar•25m ago

On what basis? Trademark infringement?

pipo234•13m ago

Yes, that. I think you're only allowed to claim support/compliance if you're certified. And that, allegedly, means they run a couple of closed source tests and involves paperwork and NDAs.

pdimitar•19m ago

What would the legal repercussions be against an anonymous coder who donated the code to multiple code forges? Action against the code forges themselves? I mean, not like they would be able to find the guy.

stronglikedan•13m ago

That's why you advertise it as HDMI 2.1 compatible instead. I believe there's precedence that allows that.

pipo234•5m ago

Yes, that might work. Strictly, HDMI is a registered trademark that might have strings but you could always say something like EIA/CEA-861... compatible instead

MBCook•31m ago

It wouldn’t be HDMI 2.1 because it couldn’t be certified. And if you claimed it was 2.1 I imagine they would sue you.

Could it actually be made? I kind of wonder that. Like if one of the things you have to do is claim to the other device that you’re 2.1 would that get you in trouble? Or if you just advertise all the features and they each work is that good enough?

bluGill•26m ago

generally if something is needed for interoperability the courts only accept patents as a way to protected it (patents have a limited lifespan). However the law gets really complex and you need a lawyer for legal advice.

baby_souffle•20m ago

I think in this case you still couldn't claim it was certified. It would be on users to discover that if they plug an HDMI capable screen into that HDMI shaped port on your widget device, things just work and video shows up as expected

tedivm•19m ago

They could just say "we believe we're compliant with HDMI 2.1 but are not officially certified". No lies, no claims they can't make, and nothing I can see that would introduce legal risk to folks unless there's some patent encumbered garbage in the spec.

robhlt•13m ago

Nvidia's kernel driver is open source now [1], they just do the important HDMI bits in their closed source GSP firmware. Basically they moved the proprietary stuff to firmware and open sourced the rest. AMD could do something similar, but it would require a hardware change on their side (the GSP was a new bit of hardware added in Turing Nvidia GPUs).

1. https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules

progbits•5m ago

Can't we just leak the spec?

Anyone can then implement opensource driver based on that and distribute it freely, since NDA won't apply to them.

xvilka•1h ago

Just promote DisplayPort and boycott HDMI.

jacobgkau•1h ago

That would be easier if both GPU and display manufacturers weren't eschewing newer DisplayPort versions for older versions with DSC (which is not lossless despite its subjective claims of being "visually lossless"), while building in newer HDMI versions with greater performance.

jsheard•32m ago

To be fair, the DisplayPort 2.0/2.1 standardisation process was riddled with delays and they ended up landing years after HDMI 2.1 did. It stands to reason that hardware manufacturers picked up the earlier spec first.

devmor•1h ago

"Just don't support the majority of consumer displays" isn't really an acceptable solution for an organization attempting to be a player in the home entertainment industry.

tmtvl•51m ago

Aren't DP-HDMI adapters good enough for the majority of consumers? On my ancient (2017) PC with integrated graphics I can't tell a difference between the DP out vs the HDMI out.

onli•44m ago

The article mentions that the Club3D adapters don't exist anymore (=the popular ones), only off-brand alternatives. VRR is not officially supported via adapters, a big problem for a gaming device.

jay_kyburz•47m ago

err, that's what Valve is doing?

eqvinox•27m ago

Well, only for the extremes where you'd need HDMI 2.1. 99% of HDMI displays will work without issue...

dathinab•23m ago

the problem only affect a subset of HDMI 2.1 features, not HDMI 2.0

but the steam machine isn't really super powerful (fast enough for a lot of games, faster then what a lot of steam customers have, sure. But still no that fast.)

So most of the HDMI 2.1 features it can't use aren't that relevant. Like sure you don't get >60fps@4K but you already need a good amount of FSR to get to 60fps@4k.

crapple8430•45m ago

There are a lot of PC boards where the iGPU only has an HDMI 2.1 output, or with a DP1.4. But DP1.4 doesn't support some of the resolution/refresh combinations that HDMI 2.1 does. Normally this doesn't matter, but it could if you have, for example, the Samsung 57 inch dual 4K ultrawide.

Albatross9237•40m ago

I think you'd have bigger issues trying to drive that monitor with an iGPU

bsimpson•38m ago

I frequently see comments that say the TV companies are the ones getting the royalties, so I looked it up.

According to Gemini, the royalties go to the _original_ HDMI founders. That includes Sony, Panasonic, Philips, and Toshiba. It does not include Samsung, or LG.

oompydoompy74•54m ago

I’ve been looking for a DisplayPort to HDMI cable to get around this on our household couch gaming computer. I have been unable to find one sketchy or otherwise that can handle high refresh rate and 4:4:4 color.

bsimpson•36m ago

FWIW, most USB docks are effectively this. DP goes in via USB-C and HDMI comes out the other end.

I bought one from UGREEN on Amazon. I think it's called the 9 in 1. It does 4k@60 with HDR, coming out of SteamOS.

oompydoompy74•9m ago

I’ve never thought about trying a dock. Thanks!

eqvinox•23m ago

https://www.club-3d.com/shop/cac-1088-1223 (https://geizhals.eu/club-3d-aktiver-adapter-cac-1088-a331004...)

https://www.club-3d.com/shop/cac-1087-1128 (3m cable version)

DP 1.4 → HDMI 2.1. Apparently they're no longer being manufactured (?? - not sure that's correct), so get one while it's still possible...

[Ed.: accidentally linked another adapter that is the other direction. Added 3m & direct manufacturer links.]

oompydoompy74•9m ago

Ty for the links! I’ll look into this.

mizzack•10m ago

VMM7100 based devices like the Cable Matters 102101 work. Also allegedly CH7218 based adapters. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/4773

cubefox•6m ago

According to the article, these adapters generally don't support VRR.

TechSquidTV•28m ago

No one wants HDMI. No one.

bee_rider•25m ago

Other than the TV, although its opinion carries a lot of weight in this discussion unfortunately.

ethin•25m ago

We really need to just force all standards organizations to release their standards for free. No making you pay $300 or whatever for a standard. (The PCI SIG makes you pay like $5000 for access to the PCIe standard...)

jonny_eh•9m ago

Is the a USB-C/Thunderbolt to HDMI 2.1 dongle? Send Displayport and audio over USB-C and then let that hardware handle the HDMI handshaking.

modeless•4m ago

This is fundamentally about DRM, isn't it? There is a working open source implementation already, but the HDMI cartel won't allow an open source implementation to have the encryption keys required to interface with the DRM in existing devices?

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