Why is HDMI (seemingly) the industry standard vs Displayport?

[tigalicious]

Hey all! After watching the Techquickie video on the various different display options available, I'm lacking understanding as to why HDMI is often found on everything from TVs, sound systems, consoles, or anything that isn't a PC?  You don't have to pay royalties seems like a no brainer for companies to implement the port onto their products... to me at least?  The only reason as far as I was able to find was HDMI is an older standard.  Any insight, links or whatever is greatly appreciated!

[Adam1394]

Older + DVI backwards compatible (years ago) with passive adapters. For many years it was good enough for PC/TV users.

 

Also - better standards rarely wins.

[tigalicious]

also, in hindsight I've could have put this in a better thread category... sorry   

[Vishera]

While DisplayPort is superior to HDMI,HDMI was first.

And because of that until DisplayPort was released - HDMI garnered worldwide support and popularity and was more than enough at the time.

My launch model Playstation 3 from 2006 has HDMI and it supports 1080p 60 FPS,so there was no reason at the time to switch.

 

In short: The popularity of HDMI is hindering the adoption of DisplayPort.

[whm1974]

Well Since HDMI is everywhere and some of the major differences between Monitors and the better TVs are starting to fade away with 4K, it can be hard to  find DisplayPort on Consumer level Monitors.

[porina]

58 minutes ago, Vishera said:

In short: The popularity of HDMI is hindering the adoption of DisplayPort.

I find that a curious way of putting it...

 

From an observer viewpoint, VGA was the in thing when I started until DVI took over on the digital side. Somewhere along the line HDMI appeared which was compatible with single link DVI, so that helped with compatibility between them.

 

I think my first encounter with DP was with a wide gamut monitor used for photography. I don't recall any benefit to picking DP or HDMI on that. The first time it made a difference was when I went ultra-wide. At 3440x1440, DP offered the display's 60 Hz, but HDMI only had the bandwidth for 50 Hz. HDMI of the time was showing its limits. It only supported 4k30 so DP was also showing its superiority there allowing 4k60. I went G-sync, which is a DP only technology until G-sync compatible kinda happened, allowing it to work on some TVs. My current TV has 4 HDMI ports. There's still often a compatibility gap, in that both ends have to support the newer versions to enable the newer features.

 

More devices I have support HDMI than DP, so in a way I wish more GPUs would have two native HDMI out regardless of how many DP they also have. 

[Riccardo Cagnasso]

If we go down that route, why are not we using SDI for everything?

[mariushm]

6 minutes ago, Riccardo Cagnasso said:

If we go down that route, why are not we using SDI for everything?

because there's useful features like ability to send commands through the hdmi and displayport cables, dedicated network wires, wires to communicate with the monitor and determine capabilities etc

 

dvi was cool for the time, but there was a definite need to have smaller connectors and with less limitations... the connector itself was kinda bad, with low insertion count, problematic.

 

displayport is better, but until majority of products have displayport, a video card will continue to have hdmi...   for example a TV will continue to have hdmi because there's so many devices (game consoles, dvd players, bluray players, hd cameras etc) that only have hdmi output or YPbPr (composite or whatever it's called) so the cheapest TVs may have only hdmi to save pennies on the displayport connectors

 

[TetraSky]

Have you ever used DP ? It's clunky to all fucks compared to HDMI.

Can't even access my bios while connected to DP, the screen stays black. I had to connect my monitor to my PC, on both HDMI and DP because of that.

 

DP has some neat features and all, but god damn it can be annoying sometimes. There are times I have to close my monitor and reopen it after booting my PC, because it seemingly didn't realize that the computer was powered on and there was no signal on the monitor.

HDMI just works. You plug it, you instantly get a picture.

[Glenwing]

If you want to be compatible with any TV, you use HDMI, that's really all there is to it. There's no DisplayPort on TVs, so it doesn't matter whether it's cheaper or whatever.

[PlayStation 2]

HDMI arrived earlier than DisplayPort did. HDMI was finalized in 2002 and started appearing on devices like D-Theater tape players and cable boxes in late 2004 and early 2005. DisplayPort wouldn't even make its introduction until the end of 2007 on a Dell monitor (the very same one I have, funny enough), with GPUs that supported it coming later in 2008. 

[NineEyeRon]

HDMI drove out SCART in the consumer market, that's how old HDMI is!

 

It is a fairly solid standard and I don't see it going anywhere for a long time.

 

Why add displayport to the mix when we have something that just works? 

 

I certainly think Displayport is great but it isn't needed outside GPU->Monitor connections.

[Riccardo Cagnasso]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

because there's useful features like ability to send commands through the hdmi and displayport cables, dedicated network wires, wires to communicate with the monitor and determine capabilities etc

 

dvi was cool for the time, but there was a definite need to have smaller connectors and with less limitations... the connector itself was kinda bad, with low insertion count, problematic.

 

displayport is better, but until majority of products have displayport, a video card will continue to have hdmi...   for example a TV will continue to have hdmi because there's so many devices (game consoles, dvd players, bluray players, hd cameras etc) that only have hdmi output or YPbPr (composite or whatever it's called) so the cheapest TVs may have only hdmi to save pennies on the displayport connectors

 

To my knowledge, there's an extensive "control" protocol over SDI

[dilpickle]

Because you are talking about 2 completely different industries.

 

Home theater and PCs have had nothing to do with each other until very recently.

 

Even now the electronics companies that talk about gaming support have no clue what they are doing. Just look at the fiasco with AVRs not working with the new xbox. Or LG TVs not working with new nvidia cards even when they had a specific cross promotion between the 2 companies.

[Arika]

DP's only "real" benefit is a higher bandwidth for higher resolution and frame rates. Something that doesn't matter to the huge majority of people.

 

you could MAYBE argue that it should have been on the XBSX and PS5, but given that most people are going to connect it to a TV, there's no reason to put DP on them

 

[Mark Kaine]

on the other hand why do seemingly all video cards come with 3 dp outs and only 1 hdmi out when all I'll ever use is hdmi? 

[Pumpkin]

11 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

on the other hand why do seemingly all video cards come with 3 dp outs and only 1 hdmi out when all I'll ever use is hdmi? 

see, that's "Big GPU's" way of getting you to buy more GPU's ... one GPU per display       jk!

 

Probably because they target gamers who, until quite recently didn't really use TV's (I guess most gamers use monitors?)

edit: clear up wording

Edited November 29, 2020 by Pumpkin

[Pumpkin]

1 minute ago, Caroline said:

uhh there are monitors with HDMI, not just TVs

 

mine is analog so I'm using a converter to plug it into the HDMI out, but the downside is that I can't plug anything else like a TV or projector without using, you've guessed, more converters

ah yes, sry about that, I meant that mostly the higher-end GPUs tend to be used by enthusiasts who probably tend to use DP monitors? Idk, just a theory. It would actually be quite an interesting topic for a yt-video (like, is it a cost- thing, contracts or sth else?)

But yeah, I know the pain of using adapters... I still have old monitors (DVI and VGA), so I have to use adapters for that... still cheaper than getting a whole new monitor setup I guess

[Mark Kaine]

59 minutes ago, Pumpkin said:

Probably because they target gamers - snip - 

See that would be a good explanation in theory... the problem is I'm a gamer and I use a monitor since PS360 era, for *everything* mainly because at the time TVs all had absolutely terrible input lag basically. And my monitor has *2* hdmi ins, 1 dp (maybe) and 1 dvi in... 

 

So this is also a good example of how industry designs things for a virtual "target audience" completely missing the actual needs of users, and then, probably, try to make their failure design the de facto "standard" after the fact. 

 

There's like no reason why GPUs can't have 2 hdmi, 2dp, and 1 dvi out to basically cover all needs, besides aforementioned misunderstanding of the market and stubbornness of "the industry" (basically dudes that "had an idea" lol) 

[PlayStation 2]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

on the other hand why do seemingly all video cards come with 3 dp outs and only 1 hdmi out when all I'll ever use is hdmi? 

Because it's cheaper. DisplayPort requires no licensing period. It's an open source standard, if I remember correctly.

HDMI requires licensing and there's a fee for each HDMI port on a device, last I remember.

[Mark Kaine]

2 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

Because it's cheaper. DisplayPort requires no licensing period. It's an open source standard, if I remember correctly.

HDMI requires licensing and there's a fee for each HDMI port on a device, last I remember.

 

it keeps getting worse lol... 

 

so they save a few cents on their $500+ cards and consumers can buy dumb adapters or a new TV / monitor altogether because of it.

 

at least some gpus come with 2 hdmi outs iirc... 

 

 

don't get me wrong it's not a big deal for me cause I only use one monitor anyway, but if I used more than that I'd be pissed lol... 

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, Mark Kaine said:

 

it keeps getting worse lol... 

 

so they save a few cents on their $500+ cards and consumers can buy dumb adapters or a new TV / monitor altogether because of it.

 

at least some gpus come with 2 hdmi outs iirc... 

 

 

don't get me wrong it's not a big deal for me cause I only use one monitor anyway, but if I used more than that I'd be pissed lol... 

At the end of the day, only a small group are looking to use their GPU with more than one display, and an even smaller subset of that group has to use HDMI. It's simply more cost-efficient to not have to throw multiple HDMI ports on a card that doesn't need them.

Hell, I have to use DisplayPort on my RX 580 as my monitor predates an HDMI version that allows for me to drive the monitor at 2560x1600 at 60Hz.

[WoodenMarker]

10 hours ago, tigalicious said:

also, in hindsight I've could have put this in a better thread category... sorry   

Moved to Displays.

 

FYI, you can use the Report button for any threads that need to be moved in the future.