Why won’t Steam Machine support HDMI 2.1? Digging in on the display standard drama.

Valve tells Ars its "trying to unblock" limits caused by open source driver issues.

See full article...

 

[Buck_Mulligan]

These patent pools were supposed to the solution, but have somehow become yet another coordination mechanism failure (see the absurdity around the HEIC format on various platforms). It's not clear to me that they actually earn that much money for contributors (because of the friction involved).

Valve/Google/Meta could probably buy out specific pools (assuming they are open to reasonable negociation) and open up the licensing (perhaps with a one-time flat rate per brand that sells >X devices) and achive much better standardization and user value.

 

[C.M. Allen]

That's the problem though, we have a proper royalty-free standard (DisplayPort) and yet we still have to deal with the stupid redundant license-encumbered piece of shit that is HDMI.

HDMI should have been relegated to legacy status over a decade ago.

And would have...if it weren't for the fact that the 'owners' of the HDMI format all happen to be, you guessed it, major manufacturers of TVs. They're acting as a cartel, a trust actively engaged in anti-competitive practices.

 

[lmcdo]

Four pages and no one noting that Intel has been working around this HDMI issue for years with its recommended motherboard implementations and now its graphics cards by keeping its HDMI output as displayport right up until it hits a "proprietary, black box" DisplayPort to HDMI converter chip that is soldered to the board. Fully validated HDMI, fully legally compliant, fully open-source in the programmable area of the hardware (I mean, I guess the converter chip could be an FPGA but I doubt it).

AMD has had years to adjust this in its roadmap and has chosen not to, because they don't care about Linux as much as people think, and they critically don't lend enough legal assistance to the Linux side to figure out what they can and can't do. This isn't a new problem for AMD's Linux division -- go back in old Phoronix forums and you can find bridgeman posting about "X has been done for Y months, waiting for legal" for basically a decade.

 

[Waco]

Well, no. The DP signal can carry audio and video which for "output" is all you really need. They can probably even hack in the "wake on activity" signal to turn the TV on automatically. The HDCP signal might be more tricky from a Linux box to be allowed to be "trusted" for that and stuff like ARC are really "optional" for coming from a PC.

That's a weird way to say "you're right but I want to disagree without any way to do so".

 

[antibolo]

Four pages and no one noting that Intel has been working around this HDMI issue for years with its recommended motherboard implementations and now its graphics cards by keeping its HDMI output as displayport right up until it hits a "proprietary, black box" DisplayPort to HDMI converter chip that is soldered to the board. Fully validated HDMI, fully legally compliant, fully open-source in the programmable area of the hardware (I mean, I guess the converter chip could be an FPGA but I doubt it).

It's been literally mentioned in this thread multiple times.

 

[Carewolf]

Bleeding is kind of the opposite of sub-pixel rendering. One is literally rendering text to each color channel based on the sub-pixel location. The other is blurring color channels across adjacent pixels. They're not at all the same thing and the effects are not comparable. One smooths text by adding fine detail. The other removes detail and simply blurs text across multiple pixels, making it softer and more difficult to read.

Sorry, that might have sounded like a weird comparison. I was only making the comparison because I work in text rendering, and one of the steps of sub-pixel rendering is a pixel blur pass specifically to avoid subpixel details appearing as weird color blur/noise.. Doing a subpixel rendering without such pass in one form or another looks awful. If you want to know more it is also knows as LCD filtering. See https://www.spasche.net/files/lcdfiltering/ (the example rendered here is an old one, so not how it would look with more modern rendering, but it demonstrates the point) you will notice green or red color bleeding artifacts on low and missing lcd-filter especially at finer text sizes.

 

[OptimusP83]

Well, no. The DP signal can carry audio and video which for "output" is all you really need. They can probably even hack in the "wake on activity" signal to turn the TV on automatically. The HDCP signal might be more tricky from a Linux box to be allowed to be "trusted" for that and stuff like ARC are really "optional" for coming from a PC.

I doubt its possible to implement broadly functional CEC via some DP->HDMI hack, at lest without creating a support nightmare for themselves. I'd consider reliably functional CEC to be an absolute must-have for the audience Valve is likely targeting for the Steam Machine.

And thats not even touching on things like ARC or e-ARC, VRR (which, you may recall, is the topic of this article), and others. Negotiating resolution, color depth, and refresh rate is doable for most modern HDMI/DP devices, but its not even the bare minimum of functionality for a device like the Steam Machine.

Aren't we always harping on and on around here about companies who workaround, hack or eschew standards to bring some buggy functionality to market without needing certification? How is this any different? And why should valve take it on themselves to create said buggy workaround when they really should be pressuring HDMI Forum to built a fully functional toolchain that actually works on non-windows OS's?

 

[rayer]

Microsoft also subsidized the price of the Xbox. Or were you unaware that every Xbox Microsoft has ever sold was done so at a loss? Yes, Microsoft lost money on every sale of every version of its consoles. Same with Sony, actually (with the exception of maybe the PS1). The hardware in them was more expensive to build and assemble than the finished console was sold for. They do this because they know they can recoup those losses on first-party titles, console exclusives, and developer kits and licensing fees. If those consoles had been priced at even a marginal profit point, they would have been far more expensive. Like, say, the Steam Machine.

Interestingly, Nintendo is the only company that has never sold any of its consoles at a loss. Why that's relevant is that these days, Nintendo's newest console generation is nearing visual parity with its 'more powerful' competition (meaning, side by side, the output from current-gen consoles is getting very difficult to tell apart). It's powerful enough to handle most of the more 'advanced' graphical tech. And so is the Steam Machine. All combined, that's a pretty sizable target market and powerful incentive for developers to develop around those capabilities.

I was aware of Microsoft taking a loss. That came out during their anti-trust trial about buying Activision if I remember correctly. I still think my point stands. Microsoft and Sony make money back in the long run on software sales for 1st party, (presumed) 30% cut of 3rd party sales, subscriptions to Game Pass/PS Plus, etc. Valve may not have the same level of efforts that console makers do since they don't bother to actually make games anymore when compared to MS/Sony, but they still take 30% of every game sale.

According to a quick internet search, Valve makes more money per employee than Microsoft and other tech giants. They could easily afford to take a loss on hardware like MS/Sony in order to get into the house.

 

[Kevin G]

That's irrelevant, as long as TV manufacturers continue to be part of the HDMI Forum, they will keep pushing HDMI down consumers' throats.

I would agree that consumer TVs in the short term to remain focused on HDMI for mainly that reason (HDMI forum) but USB-C is going to be a trojan horse in the market place. We already have this happening as with a bit of searching you can find new consumer models with it. Not common today but I'd expect more models to carry USB-C as an input option in 2026 and even more in 2027.

The convenience factor of being able to use a laptop on a TV via the same cord used for charging it (which TV's being able to charge a laptop is going to be a nice to have feature) is difficult to deny. It'll start out like that as a single ease of use port, then a second port on the back where various flash drives get plugged into as USB-A is slowly phased out in favor of USB-C. A third or forth port for USB-C for video will start to appear as more of those USB-A ports on the back of units are flipped over to USB-C. By this time we're out of the short term time window and we'll see where the market is with HDMI 2.2 (2.3?) vs. the coming DP 2.2 spec supported in USB-C alt mode vs. any emerging AV-over-IP standard.

 

[vanderbeam]

I was aware of Microsoft taking a loss. That came out during their anti-trust trial about buying Activision if I remember correctly. I still think my point stands. Microsoft and Sony make money back in the long run on software sales for 1st party, (presumed) 30% cut of 3rd party sales, subscriptions to Game Pass/PS Plus, etc. Valve may not have the same level of efforts that console makers do since they don't bother to actually make games anymore when compared to MS/Sony, but they still take 30% of every game sale.

According to a quick internet search, Valve makes more money per employee than Microsoft and other tech giants. They could easily afford to take a loss on hardware like MS/Sony in order to get into the house.

Valve pointed out why they can't do this: unlike a locked-down, special-purpose gaming console, the Steam Machine is usable as a general-purpose computer. If they try to sell the hardware at below-market prices, lots of non-gaming people and businesses will buy up Steam Machines and install Windows or desktop Linux on it without buying any Steam games

 

[Jensen404]

But would you notice slight one pixel bleed at resolutions where you can no longer see single pixels?

Yes, very easily in some circumstances. For example, if you have a one pixel thick red line against a black background, and you're displaying the image with a 4:2:0 signal, the red chroma is averaged with the neutral chroma of the background, so the saturation of the red line is greatly diminished, which can be noticed at much greater than Retina™ distances. I can easily tell the difference between 4:4:4 and 4:2:0 encoding at 40 feet away from my 4K 55" TV. I could probably tell the difference at more than twice that distance, but I don't have room to test.

The orange outline around this very textbox I'm typing is a real world example of where the difference is noticeable.

 

[Kevin G]

I doubt its possible to implement broadly functional CEC via some DP->HDMI hack, at lest without creating a support nightmare for themselves. I'd consider reliably functional CEC to be an absolute must-have for the audience Valve is likely targeting for the Steam Machine.

Conceptually yes it is possible from a hardware perspective. Various DP to HDMI convertor chips have an independent I2C bus. Note that DDC is a I2C physical bus with an explicitly defined protocol on top of it, you want a secondary I2C to fun in parallel with it. That convertor chip would need to do some DDC and CEC snooping with the ability to intercept either stream to insert commands from the secondary I2C bus. With a quick bit of searching, I stumbled upon the MCDP2900-RD2 chip from Kinetic that looks like it'd meet the hardware requirements for that but is only HDMI 2.0 compliant.

The good news it that the low speed I2C bus is found all over computing hardware so getting a programmable I2C bus visible to a Valve software stack to a convertor chip shouldn't be too much of a problem in the hardware world. The fun part comes in on the software side and testing all those edge case scenarios that'll make or break a product.

There are other devices that'll allow for CEC interception/command insertion off of an HDMI connection. I know of such an arcane device from Extron but that is more of a professional business automation tool than anything designed for consumers. Still amazing to see such a device to fix the awkwardness of CEC between devices in the real world.

Aren't we always harping on and on around here about companies who workaround, hack or eschew standards to bring some buggy functionality to market without needing certification? How is this any different? And why should valve take it on themselves to create said buggy workaround when they really should be pressuring HDMI Forum to built a fully functional toolchain that actually works on non-windows OS's?

Nope and what I describe above fits into this exact category of hackery you are citing we should avoid. But to answer your rhetorical question, the HDMI forum is simply a cartel that appeases the production industry with a means of providing protected content to consumers while also seeing those same consumers all as thieving pirates. Until that is fixed, stupid hackery solutions it is because that cartel isn't giving hardware manufacturers any good alternative right now.

 

[InsaneScientist]

And players that want to avoid the issue can use the Steam Machine’s DisplayPort 1.4 output, which supports even more bandwidth than HDMI 2.1 (and which can be converted to an HDMI signal with a simple dongle).

Apologies if someone has already pointed this out, but I didn't see it.

DP1.4 does not have more bandwidth than HDMI2.1
DP1.4 is 32Gbps raw, 25.92Gbps net.
HDMI2.1 is 48Gbps raw, 42.6Gbps net (assuming that the manufacturer runs it at the spec's full speed, but that's a whole different discussion)

For practical purposes, the important part is that DP1.4 can just barely squeeze 8b RGB 4k 120Hz (25.82Gbps) into its net bandwidth whereas HDMI2.0 (18Gbps raw, 14.4 net) can't as the article correctly calls out, but it's not actually faster than 2.1. Where this might be relevant is if you have a TV that supports 10 bit color. Even if it has a displayport 1.4 port, you'll be able to do 4k 120Hz but only at 8bits per pixel. Whereas HDMI2.1 could handle that 10 bit stream.

It's also worth noting that DP to HDMI dongles are mostly passive, and rely on the GPU switching to spitting out an actual HDMI signal over the DP connector/pins. So, you're still constrained by the HDMI2.0 specs there unless you get an active adapter, and (personally) I wouldn't describe those as simple (I, for one, have had a fair bit of trouble trying to go DP1.4 -> active adapter -> HDMI2.1 LG C1, and finally gave up)

 

[Boskone]

What I don't understand is that there is a fairly easy workaround for this (ie. have your HDMI port go through an internal DP to HDMI converter, which is apparently what Intel is already doing right now with their GPUs), and yet Valve will not be using it. Why??

At least the Steam Machine will also expose a DP port so one can just bring their own adapter cable, but again, why not make this a built-in functionality??

In addition to Waco's point, the key is that Intel designed the whole shebang. Valve is using COTS chips with a custom board.

The two are whole different levels of complexity, requiring entirely different corporate infrastructure.

 

[Boskone]

this seema like a great oportunity for some disruptive newcomer

They'd need to design the entire chain: media, media player, display, cables, etc.

Good luck with that.

 

[Wernher von Grün]

Ultimately no, there are no TVs on the market with native DisplayPort, and it's largely a function of HDMI gatekeeping CEC functionality and most home theater hardware not supporting it either.

TVs are going the way of the fax machine: it's simply a monitor with a bit of proprietary hardware attached. The sooner people realise that the better.

 

[tannmatter]

I realize that, as an AV designer who does a lot of K-12 classrooms, my typical use case¹ is pretty unusual but...I wish we could go back to an AV cable standard that can go more than 25ft without extender boxes or active cables. 12G-SDI anyone?

1. Display at the front of the classroom with an input plate near the teacher's desk. In commercial buildings you generally want the cable to go up to above accessible ceiling, across to the display, and down, which eats up a lot of the usable run.

This. I do AV at a university and I often find myself longing for the days of VGA (I know, I’m crazy). It just worked, no HDCP issues, and when properly secured to the wall plate it takes more than a gentle breeze to make it fall out. A grainy picture is better than no picture at all.

 

[Pooga]

Microsoft also subsidized the price of the Xbox. Or were you unaware that every Xbox Microsoft has ever sold was done so at a loss? Yes, Microsoft lost money on every sale of every version of its consoles. Same with Sony, actually (with the exception of maybe the PS1). The hardware in them was more expensive to build and assemble than the finished console was sold for. They do this because they know they can recoup those losses on first-party titles, console exclusives, and developer kits and licensing fees. If those consoles had been priced at even a marginal profit point, they would have been far more expensive. Like, say, the Steam Machine.

Interestingly, Nintendo is the only company that has never sold any of its consoles at a loss. Why that's relevant is that these days, Nintendo's newest console generation is nearing visual parity with its 'more powerful' competition (meaning, side by side, the output from current-gen consoles is getting very difficult to tell apart). It's powerful enough to handle most of the more 'advanced' graphical tech. And so is the Steam Machine. All combined, that's a pretty sizable target market and powerful incentive for developers to develop around those capabilities.

I was pretty certain this wasn't exactly correct, so I did a little digging. I found what I was looking for nearly verbatim in a reddit thread:


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/IsItBullshit/comments/1g7fiye/comment/lsq4pkn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

 

[Pooga]

TVs are going the way of the fax machine: it's simply a monitor with a bit of proprietary hardware attached. The sooner people realise that the better.

Granted, even a lot of cord-cutters rely on streaming instead of OTA, but maybe the fact that the FCC okayed letting stations stop broadcasting ATSC 1.0 signals might speed a few to that conclusion...

 

[Boskone]

Valve/Google/Meta could probably buy out specific pools (assuming they are open to reasonable negociation) and open up the licensing (perhaps with a one-time flat rate per brand that sells >X devices) and achive much better standardization and user value.

I don't think Valve could, they're not worth that much compared to Google and Meta, and probably not compared to the income from HDMI.

I also don't think any of the three could convince the HDMI forum to release it. It's usually really hard to get any interest group to vote in favor of general good, if it's against their benefit.

 

[Boskone]

According to a quick internet search, Valve makes more money per employee than Microsoft and other tech giants. They could easily afford to take a loss on hardware like MS/Sony in order to get into the house.

I don't think this follows.

Microsoft has more than 600 employees to each of Valves; MS could make a tenth as much per employee, and still make 60 times as much.

 

[jasonmicron]

It is more likely a licensing $$$ issue.

Yea. But Valve could also do what Red Hat does to work around their licensing issues a'la the EPEL repos.

Red Hat can't include certain packages in their main repos or base OS due to licensing issues. But users are 100% free to install them post install from a 3rd party repo. This is why you don't get Nvidia proprietary drivers in their installs, but you can 100% grab the kmod drivers from EPEL.

Valve could absolutely do something similar here, but they'd need outside help. And I don't think it can be Canonical as Canonical would be in the same boat.

This is a solved problem, but requires VERY tricky legal maneuvering and possibly some Valve dev team restructuring where some folks branch off to an upstream group and run that 3rd party repo (like how Fedora is the maintainer of EPEL, yet the Fedora team works under Red Hat). The question then becomes: is it worth it? I dunno.

And to be very clear, I am VERY much glossing over like 99% of the finer points, I'm just giving an elevator pitch.

Not to mention pissing off the HDMI consortium, but that is all they'd be: pissed off.

 

[torp]

Hmm off topic but related.

Will the steam box run headless? Will it support streaming by default?

 

[lmcdo]

It's been literally mentioned in this thread multiple times.

Just for funsies, I reread every single comment, and you're wrong! It has not been mentioned once and you did not understand my comment. Instead of pretending to know what's going on, consider asking a clarifying question!

Here's a post from a few years back going into how Alchemist delivered its HDMI support, and even includes a link to the converter one AIB used.

https://community.intel.com/t5/Graphics/HDMI-2-1-UHD-144Hz-Arc-A750-A770/m-p/1452946

This post demonstrates how Valve could implement a similar feature, especially with AMD's support, without having to ship a dongle. There is nothing Intel is doing that is secret or proprietary, and there's also nothing HDMI Forum could do to block such an implementation.

What makes this different than an external adapter? Cost, signaling, implementation validation, and vendor support. Valve should have done this and did not.

 

[rayer]

Valve pointed out why they can't do this: unlike a locked-down, special-purpose gaming console, the Steam Machine is usable as a general-purpose computer. If they try to sell the hardware at below-market prices, lots of non-gaming people and businesses will buy up Steam Machines and install Windows or desktop Linux on it without buying any Steam games

Fair point

 

[Waco]

Just for funsies, I reread every single comment, and you're wrong! It has not been mentioned once and you did not understand my comment. Instead of pretending to know what's going on, consider asking a clarifying question!

Here's a post from a few years back going into how Alchemist delivered its HDMI support, and even includes a link to the converter one AIB used.

https://community.intel.com/t5/Graphics/HDMI-2-1-UHD-144Hz-Arc-A750-A770/m-p/1452946

This post demonstrates how Valve could implement a similar feature, especially with AMD's support, without having to ship a dongle. There is nothing Intel is doing that is secret or proprietary, and there's also nothing HDMI Forum could do to block such an implementation.

What makes this different than an external adapter? Cost, signaling, implementation validation, and vendor support. Valve should have done this and did not.

...and you're failing to grok the main point.


That is not an HDMI port that will work with all the things people expect on a console.

 

[FSan]

Surprise surprise, I thought that anything could be listed is as HDMI2.1 since much of the standard is optional. If valve decides to go to the darkside, I wonder if they can LEGALLY say it's HDMI2.1 without consequences

That is what HDMI Forum wants device manufacturers to do. Saying HDMI 2.1 compatible is just meaningless as not every device will offer the full feature set, not the whole range of video link bit rates. Cables should be rated for bit rate, not protocols. Thankfully, HEAC (10 or maybe 100 Mbps Ethernet + Audio Return Channel) is a technology that nobody needs to supports anymore. Stereoscopic video is also not a desired feature anymore.
Edit: It is HDMI Forum now, not HDMI LLC. I am getting old.

 

[FSan]

Depends on the game, doesn't it? An older game that isn't as visually demanding might run at 120FPS at 4K just fine, no? It's not like you can only play the latest greatest games on Steam. . . they have a back catalog stretching what, 20 years?

A lot of the back catalog might not support 4k at all, but I bet some will, like maybe things published approx 2010 to 2020, say?

The touryst was one of the few if not the only game on PS5 rendering at 8K. Not a demanding game for sure. Sony ended up removing the 8K video badge from PS5 boxes.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

The whole original justification for creating "Intellectual Property" (copyright, patents) laws was they were supposed to promote progress & innovation to benefit all.

But it's become mostly an extortion racket that hobbles progress & innovation. Instead of supporting creators, they reward gatekeepers.

At the end of the day, if you write a book and it's a hit, you will get some money out of it. Which probably helps when you're a struggling author scrabbling for a shilling to put in the gas. It keeps the dream alive.

Patents are a bit murkier. And copyright works less well when the work is a corporate effort. Still, I would be wary of abandoning the concept.

Also, you have to admit that if IP had been done away with, the Parasitic Apocalypse that we blame on LLM would have happened already.

 

[lmcdo]

...and you're failing to grok the main point.


That is not an HDMI port that will work with all the things people expect on a console.

I am succeeding at "grok"ing the main point, which is that "There is not an HDMI port that will work with all the things people expect on a console" despite that this is an already-solved problem with relatively low cost of implementation.

You are not succeeding to grok my main point: there is an implication that Valve and AMD couldn't have seen this coming, despite:

AMD has had years to adjust this in its roadmap and has chosen not to, because they don't care about Linux as much as people think, and they critically don't lend enough legal assistance to the Linux side to figure out what they can and can't do. This isn't a new problem for AMD's Linux division -- go back in old Phoronix forums and you can find bridgeman posting about "X has been done for Y months, waiting for legal" for basically a decade.

AMD roadmapped HDMI 2.1 Linux support in its drivers and can't deliver. Adding CEC would've been trivial for Valve to do with a few minor board additions -- CEC is entirely disconnected from TDMS (the display) and doesn't even operate on the same pins. The main problems here are the 2.1-specific bits. That is mostly VRR and higher resolution/refresh rate at normal subsampling. a PCON could've solved this (though not at 10bit color, as others have correctly pointed out).

I should mention that I also ignored the author's claim that some panels support HDMI Forum VRR but not FreeSync, because the models that support Forum VRR but not FreeSync are largely models that have a useless VRR implementation with high minimum frame rates and low maximum framerates, as examining the author's source quickly reveals. Those are only listed as VRR because VRR is a mandatory part of the HDMI 2.1 spec, likely for the sole purpose of "defeating" FreeSync over HDMI (because that's how HDMI Forum thinks).

 

[Waco]

You are not succeeding to grok my main point: there is an implication that Valve and AMD couldn't have seen this coming, despite:

They did see it coming, hence why Valve is just releasing with an HDMI 2.0 port with chroma subsampling and not some cobbled together interface that doesn't act like people expect it to.


The main problem is that the HDMI Forum is a bunch of monopolistic jackasses.

 

[lmcdo]

They did see it coming, hence why Valve is just releasing with an HDMI 2.0 port with chroma subsampling and not some cobbled together interface that doesn't act like people expect it to.


The main problem is that the HDMI Forum is a bunch of monopolistic jackasses

The board traces for 2.0 and 2.1 are identical, so no, Valve did nothing.

Your concept of "cobbled together" is alarmingly strict. Motherboards regularly have supporting chips that add or change functionality. Is an ASMedia SATA chipset for extra ports "cobbled together" too? Is a Lenovo laptop cobbled together because it needs a tweaked keyboard driver?

Sometimes the base platform needs augmented. If the manufacturer open-sources and mainlines the device tweaks and it is as maintainable as any desktop, and more than most laptops.

 

[Waco]

Your concept of "cobbled together" is alarmingly strict.

No, it really isn't.

If I buy a Steam Machine and plug it into my TV and CEC doesn't work out of the box - they failed.

 

[OptimusP83]

The board traces for 2.0 and 2.1 are identical, so no, Valve did nothing.

Your concept of "cobbled together" is alarmingly strict. Motherboards regularly have supporting chips that add or change functionality. Is an ASMedia SATA chipset for extra ports "cobbled together" too? Is a Lenovo laptop cobbled together because it needs a tweaked keyboard driver?

Sometimes the base platform needs augmented. If the manufacturer open-sources and mainlines the device tweaks and it is as maintainable as any desktop, and more than most laptops.

There is a LARGE gulf between "theoretically working" and "working in practice", PARTICULARLY when it comes to anything touching HDMI.

You mention CEC...Do you have any practical experience using CEC? I do. It still doesn't always work properly for me, which is a HUGE improvement over not working AT ALL with previous devices only a few years ago. And let me refresh your memory, CEC was defined with HDMI ONE POINT FUCKING ZERO. Which was released in 2002. That was TWENTY THREE YEARS AGO...

So what you're telling me is that Intel was able to implement a workaround for higher framerates at 4k on hardware where they control the FULL STACK, both software and hardware and indeed have a specialization in building highly complex chips and interconnects in order to facilitate new standards and whatnot. Notably absent from that link you sent was any mention of VRR in any form, its just about negotiating a higher out-of-spec interconnect bandwidth. Do you have any hands on experience with Intel's workaround? Does it reliably function with both consumer TVs as well as PC monitors? Does it even try to support VRR? Does this out-of-spec negotiation all work flawlessly under Linux?

Meanwhile Valve, who has VERY LITTLE experience in the hardware world until fairly recently with the Steam Deck (and a few earlier projects I'm sure they'd like us all to forget), is going to just crank out a custom GPU? Or rather, pay AMD to crank out some custom GPU silicon to support an out-of-spec bandwidth increase with no guarantee (or documentation) that would show that it delivers on all the HDMI 2.1 features and with AMD doing much of the heavy lifting software wise (since their drivers would need to support this under windows, linux, etc)? Are you nuts? Valve certainly isn't, which is why they're pressuring HDMI to figure their shit out on Linux rather than shipping a hack that they'll be on the hook to support for a long time...

Nothing in what you've said or linked to shows that this issue is "solved" at all, even by Intel's hack.

 

[shodanbo]

I wonder how exactly the HDMI Forum exerts their authority. Are they saying Valve cannot advertise 2.1 support if they're using the open-source drivers? Could Valve just do the implementation and not advertise it? Has AMD signed some agreement with the Forum and they'd violate it with an open source implementation? Is it a patent issue?

AMD signed an agreement and paid a fee to use the standard, a standard that is not available free to "the public".

There is another Ars article from 2024 with some details about how AMD tried to deal with this but got shut down by the HDMI forum. Also some speculation (not definitive) that content rights owners on the forum may be against open source for 2.1 due to DMCA enforcement issues.

https://meincmagazine.com/gadgets/202...you-cant-make-an-open-source-hdmi-2-1-driver/

 

[J.King]

It has occurred to me that the stated conformance of the device is HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4. I might have expected DisplayPort 2.1 to be supported by now given that DP 2.x is six years old. Manufacturers do seem to have been a bit slow to adopt it (my GPU from 2022 is only DP 1.4), but this seems an extreme case.

 

[gnasher729]

AMD signed an agreement and paid a fee to use the standard, a standard that is not available free to "the public".

There is another Ars article from 2024 with some details about how AMD tried to deal with this but got shut down by the HDMI forum. Also some speculation (not definitive) that content rights owners on the forum may be against open source for 2.1 due to DMCA enforcement issues.

https://meincmagazine.com/gadgets/202...you-cant-make-an-open-source-hdmi-2-1-driver/

My understanding is that HDMI devices must support HDCP aka “content protection” aka DRM. So an open source driver must support DRM. Now open source developers should be able to create a driver supporting DRM even if it makes them throw up. But being open source, anyone can take the driver and remove the DRM support. And it would be difficult or impossible to create a legal open source driver that prevents removal of DRM support.

 

[Carewolf]

My understanding is that HDMI devices must support HDCP aka “content protection” aka DRM. So an open source driver must support DRM. Now open source developers should be able to create a driver supporting DRM even if it makes them throw up. But being open source, anyone can take the driver and remove the DRM support. And it would be difficult or impossible to create a legal open source driver that prevents removal of DRM support.

Somehow they managed to do this already for older HDMI versions and for DisplayPort. So apparently not that much of a problem.

 

[sd70mac]

DisplayPort TVs exist but quite rare and also unfortunately not sold in all markets.

What makes a TV a ‘TV’ is having a tuner for broadcast or unencrypted cable. However, since ‘set-top’ boxes are increasingly required for cable and common for media consumption (Roku, AppleTV, etc.) having a monitor/display that lacks the tuner and is cheaper but can’t legally be called a TV is worthwhile, although they are less likely to be found in stores that only stock a few models to simplify inventory.

 

[sd70mac]

Valve pointed out why they can't do this: unlike a locked-down, special-purpose gaming console, the Steam Machine is usable as a general-purpose computer. If they try to sell the hardware at below-market prices, lots of non-gaming people and businesses will buy up Steam Machines and install Windows or desktop Linux on it without buying any Steam games

If Valve want to spend extra money to make this device more attractive, they could offer gift cards for the Steam Store with it to lower the effective price, similar to promotions that Apple, Best Buy, and others have done b