cbmeeks wrote:
Which is exactly why HDMI needs to be abandoned and the market needs to move to an open standard. Which is really shocking if you think about it. Just about every major player in the digital world (MS, Sony, Apple, etc.) have to pay that (I think German) company royalties for HDMI. Seems like the TV companies and the other companies should get together and create an open standard. They can phase out HDMI.
Of course, HDMI is so saturated that it will be difficult to do that. That's why you can still buy TV's with composite and S-Video.
But still, none of those old formats need royalties.
Another aspect, IIRC, is that HDMI also has the ability to do DRM.
While I think you're right I also see issues. One is the XKCD Standards argument (See:
https://xkcd.com/927/ ) and the other would suggest that without an official standard and proof you adhere to the standard so you can legally display the logo then you'll end up with all sorts of incompatibilities. (Same for USB, DVD, CD and so on)
For a large maker of video stuff (say Raspberry Pi) the additional cost is not that big a deal once units started to ship. Dell tried to get round it by inventing their own standard - (Dell DisplayPort) which was great when you have a Dell PC and a Dell monitor, but when you have a Dell PC and a generic nice high-end non-Dell monitor (which is what my home desktop setup is) then it presents issues. (I had to buy an adapter - did I mention incompatibilities earlier?)
And even, AIUI, Dell have had issues with various legal threats and so on.
Sadly, there is no easy solution for the home/hobby user. Virtually all monitors you can buy these days have HDMI. Those with DVI are on the decline and those with other analog formats e.g. VGA, S-Video, SCART, Composite, (Gasp!) UHF are really on the way out.
Generating VGA from a microcontroller isn't hard though - but it uses up many GPIO pins depending on your bits per pixel colour (R, 2R network unless you have a high speed DAC+CLUT) plus 2 for the syncs. DVI (and single lane HDMI) isn't too bad but you need a high speed serialiser from your RAM to the cable (Which the Pi Pico can do) I have an FPGA thing that has a micro HDMI socket and some magic to drive it, but who pays the royalties? I've no idea.
I don't think there is an easy solution for us retro hobbyists and I don't think there ever will be.
-Gordon
_________________
--
Gordon Henderson.
See my
Ruby 6502 and 65816 SBC projects here:
https://projects.drogon.net/ruby/
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