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Comment by wmf | Hacker News Reader

The world doesn't care about FOSS drivers.

Anyway, HDMI is for TVs and DisplayPort is for monitors. They're both entrenched enough that it doesn't make much sense to try to cross over.

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Ok, but, why not just try to converge on one connector? as you say, the world doesn't care...

Fundamentally different goals.

HDMI world wants DRM because other than Kim Dotcom (who is highly problematic for other reasons) no one has dared to stand up to the MAFIAA goons.

Computing world wants DisplayPort and a hassle-free, high quality experience. DRM breaks that.

The manufacturers very much care - every HDMI port (physical or virtual) involves tithe to the HDMI consortium, whereas DisplayPort does not.

I don't follow - surely if the manufacturers have to pay for every port, they'd like something that isn't costing them money?

Which is why in my experience on computer hw it's common to see one, maybe two HDMI (among other reasons, to support things like connecting a console to your monitor), and multiple display port connectors - sometimes it goes ridiculous - a maximalist approach to counting on my laptop, as currently docked, from the point of "ports implemented in GPU" if not actually available physically... gives me one HDMI and 15 DisplayPort, with the HDMI being routable onto a bunch of options. Of course that's a silly comparison, but depending on how licensing is worded I would be really unsurprised if computer manufacturers optimized for lower HDMI port count.

Also, since older HDMI was physically compatible with DVI ports, a lot of computers preferred to keep DVI ports...

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