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Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

I'd assume if they aren't part of HDMI cartel as the above post suggests, they are paying patent fees for this garbage.

And they are in a good position to unblock this situation by increasing adoption of patent free alternatives, therefore I don't see why they wouldn't have an incentive to avoid paying.

So I'd rather see them as somehow complicit then, instead of having no incentive in this case.

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They have to pay the fees regardless, since no TV would sell if it didn't have an HDMI port. So unless the TV manufacturers can also convince set-top box makers, game console manufacturers, Blu-Ray makers etc to include DisplayPort, they'll need to continue including an HDMI port.

So this needs to be an industry-wide switch, not just TV makers.

For now, but that doesn't stop them from nudging things in the direction where HDMI will become obsolete by doing their part. I.e. it's not an instant thing, but each step in that direction helps and they can make a pretty significant one.

So the argument of no incentives just doesn't make sense, but it's a gradual process to get there. Unless their bean counters only understand super short term incentives. Then they should be blamed too for why things aren't improving in this regard.

The incentive seems very thin/weak. Pay extra now to push DP adoption and hope that in ~10-15 years you can drop the HDMI port? Meanwhile you still pay the cartel, and they invest your money directly against your interests. And it all hinges on predicting consumer adoption which is nearly impossible. I honestly don’t see how they could justify making such a step in that direction let alone a significant one.

That's a catch 22 / circular argument that can always be used to excuse inaction, but it's not a real argument. Yes, it's a long term problem to solve and has many moving parts. But if they don't solve their part, they are only slowing it down even more. Any contribution to move things forward moves things forward, and lack of it delays things.

I.e. if you are saying "we feed the cartel, let's not do anything about it, since doing anything will only potentially help later, so we still need to feed the cartel in in the interim" doesn't really stand any argument grounds. I.e. feed the cartel and do nothing is worse than feed the cartel and do what you can to stop that over time.

And their piece of this is pretty big (huge portion of TV market), that's why they in particular should be asked more than others, why they aren't doing their part.

It's not so much that it's a catch 22, its that there's no financial incentive for them. TVs are a low margin item already, and Samsung/LG get their margin by being brand names and advertising fancy features.

I doubt they would meaningfully save money over investing in DP, and the opportunity cost is greater for them to spend that money on the next "Frame" TV or whatever.

LG, Samsung and Sony are the only actual panel manufacturers and they probably bake those license fees into the panels they sell back to HDMI Forum.

May be, but by not solving the problem, they become part of the problem, even if they aren't part of HDMI cartel directly. So it's their fault too problems like above happen.

For DP adoption it's too late. They should push for USB4 / Thunderbolt 4 instead. We are in the phase where about every new laptop has USB4. Connecting your laptop/phone to a TV might be a selling point. I'd love that for hotel TVs.

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