Valve: HDMI Forum Continues to Block HDMI 2.1 for Linux

Posted by OsrsNeedsf2P 1 day ago

Valve: HDMI Forum Continues to Block HDMI 2.1 for Linux(www.heise.de)

537 points | 307 commentspage 2

freeopinion 1 day ago||

I always choose DP. I didn't even know there was this issue with HDMI.

jrepinc 1 day ago||

Looks like Valve also needs to start making SteamTV, just a TV without any "smart" spyware/adware OS. Until then.. this blackfriday I ordered a TV that by miracle even has a DisplayPort input (Hisense 65U8Q). Unfortunately still "smart" TV but at least it does not have US-based OS but European made VIDAA which hopefully provides much less spyware than the US-alternatives, if it properly respects the EU GDPR laws. Hopefully Hisense starts/inspires a bigger movement towards DisplayPort and this HDMI mafia dies as soon as possible.

jsheard 1 day ago||

They could also potentially sidestep the issue by designing a discrete DisplayPort to HDMI chip into the system, so the HDMI 2.1+ implementation is firewalled from the open source stack. Maybe next time, if the HDMI Forum still hasn't budged by then.

mizzack 1 day ago||

Intel did this with the ARC A750/770

https://community.intel.com/t5/Graphics/HDMI-2-1-UHD-144Hz-A...

jsheard 1 day ago||

Yeah, the chip they used isn't ideal though because it converts DP1.4 (32Gbit) to HDMI 2.1 (48Gbit), so the bandwidth is bottlenecked on the input side. Ideally you'd want a chip which takes DP2.1, which I'm not sure exists yet, and the upcoming Steam Machine only supports DP1.4 so it wouldn't have helped in that case anyway.

ZeroCool2u 1 day ago|||

Imagine a Steam TV with the Steam Box simply built-in. That would be incredibly nice. The worst part of my brand new LG G5 OLED TV is the software itself. I'd pay a good deal more to have Valve responsible for the software running on my TV.

cosmic_cheese 1 day ago|||

It might be nice for a little while, but the PC component is going to age much more poorly than the display will.

I think the better move would be for Valve to make a really nice gamer-oriented dumb TV that's essentially a 50"+ monitor. Kind of like those BFGDs (Big Format Gaming Displays) sans the exorbitant prices. The size of a Steam Box is in comparison quite diminutive, so finding a place to put it shouldn't be too much of an issue and the ability to swap it out for a newer model with the same screen 5+ years down the road would be nice.

jrepinc 1 day ago||||

And even better make it as open as Steam Deck/Machine and allow to install any GNU/Linux distribution onto it maybe even something with KDE Plasma Bigscreen or something similar if desired.

undersuit 1 day ago||||

You can get TVs with a "PC slot" like the Sharp M431-2. Just need a Steam Slot.

kaelwd 1 day ago|||

That's only 60Hz though. Are there any dumb TVs with 120+ Hz VRR and HDR?

yjftsjthsd-h 1 day ago|||

Is this an actual thing people can buy, or only companies?

undersuit 1 day ago||

I see one for sale at B&H Photo Video.

vel0city 1 day ago|||

There's actually a quasi-standard of TV-compute unit interface made for industrial displays. This could be really nice for things like steam cards that could just slot into TVs with whatever performance you need.

https://youtu.be/q9a3dCd1SQI

aydyn 1 day ago|||

Does it really matter that much? Get a $20 roku or google tv stick or whatever you're comfortable with and don't connect the TV OS.

ninth_ant 1 day ago|||

My recent-model Samsung TV repeatedly opens a pop-up info window about their AI features while my AppleTV is playing movies and shows.

So I didn’t connect the TV OS and it’s still thrown in my face. It’s not the end of the world to have to find the tv remote and dismiss a popup every few days, but I sure would welcome competition who doesn’t try this sort of nonsense.

drewg123 1 day ago|||

Thank you. I was shopping for a TV to use as a display device for an Apple TV. I was considering a Samsung, but now I no longer am.

zamadatix 1 day ago||

I've found you have to stay granular, i.e. to the model level rather than the brand level, or you end up with basically no consumer focused brand to pick from (or, even more likely, a misunderstanding that a given brand had no such problems because you didn't casually run across an example).

janc_ 21 hours ago|||

Popping up dialogs in the middle of watching a movie sounds like a hidden manufacturing defect. That should be enough to get your money back on returning it to the shop (assuming your country has anything resembling consumer protection laws).

kotaKat 1 day ago|||

The TV manufacturers still make it highly annoying to avoid their integrated bullshit now. The setting to launch an LG WebOS TV into its last input on power-on is buried under 'advanced settings' several menus deep.

They would rather launch you into their home hub full of preinstalled apps even if it's not online...

... and the thing came with Microsoft Copilot installed, and you couldn't uninstall it, either.

The future!

amarant 1 day ago|||

The trick is to not buy a "TV".

Get a really big computer monitor/screen, and put it where you'd normally put your TV.

forbiddenlake 1 day ago||

This trick unfortunately falls down above a certain size, especially if you want to game at a good fps, and stay in the consumer space (price) rather than the commercial display space. That gigabyte 45 inch is too small to use above your fireplace and view across the living room.

In my case I compromised on needing 4k, and got an lg 65 inch with only HDMI.

pete5x5 1 day ago|||

I have been doing A/V systems professionally for many years and the best system I have found recently is a Sony TV with an Apple TV. No sign-in needed for the TV for basic setup, can be easily set to come on to a particular input, works well with the Apple remote, and functions well with no internet with just a little corner pop-up saying "no internet" when you first turn it on.

You should update the TV when you first unbox it (ideally via ethernet) and then disconnect it. If you don't like Apple TV then your streaming box of choice.

toast0 1 day ago|||

> You should update the TV when you first unbox it (ideally via ethernet) and then disconnect it. If you don't like Apple TV then your streaming box of choice.

Can you update via USB? I know my (couple years old now) Samsung TVs have firmware downloads available so you don't even need to connect the TV to anything.

cosmic_cheese 1 day ago||

Yes. I've owned a couple Android-based Sony TVs in the past decade and they both support updating firmware via USB thumb. They also support installing/removing packages with ADB, just like one would with an Android phone, in the case that there's some offline app you want to use on it. The newer models also do a neat thing where if you have external speakers hooked up, its internal speakers can be repurposed for center channel audio which is super cool.

I'll echo the Apple TV + Sony TV combo. It's very solid.

bee_rider 1 day ago||||

Apple + Sony sounds like a pretty nice combo, although unsurprisingly, right? It is a combination of premium brands. (Of course often premium brands are actually garbage in a nice shell, so maybe it is surprisingly not surprisingly bad, haha).

Marsymars 1 day ago|||

> You should update the TV when you first unbox it (ideally via ethernet) and then disconnect it.

You also need to wipe the storage cache for the launcher app after disconnecting to get rid of the junky ads that get downloaded.

intrasight 1 day ago|||

Are projectors the alternative?

zamadatix 1 day ago||

Projectors can be an option but the price point to get anything comparably good in terms of picture quality puts you squarely back in commercial TV pricing.

trvz 1 day ago||||

I don’t own a TV, but would’ve bought a LG just because of webOS if I finally decided to get one. But if it comes with uninstallable Microsoft apps, that changes it.

jrepinc 1 day ago|||

Yup LG was one of my contenders, but once I found out about this MS junk it was immediately off the list.

zamadatix 1 day ago||||

Out of curiosity, what was the attraction around webOS?

kotaKat 1 day ago|||

Yeah. I'm actually really mad at that one. They really ruined webOS.

https://old.reddit.com/r/webos/comments/1o886vc/ms_copilot_c...

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/6/24337033/lg-samsung-micros...

Mindwipe 1 day ago|||

You can literally click to boot into "dumb mode" on all modern Google TVs such as Sony once and forget about it.

unethical_ban 1 day ago||

If Steam could find a good OEM to partner with, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

I don't know if any of the monitor manufacturers have an incentive to help Steam produce an ad-free, open-spec monitor/television.

shmerl 1 day ago||

HDMI forum is a frontend for the cartel that profits from HDMI patents. Everyone should use USB 4 / DisplayPort instead and HDMI should go into the dustbin of history, but TV industry is slowing things down due this cartel.

PunchyHamster 1 day ago||

Need VDMI that is suspiciously similar and compatible with HDMI standard.

Asmod4n 1 day ago||

Couldn’t AMD just release that as firmware/binary blob and call that from the open source driver to circumvent the issue?

aryonoco 1 day ago||

Great news. HDMI can just go and die. If the HdMI Forum really thinks it’s bigger than Linux, it’s wrong. While category of devices in this space are just Linux only. Eventually, they’ll add a DP port, eventually (10 years later)

blastersyndrome 1 day ago||

Legally speaking, what is stopping someone from just reverse-engineering the specification and publishing it online somewhere?

superxpro12 1 day ago||

Probably a lawyer with little legal standing that is however funded by a very large checkbook.

Avamander 1 day ago||

I suspect there isn't anything really stopping them (especially in the EU) except threats.

jonny_eh 1 day ago|

Is the a USB-C/Thunderbolt to HDMI 2.1 dongle? Send Displayport and audio over USB-C and then let that hardware handle the HDMI handshaking.

klipklop 1 day ago|

There isn't one that supports VRR/Gsync/Freesync well. What gamers want is chroma/RGB 4:4:4 + HDR + VRR/Freesync + 4k,120hz for their Linux PC on a TV. This is not possible with any DP --> HDMI 2.1 dongle on the market. They need support at the driver level to make this work. This is what the idiots at the HDMI forum are blocking. The only way to have high quality visuals on a PC/TV setup is to run Windows. That really sucks.

sunshowers 1 day ago|||

I do actually have this setup going with a Cable Matters adapter [1] + a custom firmware I found [2] and

> chroma/RGB 4:4:4 + HDR + VRR/Freesync + 4k,120hz for their Linux PC on a TV

works great now on my LG C4 TV with Bazzite's gaming mode, though:

* 144Hz is unstable

* 12-bit color is unstable (10-bit works fine), and gamescope doesn't have a way to limit color depth (kwin does), so I had to put in place an EDID override

* in the EDID, limiting the FreeSync range to 60-120Hz (which should still allow frame doubling/tripling) seemed to be better -- the default 40Hz caused a bit of flickering because the AMD driver would drop the refresh rate down to 38.5Hz or so.

Should write about this in more detail.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B094XR43M5

[2] https://forum.level1techs.com/t/it-is-possible-to-4k-120-hdr...

klipklop 1 day ago||||

I can't edit now, but it seems that there is a new dongle on the market that might be able to do this with some changes (whitelists?) to the AMDGPU driver in Linux.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 1 day ago|||

This is terrible.

Aren't there on the market big "pc monitors" instead of tvs?

raggi 1 day ago||

Not with good measured performance no. There are some which advertise good numbers (such as high refresh rates) but are unable to drive the panels to visibly change pixels at anywhere near the refresh rate.

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