The HDMI Forum, responsible for the HDMI specification, continues to stonewall open source. Valve’s Steam Machine theoretically supports HDMI 2.1, but the mini-PC is software-limited to HDMI 2.0. As a result, more than 60 frames per second at 4K resolution are only possible with limitations.



I don’t know this area well. But I have a strong preference for all port shapes to be the same where possible. Can USB-C shaped heads do the same thing as DisplayPort? If not now, is it possible to make it in the future.
Unfortunately this has an even more serious problem:
How do you know which cable supports which modes of delivery?
Turns out you have a usb c cable that doesn’t actually support power delivery or anything
Now what do you do?
Buy a supported cable? That’s a cable issue not a standards or forums issue
USB c cables right now are often counterfeit or inferior to the listed specs
You need to test them yourself to know their power delivery and features
With a separate port that is a significantly reduced issue
But again that’s not related to a committee stopping the implementation of a standard. It’s a scale of production issue, a labelling issue, and a consumer protection issue.
And I like having one port to just dock my machine in for power and display. I do understand how a separate port can help but I don’t see why we can’t have USB C working to its designed spec apart from the reasons I listed above.
It’s a travesty! I just went through this barbed wire circus! Swore to all my friends that Anker branded cables are “the way”. Sank a good amount of my money into that brand. Only to find that while yes, they excel in power delivery, many times when it comes to Data Transfer Rates, these new Anker cables are maxing out at 480Mbps. That’s USB ver. 2.0 speed. In a 2025 USB-C form factor. Other brands are pushing 40Gbps and Anker is just like the brandname (in Dutch): an anchor. I’m so peeved at the fact these manufacturers don’t do like the IEEE did regarding Ethernet cables: printed every X distance is the standard, right on the jacketing. You can’t tell me these USB cable manufacturers can’t follow suit. It’s USB! Need we all buy USB-IF compliant consumables? Is this really where we are this late into USB ver 3.X now going into USB ver. 4 ?!
I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot - I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!.. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”
This is why many of the expensive Dock options from HP / Dell / Lenovo, etc come with a non-detachable USB-C cable. You can’t have the “wrong” cable because the one you need isn’t removable.
I really dislike that. But I understand the reaction to the failure of the usb org. Usb C cables must be labelled on the cable (repeating) with exactly what they support in standard terms.
Maybe another job for the EU.
Why though? It’s immediately clear where a VGA or hdmi cable works, but a USB-C could support or not support anything.
So could an hdmi cable, there a lots of different hdmi specs as there are usb c specs. The problem is the lack of standardized labeling not the cables shapes. USB-C for everything would personally be my preference
That is where port markings come into play…
You also need cable markings, as both the cable and the port decide what specs to implement, and if they’re standard compliant or not.
Plus there are active/inactive cables for thunderbolt (and I think usb4) which massively affect performance.
USB c is better than the shitty port designs of USB before it, but it’s a huge mess.
Thunderbolt is exactly that.
Thunderbolt 2 and Mini Displayport used to have the same connector. Since Thunderbolt 3, it now uses the USB C connector.
Thunderbolt 5 supports Displayport 2.1. I wish more devices used Thunderbolt compatible USB C ports. Or GPUs came with a Thunderbolt port on them. They’re pretty awesome, it’s like better USB C.
It seems like only laptops really use them to allow docking through a single cable
You don’t need Thunderbolt for Displayport alt mode. It’s a separate spec that can also be implemented independently. I have a dock that’s not Thunderbolt but supports DP alt mode.
But Thunderbolt has some additional stuff too
Display Port over USB C is a thing now. It’s how laptop docks work these days. In one cable you have power, video, and USB.
USB-C alt mode is DisplayPort with a USB-C connector.