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Comment by code4tee | Hacker News Reader

Most people’s TVs at this point are basically a 1080 monitor hooked up to a computer (cable box) so I don’t see this as a big challenge. If a monitor is needed they are quite inexpensive at this point compared to what they used to cost.

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The issue is that the Pi uses a relatively uncommon port (mini-HDMI) for their devices, and while the “Christmas Morning” kit that they’re selling includes the correct cable, it would’ve been nice if this larger device upgraded to use the far more common full-sized HDMI port. This way, they could’ve used a cable they likely already had available instead of needing something special or keeping track of a new cable.

Yes! This was such a terrible decision. At a first approximation, 0% of users will use two monitors. Including two HDMI ports on the board was a marketing gimmick ("look ma! two 4K monitors!"), which forced us all into a world of dongles and non-typical cables.

It's not even mini HDMI. It's micro HDMI. And those cables are insanely fragile. I went through 3 in as many days when I got my Pi 4 recently.

And HDMI itself isn’t a great choice if you’re hoping to let people use old monitors.

I have an old one with DVI and VGA, so I have a DVI-HDMI dongle and HDMI-HDMI mini cable and my first dongle didn’t work because the form factor of the monitor case didn’t allow it to fit. Quite a pain.

Of course DVI would rule out old TVs, so I don’t know what the “best” choice is, if there is one.

Is cable that common? Assuming you mean cable tv, it seems that at peak it was only just over half of all homes that subscribed and is falling. Presumably this is due to Netflix et al. However wiki numbers stop a few years back.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_Unit...

The point about it being hooked up to a cable box isn't particularly relevant unless you're only watching OTA digital TV all your media comes from what can be roughly described as a computer attached to a monitor. And even if you are just watching digital OTA TV any relatively modern TV will have an HDMI port.

Even without cable boxes, basically every TV has an input you can plug something into, even if you've got one of the extremely old ones you can get an adapter.

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