Comment by Ataraxic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ataraxic | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate this article but fundamentally this is just a fault of the USB-C standard. One of the hardest parts is not just that it's sometimes confusing what is supported, a lot of the complexity is also pushed onto what any given usb-c cable supports.

Sometimes, especially with video, there is a distinct direction built into many of these cables. Now you need to find in your cable bin/storage the right kind of cable for each application potentially killing a lot of re-usability (if you have neatly organized usb-c cables labeled by their technical capabilities you're much better than me).

Not to mention, there are issues with power. Lots of laptops have video wired to usb-c which you can connect to a monitor, but I bought a portable monitor that took usb-c as an input using the DP standard last year and it was a nightmare to get it work correctly. My understanding was that usb-c => DP, most of the time the cable itself is unpowered from the usb-c side since the monitor accepting displayport will power the connection on its side (since it's usually plugged in). Since mine was a portable monitor this wasn't the case and I basically needed to use a wacom link to combine a DP signal, separate usb power into a combined signal out. Totally lame...

I remember back in 2015-2016 when everyone was heralding USB-C as the one port to rule them all. Turns out, it's more like 17 ports in a trench coat to rule them none.

It's been five years since USB-C became standard on MacBooks and we've seen Apple reverse course on the idea it could replace everything, and with the exception of a handful of ultraportables, most PC laptops and motherboards still include 2+ USB-A ports as well as other IO. In other applications, like cars, aircraft, public charging stations, USB-A is here to stay, and the advantages of USB-C are dubious at best. A more fragile port, for... what, reversibility?

Having a clear use case for a port is invaluable. When I plug in an HDMI cable, I know it's going to be used for display output. MagSafe? Power delivery. USB-A/Firewire? A client peripheral connected to a master computer bus, like a printer or MIDI keyboard. USB-C eschews that philosophy entirely. In a way, it's almost like a step backwards to the days of serial ports and DIN cables, with different standards competing for supremacy and no way of knowing if Thing A works with Thing B without trial and error.

> When I plug in an HDMI cable, I know it's going to be used for display output

https://www.cmple.com/learn/learning-center-hdmi-cables-with...

> Firewire? A client peripheral connected to a master computer bus

Nope. Firewire is masterless/multi-master/peer-to-peer. That's why you could not only transfer music from you laptop to an iPod, but from one iPod to another iPod without any (other) computers on the bus. It is also why two computers can by attached via Firewire, as a generic network link or for low-level debugging.

I have never seen an HDMI cable with ethernet. Ever. Monoprice doesn't even sell HDMI+Ethernet cables.

I’ve had a super old DVD player connect to the internet over an hdmi cable to my blue ray/surround sound system device that had Ethernet connected. It used the connection to patch itself, didn’t even ask if I wanted to.

Even a $7 AmazonBasics HDMI cable has Ethernet support (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014I8SSD0), not that this really matters since hardly any devices ever supported Ethernet over HDMI.

Also, Ethernet over HDMI is limited to 100 Mbit/s which would make it slower than most modern Wi-Fi networks (leaving aside any possible reliability issues).

The first monoprice cable that came up on Google says it supports Ethernet https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=42682

> In other applications, like cars, aircraft, public charging stations, USB-A is here to stay

Newer cars are getting USB C. Not just luxury cars either. Some cars have both A and C.

One nice thing about USB C is you can also charge laptops with them.

Playing USB-Cs advocate, a world where every specialist connector on a laptop would double as another USB to hook up random gadgetry when not in use as the primary role would be awesome. For example I never use that HDMI or the ethernet port. They exist because situations where the matching plugs are part of infrastructure you don't control, but I might prefer a world where those plugs need to be labeled because all the ports are the same to double as lowly gadget hosts.

What's bad is the usual implemention where you have one "holy grail" port that's effectively a proprietary docking station connector (because no other docking station has the exact same subset of "concurrent beyond-USB stuff") that might downgrade to some single usecase protocols beyond serving as a lowly plain USB. But where you have a serious lack of other "USB and/or X" beyond The One. This quickly gets ugly when you want to connect display and power separately. You absolutely need another port that's also capable of delivering power (or the reverse, a second display-capable USB so that power can be fed in isolation via the docking-capable port), but this is unfortunately rare, instead you get special ports that are completely useless while doing the docking station thing.

  > Turns out, it's more like 17 ports in a trench coat to rule them none.

That's why the body has an orifice for food, an orifice for defecation, an orifice for breeding, an orifice for breathing, ect. Some functionality should be kept separate, even if in some cases doubling up (breathing through the mouth) is technically possible.

A big mistake was turning the cables from passive wires connecting two ports into things needing active circuitry in the plug. Average consumers don’t think like this. They just want the “iPhone to USB” cable. Some consumers won’t understand why cable A is any different than cable B. After all, they both have the USB C thingy on both ends.

They could mandate icons, same as USB, USB 2 and USB 3 all have their own icons, usually displayed on cables and receiving ports.

That would require actually acknowledging versions like "USB 1" and "USB 2", but the standards group would rather use retroactively-changing nonsense like "USB 3.2 Gen 1".

So, if we all close our eyes, the problem goes away.

That would open them to liability of being sued by disabilities groups, because the tiny icons will be very difficult to see on the increasingly tiny connectors.

The problem is that on the one hand they want to enable USB-c to be low cost and universal for all devices. But on the other hand you want USB-C to support 100W and 240W charging but it’s not cost effective to put enough copper to carry 100-240W in your average low cost phone cable.

So the cable needs something active to indicate it’s capability. So you don’t melt it.

I imagine you could do this passively with some differently valued resistors in the cable.

Or even actively by the charged device reporting the voltage on its end. Too much current, high voltage drop, better decrease the current.

That would only occur during the overcurrent event. Robust engineering would not only try to correct existing overcurrent events but also to prevent them.

That's just reality and there is not a way around it. If you want the cable to be removable at both ends, more than an inch long, and really really fast, then it has to be active.

Aren't passive DisplayPort cabbles really really fast, and longer than 1 inch?

DisplayPort cables don't carry PCIe lanes.

True, but DP 2.0 is 20 Gb/s/lane and PCIe 4.0 is 16 GT/s/lane. Unless I'm missing something, those data rates aren't that far apart.

And at the prosumer / pro level people don't even want to think at all.

Complex, fragile connection are just a chore for the average person. It means failure on the job, delay, stress.

Unless they invest in more marketing so people get the message and stronger builds (alas for instance DELL thunderbolt docking station are not solid yet)

> for instance DELL thunderbolt docking station are not solid yet

Neither are their USB-C docks. IT wraps the USB-C connector with tape by default, because it will otherwise break in 4 weeks after handing it out. It's a shame considering the price for those docking stations.

Oh yeah I was quite shocked to see the price.

It's mostly a fail because it does too much and the part people need it (rapid and sturdy docking/coupling) is absent.

Alas

As I see it, if there are these active circuitry in the plug (and there is) it should provide "answers to questions", I don't think that the final user would be overly upset if he/she attempted to use a cable to (say) connect to a monitor and the OS would interrogate the cable and:

1) OK, this cable is fine for sending video to monitor xxxx

2) Sorry but this cable is not suited for video transmission

3) This cable seems to be monodirectional, try reverting it

...

etc.

The issue is when you have a bunch of cables, all either white or black that you cannot distinguish, and you have to try all of them, hoping to have a suitable one (alternatively they could have made them "colour coded", like, say, black 5 V charge only , yellow dual voltage, green charge + video, etc., even with just a small colour dot on the connectors )

I will be given the same task of get a USB-C portable monitor to work on a Huawei Mate D14 (1 USB-C) next week. Already preparing for that massive headache.

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