With HDMI, I have both video and audio traveling over a single cable. That is _extremely_ convenient. DP _theoretically_ supports audio too, but AFAIK that's not widely implemented.
I'm open to having my mind changed but I have not really experienced this extreme convenience in practice. The vast majority of things I plug a HDMI cable into either don't have speakers or if they do, the speakers are a bad quality afterthought.
In actual fact, what has been an extreme inconvenience is the OS thinking I want HDMI audio instead of whatever much higher-quality* alternative output I actually want to direct my audio to.
The only time I've ever gotten high-quality audio output over HDMI is via ARC, which says a lot about the need for HDMI audio...
* When I say "much higher-quality", I don't mean HDMI is a low-quality audio transport, I mean the HDMI output devices more often than not have inferior audio output to some other bluetooth / 3.5mm jack device I am using.
I think it could make sense in budget friendly setups, but... personally I'd pay extra to not have to deal with the nuisance and security risk of microphone input I can't physically disable.
I have no idea if there are downsides to audio over USB-A but for my fairly basic use case (“being able to hear things and not hear coil whine”) it works pretty well.
That sounds cool but I've never see a monitor with a jack. Mine all have many USB ports, but not audio. How common are they?
I use 2 computers connected to the same monitor via hdmi and use barrier (and a script) to switch screens. The audio for the correct monitor gets activated automatically. It's very convenient.
I wonder is it a regional thing (in EU)
Here's where ARC/eARC really benefit me, and I don't see how this problem could be solved with DisplayPort.
I have a PC and a PS5 that support Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) over HDMI. I bought a new TV last year that also supports VRR, but I did not want to replace my perfectly adequate 3 year old reciever that does not support VRR. Even today, VRR support on recievers is questionable at best, and most users likely want their VRR devices plugged directly into their TV.
Thanks to eARC, I can plug my PS5 or PC directly into my TV and have it send the PCM 7.1 surround sound audio to the reciever over HDMI. I can still leave other devices like an Apple TV or Blu-Ray player plugged into the reciever, and everything just works.
Without eARC, I would have to fall back on TOSlink. That means extra cables, and dropping down to compressed dolby digital 5.1 if I want to keep surround sound. Using dolby digital on a game console incurs a pretty noticeable latency penalty, which is why they all default to PCM.
All of my consoles work the same way: just run a single HDMI cable for each one.
The counter point might be that my TV would have "bad audio." But I don't think so (at least not at the volumes I prefer), and even if it did, it supports audio out to connect the TV audio to a separate hi-fi.
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I have an Intel IGP; Intel has supported this since the G45 (Core 2 Duo era), AMD added it in the HD 4800 era, and nVidia in the GeForce 8300 era. Support for this is over a decade old at this point.
The "stereo only uncompressed" is a S/PDIF legacy, and while HDMI does support S/PDIF, it was already "the bad old way" when Bluray players came out (though it took a few years for discrete GPU makers to catch up).
Almost everything I use for media sends audio and video to my receiver over HDMI; the exception is analog sources, which go into a mixer whose output is digitized and sent over CAT-6 cable to an optical converter sitting on the receiver.
I doubt that there exists any reasonably recent GPU that does not support audio over DisplayPort, so if there are problems they might be caused by the monitors. I have no idea how many monitors have speakers and DisplayPort without supporting audio over DP.
Citing § 7.5 normative language:
> An HDMI Source shall be capable of transmitting audio and video data streams with no more than ±2 msec of audio delay relative to the video.
It's widely implemented.
I've been using audio over DisplayPort for years and years and years without issue. every device I've ever had that supports DisplayPort supports audio over that connection.
I'm using my monitor's speaker through DP since GTX 1070 (2016). Currently RTX 4070 Ti and that works too. And it's a pretty mediocre AOC monitor I have.
HDMI CEC? Has anyone actually got that working correctly?
Anyone remember Ethernet over HDMI? Apparently that was a thing. (Not to be confused with HDMI over Ethernet, which actually has some uses.)
HDMI for soundbars? We got ARC ports (Audio Return Channel). But it was buggy, didn't support lossless audio, needed new DRM, and was bad at maintaining lip sync, so introducing eARC (Enhanced Audio Return Channel). eARC works by... scrapping Ethernet over HDMI and reusing the wires. Better get a new TV that supports it, there's no adapters (downgrading to regular ARC if any part of the chain doesn't support eARC).
ARC was a bit more spotty, but I moved somewhere with no live TV reception, so my only use-case for it went away (everything else routes audio through the receiver).
I stay in lots of hotels and take my Roku stick. Most of the time the Roku remote can control the TV volume and power using CEC