The Vergecast - The HDMI Holiday Spec-tacular

Episode Date: December 24, 2020

For a special Vergecast holiday episode, The Verge’s Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Chris Welch talk to three industry experts about the new HDMI 2.1 standard: Polygon's front page editor Samit Sarkar, Vizio CTO Bill Baxter, and HDMI Forum president David Glen. The Vergecast crew discuss what to look for when buying a new TV, how serious the TV manufacturers are on supporting 2.1, and how the new standard is being implemented throughout the industry. Happy holidays! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, H.DMI Holiday Spectacular. Featuring special guests, Bill Baxter, CTO of Vizio. Submit Sarkar, front page editor of Polygon. H.D.M.I. Forum President David Glenn. And now, here's your host, Nelai Patel. Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast, H.D.M. Holiday Spectacular. It's Christmas Eve. A chill has fallen over the world as we await our new televisions and game consoles. All the children were sleeping. All the ports were unplugged.

And we are going to spend the next hour talking about H.DiMI. I'm Nilai Patel. Dieter Bone is here. Hi, I'm so excited. Chris Welch is here. It's my favorite time of year. An all-star lineup of guests will be joining us. Bill Baxter, CTO of Vizio, one of the nation's largest TV manufacturers. David Glenn, president of the H.D.MI Forum.

Did you know there was an H.D.M.I. Forum? There is. And he's the president. The man in charge of H.T.M. on the Vergecast, H.T.M. H.T.M. Truly. The Santa of H.T.M. Summit Sarkar from Polygon. Tell us all about the new game consoles, the features of H.m. They support. And those. They do not. He's like the Rudolph of HTML. He's our guide. He is.

We don't normally think about HTML plugs. They've been around. They've been around. They're the secret to the happiest of holidays. Because everybody gets TVs and consoles and they used to get DVD players. HTML is the plug. It's the standard that brings joy to us during these holidays. This is a big year for HTML.

What's going on? Well, if you buy a new Xbox, Series X, Series X, Series S or PlayStation 5, you get to unwrap with it a brand new HTML 2.1 cable. And tell you, folks, it's a special feeling. But over the last several months, we've seen a bunch of TVs roll out with the new HTML specification, which is a pretty significant change.

It's the same connector, same port, but there's a whole lot more bandwidth as part of the HTML 2.1 spec than there was before. So you're talking about things like 4K gaming at 120 frames per second. VRR, variable refresh rate. There's auto low latency mode and E-Arc. And so there's a lot going on. It's the biggest change for HTML in a long time. And the problem is there's a lot of confusion and murkiness around which TVs do what features from the HTML 2.1 spec. So that's what we're here to try and figure out. When I think of which of Santa's helpers can help me understand

standards confusion, it's Dieter Bone. What is going on on? the standard right now. So there's a forum. A bunch of standards are designed by forums. Like there's the USB IF, which is a USB implementers forum. There's also alliances, if you're aware, like there's the Wi-Fi Alliance. There's also

SIGs, the Bluetooth SIG. I don't remember what SIG stands for. Special interest group. Special interest group. There it is. These are all phrases that really conjure the holiday spirit. And they make specs. And then a bunch of companies that are part of the forums or SIGs or alliances release devices.

that adhere to the specs or not. So, HGVI 2.1 is a spec, and it's basically, it increases the bandwidth, so the cable needs to be able to transport 48 gigs instead of 18. And on top of that, there are a bunch of features that are possible once you have that kind of bandwidth. And so HDMI 2.1 isn't a guarantee

that your TV will do all of the things that you want it to. But it is a guarantee. that it's possible if your TV does support it for it to work because everything in the chain is 2.1. Does that make sense? No. But if you just think of it as a Christmas bag, as a holiday bag full of features, and all the little presents inside the bag are things that you want your TV to do, that is the right way to think about HDMI 2.1. H.T.I.2.1 is Santa Slay, and then everything that you could do with it are the bag of features that he brings along with him.

What better way to celebrate Christmas than a tortured metaphor about auto low latency mode? Chris, I'm just going to read you some phrases and you're going to tell me what they mean before we jump into this conversation with submit. Okay. VRR. That is variable refresh rate. So what that means is the TV can adjust its refresh rate on the fly based on what it gets from the input device, like a game console. So this will stop like stuttering or screen tearing. It just keeps everything running really, really smoothly.

A-L-LM. That is auto-low latency mode. That's another big boost for gamers. So what that means is it puts your TV in the lowest possible latency. And so if you push a button under controller, that thing will happen on the screen in as short of time as possible. E-Arc. Enhanced audio return channel. So that's for your sound bars and your sound systems.

That lets you pass a full-quality Dolby-Atmos surround sound over HDMI. I'm very excited about all these letters. And we're going to talk about them in extraordinary detail. Deeder, you... You and Chris talked to Submit. We did. So if you are lucky enough to have purchased one of these new consoles, naturally you're going to want to know if all the cool new frame rates and 4Ks and HDRs

and everything else that are possible on these new consoles will work on your TV. And Submit did a great job writing about this on Polygon. We wanted to find out what TV should we buy to actually take advantage to these features. Coming out next on the Vergecast, H-DMI Holiday Spectacular, that conversation with Smith StarCart from Polygon. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade no-code website builder used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Muro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS, with everything you need for great SEO,

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Right now we're joined by Polygon's front page editor, submits for car, and we're going to talk about video games. We just had two big new consoles launch. The next gen is here with the PS5 and Xbox Series X. These are some of the first two major HTML2.1 products on the market that you might need a new TV for if you want to get the most out of them. So we're going to cover some questions about what features you want, which TVs might meet that criteria, and who knows what else. Anyway, hi, submit.

Hey, how's it going? Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. So you've been covering all this pretty closely as the PS5 and Xbox Series X have been coming up to launch. So what's been your take on everything so far? In short, it's a mess. I love it when, hey, all this stuff happened. There's a million things to talk about what's the TLDR, and the TLDR is, it's a mess.

That's HD-Mina nutshell. Yeah. I think that as is often the case with new product launches or new technology specification launches, whatever, things will likely settle over time. But for now, with these nascent technologies and things like that, it's hard to wrap your mind around and things are still kind of falling into place and probably will be for some time. So a super high level, why did the PS5 and the Series X and maybe the Series X and maybe the Series need a new

HTML standard. What features do they have that required a different version of HTML? Yeah, so the main benefit of HTML 2.1 is its vastly increased bandwidth. The previous consoles had HTML2.0B, which I believe is limited to 18 gigabits per second. And what that

translated into was basically they would top out at 4K resolution at 60 frames a second, which is fine. Nothing wrong with the PS4 in the Xbox 1. But HTML 2.1, offers up to 48 gigabits per second, which supports 4K at twice the frame rate, 120 hertz frames per second, and also eventually at some point down the line 8K at 60 hertz. And so that's the main feature of HDMI 2.1.

There are also other gaming-oriented features, but this is a way for game developers to really bring a new dimension to their games that hasn't been possible until now, except on PC. with high refresh rate monitors. Yeah, I think one of my favorite things about this whole situation is that Sony has a bunch of TVs. Sony, the maker of the PlayStation 5, put out a bunch of new TVs this year. And when they shipped, they were not yet ready to take advantage of the company's own console. I think that's since been fixed.

Has it, Smith? In some respects, yes. So this is another bug of moon mind that we can get into later. But, yeah, they have a couple of TVs that they have labeled ready for PlayStation 5. And, you know, one of them is actually a TV that I, I recommended in a thing that we put up at Polygon for Black Friday, the Bravia X-900H, which I think is known as something else, like the XH-90 in Europe. But this TV shipped initially without 4K-120 support.

They have since patched that in with the firmware update. However, variable refresh rate support, which is a key gaming-oriented feature of HTML2.1, is not yet supported on that TV that that's still coming in a future firmware update, which is honestly fine because Sony has also not patched that into the PS5 at all. Yeah, the PS5 itself. So, as I said, it's a mess. So we'll talk about Sony specifically, but like maybe more generally. My default attitude when a company says we'll fix it in a future firmware update is,

sure you will. Okay. I don't believe you. I don't trust you. I'm not going to make a purchase until you've done it. And with Sony in particular, it has made many promises about former updates on its phones that it hasn't come through on. I think it does have a better job coming through on former updates on the PlayStation in my experience.

And on cameras, I'm also a Sony camera guy. They are like medium cameras that are really tough because they're like pretty limited and they're processing part in the first way. So it's hard for them to add a bunch of new features later. Sony just kind of not great at that. How are they at on TVs and how in general is the TV industry at sending real genuine updates that add features or fixed problems to its systems? Well, I just bought the new LGCX this past.

year. And they've also been just pushing out a ton of firmware updates every few weeks. I mean, this is all new tech for all these companies. 4K gaming at 120 hertz before it was just very conceptual. And now it's actually real. And so people want it to work as promised. And so these, so I think they're all playing catch up to some level. But they're actually pushing the updates out, it sounds like, like they really are trying. They are. I would also say that firmware updates in general can be dicey. I was looking at a review of Vizio's new OLED TVs and And basically they were saying, you know, the TV in general is great. And technically it does have variable refresh rate support.

But there are a ton of bugs. It drops frames all the time at 4K 120. And in fact, it would originally skip frames at 1080P and 1440 at 120 hertz. And then they did a firmware update and now it skips frames all the time. So sometimes firmware updates can make things worse, of course. Well, to be fair, it is Vizio's first OLED. but still, that does not sound ideal. So how do you know you're buying a TV that should work as promised for these consoles?

That's a good question, and nobody's really figured it out. So, you know, I said before that Sony has this ready for PlayStation 5 thing, and that's really more of a marketing tagline than anything else. It's not like a certification program. Okay. So there's like the H.DMI Alliance or, you know, whatever that organization is, that maintains the standards, and they have certified certain Kavanaugh. as, you know, HDMI 2.1 cables, which they call them ultra-hide speed.

Yeah. And, you know, that's just certifying that they can carry the full bandwidth of 48 gigabits per second that I mentioned earlier. So, you know, at Polygon, we did a story about the, or I did a story specifically about the Ready for PlayStation 5 thing. And when I first announced it, I was looking at the press release. I was like, oh, this could be great. This could let consumers have this measure of confidence in a, you know, massive new

purchase, a TB, alongside a second massive new purchase in a PS5. knowing that, like, if I buy this TV, I'm good to go. But that's not the case. You know, when I ask Sony, what qualifies this TV as ready for PlayStation 5? You know, they said, well, it can do 4K 120 and also 8K if, you know, there's an 8K TV in the line that is labeled this. But in terms of the gaming-oriented features of HTML 2.1, which, by the way, we didn't get into this yet, but in addition to variable refresh rate, there's also auto-low latency mode. Those are two things that you also want, along with HDMI 2.1, the bandwidth support itself, and the TV doesn't support that. And there's not really any specific kind of branding or certification that you can look at yet

on the market to be sure when you're buying a new TV that it has these features. You're really just going to have to do the homework, which is time-consuming. And, you know, I've been looking at a lot of TV reviews this year. And there's also a lot of caveats with this stuff. and it's hard to figure out and get a handle on what your TV doesn't support, at what frame rates and resolutions it does and doesn't support it at, etc., etc. Well, let's help the people a little bit then. I said I just bought the new LGCX that's been all over YouTube as like the TV for these new consoles.

It does have pretty much all the new features. It's a bit buggy here and there, but like I said, LG is still putting out constant former updates to make it all smooth. But which other TVs are in your piece as far as being fairly safe to get? Yeah, so in addition to the LG, which, you know, as you said, is pretty much the consensus best pick, there's also the Samsung Q80T and Q90T, which are in the same ballpark in terms of price, like 1500-ish and north of that. Those are LED LCD TVs. So there are, I know some people out there who are not comfortable with buying an OLED because of the risk of burn in. And also, if you live in a place that has a very bright room where you're going to put the TV, maybe don't. want an OLED because it can't get as bright as an LCD TV. So the Q80T and Q80T are very good and, you know, they've got the same level of support for HTML 2.1 that the LGCX has. That's a good option. You can also get the previously, the aforementioned Sony X 900H, which again does not support VRR yet, but that's a more mid-range option. It's like $1,000-ish for the, for like a 55

inch model. So obviously it's not going to compete with the LG or the Samsung's in terms of picture quality overall. But it does have the gaming features that you want, again, aside from VR, which is going to get patched in at some point. Okay, so that's a bunch of TVs that I'm interested in. But I'm also interested in not having it be that complicated. And since it's so hard to figure out, is the real answer here, just wait for a little while longer until people can like start publishing definitive lists that you can trust of TVs that definitely have all the features that you want. It seems to me that at a high level, the actual answer here is there's this TV and that TV, then we recommend them and there's going to be some former updates, but really,

the real answer is this came in really fast and hot. Just give it another six months to a year until, like, we definitely know and have tested a bunch of TVs that feel right. That would be my recommendation, honestly. In the Black Friday TV piece that I wrote, I put the recommendations at the end, but before all of that was like a whole, I don't know, 300 words of caveats where I was like, this, this and this. And honestly, I also recommended like a TCL6 series in there, which does not have support for 4K at 120 hertz. But I was like, this is a good stopgap option. It's a cheaper TV.

And if you just want to wait it out and see when the market will clear up, you maybe want to go this route. And I should also say that in addition to the TV side of the equation being unsettled, the gaming side is also kind of unclear. You know, as I said, the main feature here is support for 4K at 120 hertz, but there are very few games at the launch of the new consoles that can do that. Dirt 5, Call of Duty, Black Ups Cold War that can do it, and also Devil Make Cry 5 Special Edition. So, you know, you can get this 4K 120 action, and in some cases Microsoft has allowed it on backward compatible titles like Gears 5. But it's really unclear at this point how many games are going to support this going forward. If we wait and see what happens, we'll have a better idea. It could be the case that, you know, two years from now, it's still a very small niche kind of thing.

And, you know, maybe not worth buying a TV just for that feature. But I think for now, with the support being so kind of scarce and the TV situation being unsettled, it might make sense to just wait. Seems like sound advice. And also, from what I've heard, it's a little bit challenging to even get an Xbox series X or PlayStation 5 right now. So by the time you can actually obtain one of those, maybe then this whole thing will be a bit clear. The other thing about these consoles is they feel more like PCs than any previous console. The thing about a PC, though, when you're like benchmarking is you can run a benchmark. You could see what the V-sync status is.

You could see what your frame rate is. You could see what's happening. Are these televisions and these consoles just like able to display the information to tell you, yes, you are getting 4K-120 Hertz HDR? My current Vizio, it's super old. It does successfully show me, yes, you're in HDR mode. Yes, we're getting 4K content out of the thing. It, like, has a little bar that shows you that it's switched into the right mode or whatever. But I have no idea if my cables are up to snuff.

I kind of doubt they are. I have no idea if the game's actually providing, you know, the stuff that I think it is. I assume that when I see it, I'll know for sure, but maybe I won't. So can you just benchmark this stuff and can either the televisions or the consoles themselves just use H.D.I.2.1 to get gather the information about whether or not the TV is actually outputting the thing it's supposed to. So I think both consoles actually have a menu where you can go in and it'll show you which features it actually sees on your TV as supporting. I don't know if my LG, sorry, actually shows me when it's in like 120 hertz mode versus 60 hertz or 90 hertz or something else.

But it definitely shows HDR and 4K and things like that from what I've seen. That part isn't a disaster at least. It's just everything else. Exactly. Are we expecting a rush of games to support 4K-120 or, Is it going to be like, you know, oh, this game has a special mode and, like, you're just having to, like, keep an eye out here and there. And it's going to take quite a while before it goes from, like, a weird, cool thing you can do on a few games to a standard. Yeah. I don't know that it'll ever become the standard per se.

I mean, maybe years and years down, you know, four or five years down the line. I just think that part of the reason that it wouldn't is that the lack of any of the install base for TV is that support it, right? Like, you know, why is a developer going to go to the length of putting a 4K 120 hertz mode in their game if 1% of the market has TVs that can actually support it? You know, obviously, that's a different case on PCs where you've had, you know, again, 144 hertz and higher refresh rate monitors for quite some time. But, you know, I think it will primarily be limited to things like multiplayer modes. So, you know, you'll have Halo Infinite that's coming out next fall and that'll have 120s. Hertz support in its multiplayer, you know, Gears 5 already does, as I mentioned. Aside from that, we're seeing at least right now, single player games, you know, even in some cases are struggling

to hit 4K60. So if you look at Assassin's Creed Valhalla at launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X, it wasn't really hitting 60 on either console. It was better on PS5. And that's a case where you would want this variable refresh rate feature that I mentioned, that is part of the HDMI 2.1 spec where basically if your game is exceeding the display's refresh rate, you'll have screen tearing, and if it's dropping below the refresh rate, you'll have stuttering, and that's the kind of thing that variable refresh rate really smooths out. It'll take care of it and make the game more responsive. So that's something where if you had like an LGCX, like Chris does, you could play Valhalla at launch and not even notice that it was dropping frames below 60 because of VRR. The problem with, again,

figuring out what your TV has and doesn't have, though, is it's not as simple as just, oh, my TV has HTML 2.1. Right. You know, because these other features, VRR and auto low latency mode, are not required as part of the spec. Like, they are part of the spec, but like, you can say my TV has HTML2.1 support, which the only qualification required is the bandwidth that can do 4K at 120 hertz. And so it's hard to figure it out for games in terms of like, does this game support it, and it's hard to figure it out for your TV as well. Our video game is supposed to be fun, you know, and not weigh you down under this crushing anxiety of getting the exact right TV with ALLM and VR.

And I think our main advice here is to wait, give it a few months. We've got CES right around the corner where there'll be no doubt a ton of new TVs that claim to be perfect for your shiny new PS5 or Xbox Series X or Series S. But thank you for guiding us through this Hellscape. commit it's been a valuable lesson we appreciate it of course happy to help you know when I think of the holiday spirit I think of unwrapping a TV that's really what the holidays mean to me it's not about it's not about the spirit of giving no it's not about Christmas lights or cookies or family it's about receiving a television that's what I think about Vizio ships more TVs than almost anybody in the United States so we talked to Vizio CTO Bill Baxter about what people are going to experience this holiday season when they're they gaze upon the H-D-M-I ports of their new televisions.

Here's Bill Baxter, CTO Vizio. Bill Baxter, you're the C-T-O-Vizio. Welcome to the Vergecast, H-T-MI Holiday Spectacular. Hey, thank you very much for having us. We appreciate it. Yeah, I hope you're in the holiday spirit. So, we have been talking about H-T-MI for the whole year. This seems like a big moment for the TV industry because of the new game consoles.

They're coming out. They're HTML2.1. They support variable refresh. 4K 120. The standard is changing. I really wanted to talk to somebody who builds TVs to talk about this interconnect that we all rely on that we maybe don't think about so much, but it seems like it's in a moment of flux. So I want to start with the simplest possible question. How do you decide how many HTML ports to put on a TV? We throw up a bunch of coins in the air and the ones The land on heads are the ones we make HTML inputs.

Now, we survey users every year. We try to figure out what they want. And then it also depends on the price point of the TV because each incremental one costs more. But we've gone from five to, you know, three, you know, for example, across the line. Historically, the higher end TVs had a fifth one. I'm not going to tell you the real reason why it had a fifth one. It's not great. but four is the sweet spot, we think,

and especially with the new features that we're releasing this year with H.DMI 2.1. Well, now you've got to give me a hint on the fifth one now. You let up to it. It was our game low latency port. It was the fastest HDMI port. So it's a complete pass-through, and so there's no extra picture quality processing or anything like that on it. So that leads into where we are now, right?

Sony and Microsoft, they're supporting, variable refresh rate, they're supporting auto low latency mode. Some of your new TVs have that stuff. Obviously, I'm assuming the cheaper ones don't. How do you think about when it's time to support the new versions? So the thing about HDMI 2.1 is it's basically a basket of features that all really culminate in delivering essentially higher bit rate video and audio, especially in uncompressed formats. And as you look at those features, you've got to think about what are the use cases, you know, 4K-120.

Uncompressed is a big use case, higher quality, better picture quality, high bit rate audio, so you can do pass-through of a large number of multi-channel audio protocols, those sorts of things. And so as we look at it, we look at, okay, what are the ones that enable the great use cases in the living room? And so obviously, variable refresh rate is something that makes that 4K1-20 experience better for a gamers because it eliminates the tearing and other artifacts. And then you have EAR that enables us to do the high bit rate audio and run Dolby Atmos and other uncompressed through auto-low latency is something that is important for us when you're in-game mode.

So we pick the features that we think that consumers are going to most relate to from an experience perspective. One of our other guests on the Vergecast H2MI Holiday Spectacular is David Glenn, who's in charge of the H2MI Forum. This standard, to me, it seems emblematic of maybe every standard. There's a forum that runs it. They've got 84 members. Everyone's pushing and pulling in different ways. The standard is labeled.

It has different names across a bunch of different companies. You get to sort of pick and choose. How do you, how do you as a TV maker push and pull on the standard? Do you call David and say, here's what I want? Yeah, of course. No, like, Vizio is not in the business of making that standard. We are in the business of delivering great consumer experiences. There are others who will drive the standard itself towards higher bit rates and enable us to do the things we want to do.

But the thing you have to understand is it's really a big chicken and egg problem because components have been out since, what, 2018. but if you don't have any devices, then you really don't need to have the features on the TV and vice versa. So as you pointed out, this is a really exciting year because right now, we have culminating all new system on chips for Vizio, which was a big part of our thrust, much higher performance.

They all support HDMI 2.1. And you have the consoles, which are finally coming to market that take advantage of those features. So for us, it's all about the adoption curve. Sometimes you want to push harder to make something happen. Like, let's type Dolby Vision, for example. We did Dolby Vision early, but you needed those displays out there for the content to come along and vice versa, but it was much easier for us to push. When it comes

to hardware, it's harder because the technology is just catching up. And even today, if you look at the testing technology, the certification technology for HDMI 2.41, it's really still quite in its infancy. So we have to do it based on, you know, is the market ready? Are we going to, is it going to be disruptive to ourselves? Or is it going to be a disruptive feature in the market that could be good for Vizio? So those are the kind of concerns or considerations we take. It's funny because, you know, we're having this conversation pegged the new consoles, which makes sense.

They have the ability through firmware updates to enable more and more of the features. Is that the driver? I mean, obviously games are a huge business. They're growing. A lot of interest in the consoles. But I'm not, you know, I don't think the Roku's and Apple TVs of the world are pushing on the spec as hard necessarily. No, again, you know, it's a bit of a chicken and I'd probably even for them because those costs are, you know, going to go up as well. So if I look at the major things, yeah, consoles are one component of it.

We do believe that the TV has a much broader play in the living room and specifically with consideration to your console games. It's also audio and atmos. Zio is a leader in Atmos. We just released our elevate soundbar with the rotating upfiring speakers. And without the EARC support, there are certain use cases that don't work with that. So those are two of the major motivators for us. Obviously, we don't have any 8K TVs right now that are begging for it. So those are really the big drivers.

We always talk about the TV industry as a whole, kind of chase the dragon of. the upgrade cycle for a long time because there were so many sales with the transition to flat panels and then i you know i've had this conversation with various people of visi over the years there was 3d and there was curved and it was all all kind of like trying to get people to upgrade for a reason it seems like okay the game consoles will look better is one good reason but to me it seems like 4k hdr those are also good reasons to upgrade did you see that reflected that people wanted those particular new features? Yeah, I mean, we survey every year. I do a broad survey across the industry, and the top consideration for a TV upgrade is picture quality. There are other considerations,

but picture quality is always at the top of the list. You know, we have people who have our TVs for like, you know, seven to 12 years. We obviously would love them to upgrade to get 4K. You know, 4K was the big thing. You know, smart was the thing before it, really, that propelled Vizio. And we feel right now, I mean, not to disparage anything, but, you know, the pandemic was the perfect reason to upgrade. You know, and so TV sales have been incredible with over 7 plus million TV sales in the last year. And, you know, we account for over one-fifth of all the TV sales in the U.S. over the last five years. I mean, there was a big forcing function to upgrade. But consoles will be another driver.

Consuls and high-bit rate audio with soundbars that suppress. Port at Atmos protocol. It's going to be a good driver for the industry going into 2021. Let me talk about Atmos for a second in relation to HTML. One of the things that strikes me about most of the soundbars in the market is they take an HDMI port away from you because of EARC. Right. So you've got three, four, five ports. You're going to use one for your sound bar. Does that seem like the right trade? Like I think of those as inputs. So I'm losing an input to run my soundbar. Yeah, I know. I hear this all the time. But this is part of the chicken and egg problem. There's two things here. One is, there's not many AVRs out there that are

HDMI 2.1. Those are receivers, you mean? Yeah, receivers. Yeah, yeah, out there. So we need to make sure that we don't make someone dependent upon, you know, being able to have their game console on the AVR. We want them to put, you know, they'll have to plug it into the TV anyway. So you're right, we did make that conscious choice, but it was simply because of this chicken and egg problem. The other thing is that once you add, for example, our elevate soundbar, you add back that H.TMI 2.1 input. So for us, it's not a loss. You can have it both ways. So, you know, it's just a matter of the evolution of the industry and where it is today. And they're just very practical down-to-earth considerations.

How far in advance do you evaluate the H-TMI spec? So how many years ago did you know HDMI 2.1 is coming? We're going to ship a bunch of TVs with it. Oh, I mean, I joined Vizio in 2015. We were probably talking about it in 16, 17, heavily. You know, it came out in 18, and we finally have adopted it in 2020. What are the steps along that process? Well, you've got to drive your suppliers, your system-on-chip suppliers.

There are other alternative sources for HDMI components, so you drive them. and you wait until there's a price point that makes sense for the product line. And so, you know, there have been 8K chipsets and other HDMI 2.1 bridge components that supported it, but the incremental cost to the TV, we felt was prohibitive for what you got for it. But, you know, Atmos honestly, was the first real pain point we felt because we couldn't pass through uncompressed Dolby Atmos encoding before.

And now this year, it's game consoles. So it was kind of like it was the right year to make the move for us. Speaking of your new TVs, this year you put out your first OLED sets. And I've watched and read some reviews. And it seems like you're having some growing pains as far as like bugs and picture issues.

So can you talk about what you're learning as far as how this is all going and how fast you're working to make sure these TV's performance as they should? Ah, so this is how you make the interview interesting. No, just kidding. Well, I can't argue with anything you just said. We think OLED has a place in the industry. We did build two models this year, and it's not simply an LAD TV. It's a very different beast in many different ways, although the same operating system runs across all of them.

But we're going to continue to refine our OLED approach for those consumers that prefer that type of experience. You know, the big things you want to take it. into consideration really are the burn-in and the longevity of the TV. So we put extra special care to make sure that there are good burn-in protection mechanisms and that the TVs last a long, long time. They don't last as long. They don't have the same service life as an LAD LCD TV. So you have to really be very careful when you deliver those products to the market. One of the things you're talking about is software. And just as we're talking here, you know, you've got new OLED TVs. You've issued some software updates. We're going to keep

issuing software updates to make them better, right? There's some drop frames and we're going to roll out VRR and all that's going to happen there. You're also moving an awful lot of data through H.DMI 2.1. You're going to unlock variable refresh at 120 hertz. That's a lot of software updates for a TV. I think maybe now we're getting more used to TVs needing software updates as they've all gotten smart. But it seems like you have a lot of compute going on on the TV and it seems like they need software updates on a cycle that we think of as other computers needing software updates.

How are you managing that? Because that's a long tail of investment for you in products that you've already put in the market. The TV makers traditionally, I don't think of doing it all. Yeah. No, I mean, we've, I think you know that we really try hard to extend the value proposition to the customer throughout the lifecycle of the TV. We're not just looking at you bought this one static product.

And so you see us adding features over the years like Alexa and, you know, Google Assistant and Siri, HomeKit, AirPlay, all that stuff. I think this is very different, though, than when we talk about HDMI 2.1, because frankly, you know, you don't know what you don't know until you get the equipment in hands. I mean, a plug fest on HDMI 2.1 is kind of a skinny plug fest right now. And so what you really want to do is focus on what consumers are going to go after in high volume, which is... Wait, I think I know what a plugfest is, but can you just say what a plug fest is? Plugfest is where manufacturers, whether they be, you know, TV manufacturers, peripheral manufacturers or others, come together and they test their interoperability.

So they literally just plug things into each other. They just plug things in. This sounds like the best part. Can I come to one of these? You know, one of the hardest parts about the pandemic is, you know, PlugFest being virtual, it means you have to ship a lot of hardware to everywhere. So you're saying right now there's just not a huge sample set of HDMI 2.1 devices to plug in to see if your implementation of the standard is working well.

Yeah, and they're ever changing too. So, you know, we've been working very closely on both Xbox and the PlayStation 5 with those parties. and it takes that kind of effort to make sure that they are compatible with one another. So I was going to ask how much dialogue there is between you and Sony and Microsoft in terms of bugs and figuring out, oh, this is actually your fault, not ours, and that kind of thing. Well, let's see. We don't keep a running score. Sure.

We might be on the wrong side of that right now. No, it's very collaborative. Look, they're guarded about their assets. So we just need to provide the support to them to make sure that they can do the things they want to they need to do. We're unavoidable in a way because we have such a large footprint. And so they need to ensure and it's in our both interests to make sure that those are interoperable. So it's it's a very good close collaboration. Is there a difference in how when I think of a standard? I'm like, okay, it's a standard. Everyone's going to write to the standard

implement it. It'll just work. But that's never the case. Is there, are there particular differences in how Sony and Microsoft and Roku and Google all? use the spec? Yeah, because the way you detect game consoles, for example, differs. And so when you have our auto game mode feature, it's really slick, you know, all the game features get turned on when you figure out you're playing a video game. It's easier said than done, and it's not necessarily what was standardized, but that's what makes it easy for consumers. Consumers actually don't change inputs all that often intentionally. Like if you ask a consumer how often they change inputs, it's actually relatively low. But in order for you to actually effectuate a lot of

these changes, you have to change all the different settings for that input on the fly. And so that's part of the problem. And that's what we have to deal with is, you know, how do you detect it, you know, and go into the right mode, that sort of stuff. The stuff that's in the standard should be relatively easy to get right. You had even indicated, right, Nele, that people are branding essentially supersets of HDMI 2.1 features, right? And it's actually the HDMI 2.1 feature plus the other things that are part of that, that brand.

And so we have to make sure that we work with all of it, not just the HDMI 2.1 part of it. When you talk about turning on features at the input level, one of the new features that, you know, the consoles are going to eventually support auto low latency mode. We just had Phil Spencer from Xbox on the Decoder podcast, and he said something really interesting, which is a lot of people just watch Netflix on their Xboxes. A lot of people just watch streaming content on game consoles. It's a huge market for that.

Can you dynamically shift between, okay, they're watching Netflix. We're going to run the TV optimized for a movie. Oh, the box sent us and says, okay, they're playing Assassin's Creed. we're going to shift to low latency up the frame rate. Is that something you can do in real time on the input? So those are the things that are the challenge right now is, you know, how do you switch between a mode that has reduced PQ processing, for example, to achieve, say, super low latency on the HDMI point?

And yes, that's the entire point of what I'm trying to make here is to make those experiences work seamlessly on the fly. It's not just a matter of switching the input over to the XT, box, it's the detection of when you're in the menu system, when you're playing a streaming video versus when you're playing a video game. One of the things that strikes me out variable refresh in particular is that it makes a lot of sense for video games, right? Do you want to run those at high frame rates?

But also, I mean, your TV is smart, has an interface, has a bunch of interface elements. You often put those over video content that runs at 24. It seems very natural that you would just speed the interface up to 60 and run. the UI at 60 and then drop it back down to 24 when the movie's swinging in. Is that something you have thought about doing? So our UI does run at 60, up to 60 hertz. It's been a big transition for us over the years just to move there. But yeah, we feel like, you know, being able to dynamically switch the frame rates effectively without any bunks or black screens or whatever is essential.

Are the streaming box makers thinking about this? Because right now all the streaming box, the streaming boxes are at fixed refresh rates. And so... What are streaming boxes? Like an Apple TV or a Roku. What do you call them? What's the industry term for streaming boxes?

Oh, you don't know because you make your own streaming box. I didn't know that. Wow. I just got owned by Bill Baxter, my own show. No, I mean, people plug a lot of those into your TVs. They have to want variable refresh. that coming down the line? Oh, I mean, look, we are the play nice company in the industry, right? So, yeah, when the new Chromecast with Google TV built in, you know, came out, you know, we have to make

sure we handle all the different bit rates and, yeah, Dolby Vision and everything they're doing. Like, it's just, it's just the game you play. And it's, it will, you know, look, they will adopt them to the extent that it fits into their price point more and more. But, you know, I don't know if 120 makes a boatload of sense. Maybe not for Netflix. One of the things I am thinking about a lot is game streaming. So we know Microsoft is going to do X cloud, Amazon's going to do Luna, there's Stadia. Those are apps that could theoretically run on your TVs.

Do you think about how you build the TV to support those apps and the features they need, the same way you think about supporting HTML features, or is that a different workstream? Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, bandwidth and latency. are two of the biggest factors there and how we can affect that. And then if you just look at, you know, where we are today, even though we launched all new system on chips this year with, that are much higher performance than they were, we're already looking two to three years out on the next set of chips that we need to adopt to move us into the next level of this. And

obviously that brings you into hopefully a realm where 8K is more relevant in the U.S. than it is today. And so, you know, 4K 120 is like 8K60. And, you know, before you know what, people want 8K 120 for some reason. And then they'll probably just scale up to it or something. Here's a question. How many prompts are too many? I feel like the upright corner of my TV has never been so busy. It's constantly telling me, oh, now you're watching Dolby Vision.

Now you're watching HDR. Now you're in game mode. Like, do you think there's a point like coming up soon where all the TV will just do those things and not always pester people about them? I want to know. I love the prompts. I got the product management guy on. the listening in. So Mike taken out. I think that it could be quite annoying. I agree. But I do think people want to know. And I think you might be the first person, Chris, to tell me this. But I'm going to go

back and look and see. Because I don't even think they blame us for that. They don't know where that thing comes from. It could come from like voodoo or Netflix or whatever. But we did try to minimize it in terms of we don't bring the whole banner down now. We just show you the logo. I love knowing. It's somebody who has what I would call a personal plug fest in his living room all the time. I like knowing when everything is actually working. But maybe most people just see that as. Well, what we understand, at least from consumer feedback, is they complain when it isn't showing, because they bought the TV for this purpose, especially when you look at the P-series Quantum X or the OLED TV. You know, they're like, hey, I bought the TV for this stuff. Is it doing it?

How do I know what's doing it? And so that's our best way to basically showcase it. On the Vergecast, the way that what we say is all of the lights. I want all of the lights on the AVR or on the TV to show up. Like, just light them all up. Let's make it happen. There's one DVD or one Blu-ray in the world that supports this one audio format that I can use. I want to run it.

But we are in a transition to a software world, right? There are streaming apps on your platform. We are talking about game streaming apps. How relevant is the HDMI port? In five years, are you going to ship a TV with no ports? Because it's all running in apps on the processor there? Well, you probably will remember our ill-fated attempt to remove the tuner. Yes.

Well, wait. There are a couple. You removed a tuner. And the remote control. And the remote control, Chris. It had 11 buttons on it, at least, you know. But the way you have to look at this is how, what's your total addressable? market. For us, we don't need HTML. Like, honestly, like, we would love for you to do everything

out of Smartcast. We offer the top apps. We have Chromecast. We have Airplay. You get every app, basically, available to mankind to stream to, you know, we've added all these other features. We're a content-centric experience, so you don't have to go dive into apps to figure out exactly what you want. You can go look for content. We offer recommendations. So, honestly, like, from our perspective, yeah, we don't want you to be on an external box, but that's a, it's a naive to believe that that's the world today. I think ultimately, if you just follow this progression, that a lot of what you do now on, on HDMI goes away completely, 100%. And where it comes in, unfortunately, is, you know, when your TV gets long in the tooth, you know, some of our older smart TVs,

you know, maybe you want to put a streaming stick on it or not. It's up to, it's up to the consumer and to extend the longevity of it. I mean, the panels have good longevity in the sense of great picture quality over the years. They don't degrade really at all. So, I mean, I would love to see people, nobody switch to HTMLI, but to the extent that they do,

I want to make it the best experience possible. Last question, it's my leading question. Right after this, we're going to talk to David Glenn, HDMI Forum. Okay. What's the one thing you think I should ask the head of the HDMI form? The one thing I would,

I would ask about, all the compatibility test suites and where we are with that and how he sees that evolving over the next couple of years. Even test equipment is hard to come by for a lot of this stuff. And so, you know, when you're like Vizio, we're pushing the envelope. We literally feel like we're pushing this as hard as we can, knowing that this is probably the year, because this is going to be in our MNP series. It's not like we just put it on our premium line. Like this is going to be a pretty broad distribution, and we will push it down even lower over time, as you know, because we waterfall stuff. So how do we go to four or five million TVs a year with all these features,

you know, without the proper test technologies, tools, you know, that sort of stuff? The HGMI Forum is in charge of that? No, but they are with the compatibility test suite. Got it. Yeah. Okay. Well, happy holiday spill. Yeah. It's good to have you here on the H.D. Holiday Spectacular. This is great. Any hints on what's coming? CSA TV show. It's still happening.

Any broad hints? Oh, I would get shot in the head if I'd say anything right now. Like, there are people with guns around me right now. What an incredible tale of Christmas spirit and adventure from Bill Baxter, CTO Vizio, on this, the Vergecast, H.GMI Holiday Spectacular. But you know what, Dieter? What? There's a piece of this puzzle that we just can't fill in.

We need to fully bring the Christmas spirit to this, the Vergecast, H.DMI Holiday Spectacular. We need to go to the source. Of all Christmas cheer. Of all Christmas cheer. The HDMI Forum. The H.D.M.F.M. The H.D.M. Forum is the industry consortium that is in charge of H.D.M. That consortium is led by H.D.M.F.M.F. President, David Glenn. And he came down.

from Santa's Workshop for a shockingly contentious interview about H-TMI. Here he is, H-D-MI Forum president, David Glenn. David Glenn, you are the president of the H-DMI Forum. Welcome to the Vergecast, H-TMI Holiday Spectacular. Thanks very much, Neely. Great to be here. I am very excited about this. I'm like unreasonable excited about this very niche episode of our show.

So thank you for joining us. Very quickly, tell me what the H-D-M-I form is, and what you do as the president of this body? Well, the H-TMI Forum is the group that is responsible for setting all future versions of H-TMI standard. And it's open to basically any member company, any company that wants to join and become a member, we currently have about 80 members from across the spectrum of people that, companies that make, you know, devices or make cables, or a lot of them are also content companies. We have some of the streaming companies and other content companies in there.

So really, it's a good name. mix of all the different companies that are interested in where HDMI is going. And it's the place where they come together and define where we should go in the future with the standard. So the H-Tam forum is, it's a nonprofit. You actually work for AMD, if I'm getting this correct. Well, that's my day job. But I'm here as H-D forum president.

And so anything I say here will really be in that light. And if you're going to ask me A&D questions, I'm going to decline to answer, unfortunately, because that's not who I am here. It's sort of, I have to wear two hats, and that's how it works. I was, you know, I was wondering where the conflict and the HTML holiday spectacular would come from and we'll write into it. But I just mean mechanically, your day job is at AMD. That's right. But you have this other important role running the HTML forum.

Just how does that operate? Do you spend Monday and Tuesday at AMD and Wednesday and Thursday at HTML? Like, how do you balance these roles? No, it's more hour by hour or minute by minute than that. So just switching half. all the time. You're the president. There's a board of directors. Is there an election? Is there, are there worries of election interference? We haven't had anything nearly as controversial as U.S. elections. But yeah, the board is elected by the membership every two years. And then within the

board, we elect officers like the president. So I was, I became a, first a director and then I became president. Okay. And then my last mechanical question. And it's about AMD. So, you know. Oh, well, we'll see. Can you confirm or deny that you were one of the lead technical people on Frecink and Variable Refresh? Because that has a lot to do with HDMI 2.1 at this point. Well, I think that you could probably search for stuff about my name and Freesync, and stuff may come up. Yeah. But basically, variable refresh rate is not quite Freesync.

They're somewhat different. And it's variable refresh rate as part of the HTML2. 2.01 spec. And it's a great thing that it's now sort of a standard that is now going to get widespread adoption, we believe, across the industry. That's all good. Yeah. I do like that there's already a slight edge to the holiday spectacular. This is great. I'll also answer it by saying you can ask me very detailed questions about VRR and I may be able to answer. Because I may know a lot of detail. I feel like that's a road. We're definitely going to go down. So we're at this moment, HTML 2.1, you know, it's years in the making and development.

The two big game consoles are out to PS5, the new Xbox. There's a wave of TVs that support it. Is this the inflection point where we're going to see broad adoption? Well, yeah. I mean, there's a rollout every time a new version of HTML happens. It takes a wild roll of things out. You know, first you get the things that are much lighter weight, sort of more software, firmware type updates.

And that happened with ALM. or auto low latency mode, you started to see that come out pretty quick on some of the TVs and some of the previous generation game consoles supported it, as well as some of the PC graphics cards. And there was also EARC. That was a lighterweight hardware update that did roll out in the AVRs and some of the TVs a year or two back now. But the real sort of meat of the 2.1 spec, I think, is around going from the 18 gigabits per second that we had in H.TMI 2 up to the 48 gigabits per second maximum that we get with HMI2.1. And that's the real. And that's, you know, a bigger set of hardware changes. It does take a little bit longer to roll out those kinds of hardware

changes. And yeah, now is the inflection point because as you said, right, we've now got the two major game consoles, the two major graphics card vendors and a whole bunch of TV vendors already now with these higher rates beyond 18 gigabits per second on HTML that are enabling use cases like 4K120. So our listeners know that we pay attention to a bunch of different industry groups. There's the USBIF who has a bunch of meetings. There's the W3C for web stuff and they come to decisions by yelling at each other mostly is what I've observed. There's the Wi-Fi Alliance, there's the Bluetooth Sig. When you are working towards getting to, you want to call it HDMI 2.1 and you need to make a decision of this is what we want the throughput to be. These are the features we want

to support. Can you just walk us through the basic mechanics? Do you just declare, I'm in charge this two-year period, this is what we're aiming for. How do you get to what you want this target spec to be? Well, no, that the president is not a dictator. That's not how it happens. It is actually a democratic organization. And generally the way any of the advances in HTML happens is that, you know, one or more of the members will say that they want to do something for the future of

HTML like develop EARC, you know, EARC was something where a few very focused companies that are good in audio and AVR space said, we're going to drive that part of the spec and they got together. And sort of a subgroup happens and they drive it. But the whole group comes together and reviews it. And there is a full, very detailed review by all the members that goes on before it becomes part of the spec. But the sort of the core experts become, normally it's a smaller handful of companies wrap around each feature. And that happened with VRR. There was a group of companies within the forum that wrapped around VR and ALM and gaming features and drove those.

And there was another group of companies that wrapped around how to get us up to the 48 gigabits per second. And that was a bigger one because that just not only involved a lot of work on the sources and sinks. It actually also involved a whole cable group. So it was sort of a whole other group for it around. How do we define a higher speed cable and what are all the details around that? So yeah, it's a very good process actually. And really any member is able to come in and say, we want to do something new and get support for it. And normally, you know, as the ones coming in and presenting it, they sort of form the nexus of the group that sort of forms around that feature and doing the major lifting of drafting that section of the spec.

But then the whole membership comes together and does a very detailed review and editing process. So specs and standards are the companies take them, they implement them, they build supersets of them. we see this over and over again. It would not be an episode of our show. If somehow, even in the HTML episode, I did not complain about USBC. But, like, but right, it's a new version of HTML. You're talking about cables. The cables have to support more bandwidth now.

You have kept the connector the same. Yes. Is there a conversation you have about, oh, we got to educate a whole bunch of consumers that their old cables might not work when they plug their new TV into their new PS5 or whatever? Well, the old cables will work. The real question is, will you be able to get beyond, you know, the speed limit of that cable? Like, you know, if it's a high speed cable that's capable of 18 gigabits per second, will you be able to get the higher speeds like for 4K 120? And that that may or may not work, depending on your cable, right? Was there a conversation about changing the connector just to make the brake clean? No, I think that, you know, we currently have a lot of desire around staying with a connector that that we have. There's a lot of value in staying with that connector.

as long as we really can stay with it. And I don't know how long that'll be. You know, we got to 48 gibbits. We'll see in the future if we get to more. You know, every speed increase gets harder. No question about that. But it was definitely achievable to get to the speed we did on the existing connector. And so the value is really to stay with that connector and that infrastructure,

rather than, you know, go to the point where you now have to have all your source devices have, you know, either two types of connectors or create all these that are adapter dongles to plug into your sources or plug into your TVs or have TVs have a mix of, you know, two of this type of connector and two of that type of connector. You know, maybe someday that will come, but it didn't need to happen for us to get to 48 gigabits per second. How far in advance is the spec written, right? Like you're obviously 2.1 is coming out.

There must be some implementation work that's happening now. Are you already working on 2.2? Is that five years from now or 3.0? How does that roll out? Well, I don't really want to talk about the future because I think 2.1 is still going to roll out for the next while. It actually has a lot of headroom in it. The focus right now in holiday 2020 is about 4K 120. But there's a lot of 8K infrastructure in the 2.1 spec as well at both 8K60 and even in much longer term at AK120. That infrastructure is already in the 2.1 spec. So you're going to see that that the sort of 2.1 is the base spec is going to stay, I think, for quite a few years yet. That doesn't mean the forum isn't working on, but it's called the minor tweaks. And I think you will see some minor tweaks to the 2.1 spec. My feeling is you're not going to see something called 2.2 for quite a while.

I mean, that's that question in the reverse. How long ago did you start working on 2.1? Oh, well, that was really, I think the short answer to that is probably about five years back if I would have to take a wild stab at it. I think it was, yeah, at least five years. back, I'd say. And you've got, you said you have a bunch of companies that wrap around different parts of the spec. What's like a technical tradeoff that you made, a bet on one technology versus another or another approach versus another. I'm just going to, in our part of the tech industry, no one ever really talks about this stuff. So I'm curious if you can just unpack. At some point, every technology has a set of tradeoffs in it. What was one bet you made here that could have gone another way? I don't think in writing 2.1, there was ever a point where, there were really two different options on the table and we had to make an A, B choice. I don't recall that actually happening. It was really more, you know, where we sort of said from a market desire viewpoint, we said, you know, let's go after a higher speed return channel and get, you know, 32 channel audio

and the new Dolby and DTS standards. And really, you know, there may have initially been a couple of different companies said, here's an idea of how to go about that. But very quickly, it turned into everyone coalesced around one option pretty quickly. And it didn't come down to, we're going to have a duke-a-m-out fight about, you know, doing it our way or doing it your way. I don't think that really happened. Do you have a point of view, one of the issues we're finding is the TV might have an HDMI port, but the HDMI port might do a bunch of stuff, but the TV itself doesn't support it. Does the HTML forum, do you have a point of view that if you've got an HDMI 2.1 port or two or three of them,

that the TV itself should also support some of these features that that higher bandwidth allow. So I might buy a TV because it says HMI 2.1, and I assume that means it can do 4K-120, but the TV itself, for some reason, can't quite do that. Or is that sort of, that's the TV maker's problem. We don't make any judgment on that.

We talk about the port itself and the cable and the rest of it's up to y'all. Well, there's a lot to unpack in that one, Deeter. So really the spec, the way to think about the HTML spec, is it has a lot of options for HTML implementers to use or not used as they choose. And each of those options really has what we call a feature name around it. So there's a 4K 120 feature name. And the TV or the source device can choose to implement 4K120 or not implement 4K120,

but if they do implement it, they should use the feature name is how you look at it. Or if they implement EARC, they should use the EARC feature name. VRR and use the VRR feature name. That's really the way to put it, because in the end, the way H.DMI is structured, all these things are effectively optional. You don't just say, I'm 2.1, and therefore I do every single thing in the spec of 2.1. That's really never how HDMI is operated, even if you go back to H-DMI 1. Whatever, it was the same.

You said there was never really a place where there was a knocked-end fight, but this does lead me into the VRR conversation, variable refresh rate conversation. There are two competing standards. I'm just guessing, based on the fact that your day job is at AMD, that you had one of them. There's one of them you liked. But then VRR in HTML is a super set that supports a lot of things. How did that process work? So VRR is, it's an open standard. And that's what HTML is all about is open standards. Right. So it's a transport specific standard that really says to put, variable refresh rate frames over an HTML, here's how you go about it, right?

It's not necessarily a system level standard because that's not really what HTML does as system level standards. So you can look at it more like system level specs, like the two you were alluding to. They could work over VRR as their transport level over the HTML cable, but they could still be sort of a bigger system level spec around those. two major technologies you were talking about. Does that kind of make sense? It does. And I'm enjoying the diffuseness of the description very much. Yeah, you're enjoying my struggling to remain the H.D.M.I. president. I guess what I'm asking, maybe not a fight between the two, but that difference

in here's the system level, like the transport level standard that HDMI is specified. And then you've got a box here that supports Freesink and you've got a TV that supports G-Sync. Does HDMI get involved in helping people understand that actually the ends, the two end products might not work together? Okay, well, if the TV says I supported, in your example, Gync, you know, if that TV also said they're supporting VRR, and if the source device that said it supported Freesync also said it supported VRR, then you're going to get interop with VRR. That's really the way to look at it, right? So, you know, if all of the source vendors say they support VRR and all of the sync vendors say they support VRR, then you're going to interlock with VRR. And I think that's the simplest way to look at it, right? You know, they may also put another branding on it around Gync or freesync, but that's sort of just another way to look at the interop, right?

Yeah. So that kind of leads me into a question I have for every sort of standards vendor. you know, the Wi-Fi Alliance keeps rebranding Wi-Fi to make it easier to understand. And then they make it worse and they make it harder. And it's just like a TikTok. Anyway, sorry. I have feelings about the Wi-Fi names. I feel like we're just here.

We've brought you here to complain about other standards organizations. It doesn't seem to be what's going on. Well, I feel like we have the same set of questions for every standards organization. So, like, right now, H.J.2.1 is out. You can buy PS5. You can go buy a Sony TV that says ready for PS5. And that indicates something. but the TV actually doesn't have the firmware on it to support all the 2.1 features.

Does that kind of supplemental branding? Does that come up in your conversations? How do we communicate well? No, that's not really in the area that the H.D. My Forum works in, I'd say, because we're really focused on the specs and creating that infrastructure. You know, it would be nice sometimes to try to make the messaging better, but that's not really where we have the focus. So that kind of leads me into the next thing that I often see branded and rebranded.

And maybe the answer is the same. But every TV vendor rebrand CEC. CEC is like the grand dream of we're going to replace thermo control. And I rail about IR Blasters on the show. I have now complained about IR Blasters on the show for almost a full decade. So really, really opening Pandora's box. It's a horrible present on this holiday spectacular. But CEC gets rebranded all the time.

it works in confusing ways. As you were developing 2.1, we're like, we're going to give this a consumer-friendly name and we're going to make it more stable, or is that still just up to the vendors? It's still up to the vendors, is I think the bottom line answer there. I guess one way to put up is that no one's really focused

on being the one to sort of solve that problem within the forum, right? And I definitely am aware that it's a frustrating thing. And me as the consumer, I find CEC frustrating too at times. But we didn't really spend any focus on developing 2.1 on that issue, I guess is the answer to your question. It was all in other areas of the spec. Right. And I can kind of see where the incentives line up, right? Like, let's make the bandwidth higher so we can support more features.

Let's add more audio channels because the higher resolution object oriented codex are here. And gaming. And gaming, right? Yeah. I see a lot of incentive there, but you as a consumer find it frustrating. One assumes the other members of the forum go home at night and turn on their televisions and they have the same experience. For maybe an industry body, but even for a consumer electronics maker, what is the thing

that will push that over and say, okay, we have to focus on it, make it better? I don't know if I have an answer to that. Yeah. Maybe if I had an answer, it would have been part of 2.1. So I got one question. So I just bought a new LJC10 series TV, and I was going to ask how strict this baseline bandwidth thing is because I think, you said it's 48 gigabits per second. But I've seen, there are some deep dives on this TV where they show it only actually hits 40. And so I'm wondering, like, is that one of those things where you can, like, get close and still call it HDMI 2.1, as long as you support all those other features like VRR and ALL and like, how strict is that baseline spec?

Well, first of all, let's be clear, you don't call it HTML1. You say you support a feature name like VRR or ALLM or 4K120, right? So you don't actually call it 2.1. That's sort of not how it's actually marketed. So, you know, from a procedure viewpoint, there is actually, you know, only HTML2.1 at this point and 4.1B, I guess, if you don't want to implement any of the HTML form specs. So, you know, anyone is implementing HTML, anything in HTML2 or 2.1 is actually now following the H2.1 spec. That's a requirement actually at this point. But they don't have to do any of the

features that are new to the HDMI 2.1 spec. But if they do do any of the features like 4K12, they advertise 4K120. To your question about the bandwidth, so let's be clear here, right? There's sort of the view of what do you need for a certain feature? Like for 4K 120, you know, how fast do you need to go? And the answer is you don't need to go 48 gigabits per second, right? You can do it at only 40 gigabytes per second. I think in that case, you can do it even at lower band widths like potentially down to 24 gigabits per second, but don't quote me on that because it's all not in my memory. So, you know, if you're building a TV or building a source device and you're only trying to target 4K 120, there's really no value when you're putting the cost into the silicon of going 48

gigabits per second, right? And nothing's mandating you to do that in a 4K TV. On the other hand, for the cable, it's different, right? So if you're an ultra-high-speed, cable, you must support 48 gigabits per second. So there's no tiering in the cable, right? So anyone who's investing in the new cable, they're sure that they've got sort of that forward-looking viewpoint into 8K-60 and even 8K-120 that I talked about because the cable is the one new spec that's good for the entire 2.1 roadmap, if you want to call it that. We also talked to Vizio-C-T-O Bill Baxter as part of the H-2-Mai Holiday Spectacular. I asked him, what's the one question you think we should ask David Glenn. And he said, how is the ramp of testing equipment and certification

going? Because from his perspective, he's got to buy a lot of testing equipment to make sure it's certified. There's a certification protocol. That stuff is obviously in its infancy as 2.1 rolls out. But where is that ramp? Is it getting faster? Is it going to get cheaper? I imagine certifying 2.0 is cheap and faster now because it's been going on for 10 years. Well, not quite 10 years yet for 2.0, but I guess closer to six years for 2.0. But yeah, great question about 2.1. Because 2020, especially the second half of 2020, was a huge ramp in the test equipment. So a lot happened.

And we launched the certification of these new ultra high speed cables. That happened in the last few months. And there's now, I believe, over 100 different cables designs have been certified in the last three months on UHS. And they're definitely available in the marketplace now, if you've, you've, look for them online. What does that, what does that process look like? You got to buy a box. Are there vendors who sell certification equipment that can pass the appropriate bandwidth? Yes, there are test equipment vendors that sell, in this case, test equipment, oscilloscopes and network protocol analyzers that will, you know, basically analyze the cable

to make sure that it has the full 48 gigabits of bandwidth and also support a lot of other electrical properties around its impedance and all sorts of other details there. And there's actually a second part around the UHS cable around EMI, so electromagnetic interference, right? So part of the things that we did focus on in 2.1 was making sure that the cables are not radiating a lot of radio frequency interference that might get in the way of your Wi-Fi or your Bluetooth. So part of the certification that every UHS cable goes through is they actually have to go into a very specialized test chamber. And this is not something cable manufacturers have lying around in the back of their warehouse. These are chambers that, you know, you have to book, you know, a day of time in this chamber and go in there with some very specialized test equipment. And these chambers are meeting a lot of international standards.

And they get recalibrated quite frequently for a lot of uses. They don't, not just for HTML cables, these chambers get used for basically anything that produces radio waves has to get tested in these things. So you talked about cables. You also, presumably also certify TVs and game consoles and streaming boxes and things like that. Yeah, so that's done with what we call authorized test centers. And we've certified a whole bunch of those for 2.1 in the last few months. And that's actually available online. If you go to hdmi.org, you can understand all the test centers that are available

to take your product to and get it authorized or tested for conformance or whatever we call it. So is that process getting, I mean, that's the heart of bills question. Is that process getting cheaper, faster, more accessible for, for two? 2.1. Well, I can't speak to cost, but it's certainly more accessible. Yeah, it's very, there's, there's a bunch of test centers now that have been authorized for many aspects of 2.1 in terms of all the features we've talked about so far on the call. They all have many different test centers that you can go to at this point. So it's the holiday season and people are looking for stocking stuffers. And so when your friends and family ask you which HDMI cable to purchase, what is

your recommendation? Well, I have a very good at record. recommendation, which is any cable that is showing the ultra-high-speed label. So there's a green label. It's got a little QR code on it and a little hologram, and it's anti-counterfeiting. And you can get a free download of an app on your Android or Apple device and point it at the label, and it'll tell you that you've got a certified cable. There's also an existing program predated that called the Premium. cable program. It's an orange label. Similar idea for 18 gigabits per second for the 2.0 spec or 2.0 level devices. So yeah, either way, if your cable at this point doesn't have either an orange or a

green label on it, you know, it's buyer beware at that point. I have one last question. It might be the most controversial question of a surprisingly controversial conversation. You've got a new TV. You're setting it up. You're very excited. You plugged in all your HTML 2.1 devices in case. do you or do you not go check your motion smoothing setting and do you leave it on or turn it off well as hd my foreign president i have no comment on that i love it david this was uh fantastic truly the holiday spectacular has exceeded all of my hopes and dreams we are going to have to have you back soon uh thank you so much for joining us yeah my pleasure this was rougher than i was expecting.

Well, Dieter and Chris, I don't know how you experience the Christmas spirit, but for me personally, I will always hold in my heart the president of the HDMI Forum telling us that he is also frustrated by HDMI CEC. Yeah, that really is the thing that brings us all together as a human species. We may have our differences. We may fight over politics. We may not have the same religion. or like the same cars, or whatever else divides us.

What unites us is that CEC sucks. Yes. The sound of a PS4 beeping well into the movie brings all the people of the planet together in a shared holiday experience. And maybe next year or five years from now or whenever H.TMI 2.2 will come out. I don't know because David Glenn wouldn't tell us. That'll get fixed. All right, children.

it's time to bring the Vergecast HDMI Holiday Spectacular to a close. I hope as you unwrap your Rokus, your PS5s, whatever letter of Xbox you've chosen to receive this holiday season, I hope you think of all of Santa's helpers

working in the HTML minds, making it so that your frames are variably refreshed and your latency is extremely low. We'll see you next year on a different, extremely niche holiday spectacular. My thank you to all of our guests on the Vergecast, H.GMI Holiday Spectacular,

Dieter, Chris, my favorite of Santa's helpers, submit from Polygon, Bill Baxter from Vizio, David Glenn of the HDMI Forum. I hope the holiday spirit infuses you all, and you have a plug fest of your very own. We'll see you next year on the Vergecast.