The HDMI Holiday Spec-tacular

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Vergecast HDMI Holiday Spectacular. Featuring special guests: Bill Baxter, CTO of Vizio; Sumit Sarkar, front page editor of Polygon; HDMI Forum President David Glenn; and now, here's your host, Neelai Patel.

• 0:27Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to the Vergecast HDMI 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 HDMI. I'm Neelai Patel. Dieter Bohn 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 HDMI Forum.

• 1:11Nilay Patel?

  Did you know there was an HDMI Forum? There is, and he's the president, the man in charge of HDMI on the Vergecast HDMI Holiday Spectacular. He's like the Santa of HDMI. Truly, the Santa of HDMI. Sumit Sarkar from Polygon, tell us all about the new game consoles, the features of HDMI they support, and those they do not. He's like the Rudolph of HDMI. He's our guide. He is.

• 1:38Nilay Patel?

  We don't normally think about HDMI 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. HDMI is the plug. It's the standard that brings joy to us during these holidays. This is a big year for HDMI. What's going on?

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Well, if you buy a new Xbox Series X, Series S, or PlayStation 5, you get to unwrap with it a brand-new HDMI 2.1 cable. And I tell you, folks, it's a special feeling. So, but over the last several months, we've seen a bunch of TVs roll out with the new HDMI 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 HDMI 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 HDMI in a long time. And the problem is

• 2:45Speaker 02

  there's a lot of confusion and murkiness around which TVs do what features from the HDMI 2.1 spec. So that's what we're here to try and figure out.

• 2:55Nilay Patel?

  When I think of which of Santa's helpers can help me understand standards confusion, it's Peter Bone. What is going on with the standard right now?

• 3:04Speaker 02

  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.

• 3:20Nilay Patel?

  Special Interest Group.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Special Interest Group. There it is.

• 3:22Nilay Patel?

  These are all phrases that really conjure the holiday spirit.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  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 HDMI 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

• 4:08Speaker 02

  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. HDMI 2.1 is Santa's sleigh, and then everything that you could do with it are the bag of features that brings along with him.

• 4:33Nilay Patel?

  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.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 4:46Nilay Patel?

  VRR.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  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 stuttering or screen tearing. It just keeps everything running really, really smoothly.

• 5:01Nilay Patel?

  ALLM.

• 5:02Speaker 03

  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 on your controller, that thing will happen on the screen in as short of time as possible.

• 5:15Nilay Patel?

  EARC.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  Enhanced Audio Return Channel. So that's for your soundbars and your sound systems. That lets you pass a full-quality Dolby Atmos surround sound over HDMI.

• 5:25Nilay Patel?

  I'm very excited about all these letters, and we're going to talk about them in extraordinary detail. Dieter, you and Chris talked to Submit.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  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 of these features?

• 5:53Nilay Patel?

  Coming up next on the Vergecast HDMI Holiday Spectacular, that conversation with Smith Sarkar from Polygon.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, "How do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting?" and "What sectors are on the move right now?" Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, "How do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting?" and "What sectors are on the move right now?" Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  And we're back for more of our HDMI holiday spectacular. Right now, we're joined by Polygon's front page editor, Sumit Sarkar, 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 HDMI 2.1 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, Sumit. 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.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  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 HDMI in a nutshell.

• 8:45Speaker 05

  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.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  So, super high level, why did the PS5 and the Series X and maybe the Series S need a new HDMI standard? What features do they have that required a different version of HDMI?

• 9:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, so the main benefit of HDMI 2.1 is its vastly increased bandwidth. The previous consoles had HDMI 2.0b, 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 and Xbox One. But HDMI 2.1 offers up to 48 gigabits per second, which supports 4K at twice the frame rate, 120 hertz or 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,

• 10:04Speaker 05

  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.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  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?

• 10:32Speaker 05

  In some respects, yes. So, this is another bugaboo of mine that we can get into later. But yeah, they have a couple of TVs that they have labeled "ready for PlayStation 5." And one of them is actually a TV that I recommended in a thing that we put up at For Black Friday, the Bravia X900H, which I think is known as something else like the XH90 in Europe. But this TV shipped initially without 4K 120 support. They have since patched that in with a firmware update. However, variable refresh rate support, which is a key gaming oriented feature of HDMI 2.1, is not yet supported on that TV. 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.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  The PS5 itself. So as I said, it's a mess.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  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 firmware updates on its phones that it hasn't come through on. I think it does have a better job coming through on firmware updates on like the PlayStation in my experience. And on cameras, I'm also a Sony camera guy. They are like medium cameras are really tough because they they're like pretty limited in their processing power in the first way. So it's hard for them to add a bunch of new features later. Sony is just kind of not great at that.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  How are they at on TVs and how in general is the TV industry at sending real genuine updates that add features or fix problems to its systems?

• 12:08Speaker 05

  Well, I just bought the new LG CX 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 Hz 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.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  But they're actually pushing the updates out, it sounds like. They really are trying.

• 12:31Speaker 05

  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 basically they were saying, you know, the TV in general is great and technically it does have a 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 Hz. 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.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  Well, to be fair, it is Vizio's first OLED, but still, that's does not sound ideal. So how do you know you're buying a TV that that should work as promised for these consoles?

• 13:17Speaker 05

  That's a good question, and 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, you know? So there's like the HDMI Alliance, or, you know, whatever that organization is that maintains the standards. And they have certified certain cables as, you know, HDMI 2.1 cables, which they call them ultra high speed.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:45Speaker 05

  And, you know, that's just certifying that they can carry the full bandwidth, the 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 TV alongside a second massive new purchase in a PS5, you know, knowing that like if I buy this TV, I'm good to go. But that's not the case, you know? When I asked 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 has labeled this.

• 14:27Speaker 05

  But in terms of the gaming oriented features of HDMI 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 gonna 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, on, you know,

• 15:11Speaker 05

  what your TV does and doesn't support, at what frame rates and resolutions it does and doesn't support it at, et cetera, et cetera.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  Well, let's help the people a little bit then. I said I just bought the new LG CX. 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 firmware updates to make it all smooth. But which other TVs are in your piece as far as being fairly safe to get?

• 15:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, so in addition to the LG, which, 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, 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 you don't want an OLED because it can't get as bright as an LCD TV. So the Q80T and Q90T are very good and they've got the same level of support for HDMI 2.1 that the LG CX

• 16:19Speaker 05

  has. That's a good option. You can also get the previously, the aforementioned Sony X900H, 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.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  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 firmware 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.

• 17:22Speaker 05

  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 TCL 6 series in there, which does not have support for 4K at 120 Hz. But I was like, this is a good stopgap option. It's a cheaper TV. And if you just want to wait, 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 Hz.

• 18:06Speaker 05

  But there are very few games at the launch of the new consoles that can do that. Dirt V, Call of Duty, Black Ops Cold War that can do it. And also Devil May 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

• 18:48Speaker 05

  and the TV situation being unsettled, it might make sense to just wait.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  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.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  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 Hz HDR? My current Vizio, it's super old. It does like 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.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  So can you just benchmark this stuff? And can either the televisions or the consoles themselves just use HDMI 2.1 to gather the information about whether or not the TV is actually outputting the thing it's supposed to?

• 20:02Speaker 05

  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 Hz mode versus 60 Hz or 90 Hz or something else, but it definitely shows HDR and 4K and things like that from what I've seen.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  That part isn't a disaster at least. It's just everything else.

• 20:22Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Are we expecting a rush of games to support 4K 120? Or is it gonna 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 gonna take quite a while before it goes from like a weird cool thing you can do in a few games to a standard?

• 20:40Speaker 05

  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 TVs that support it, right? Like, you know, why is a developer gonna go to the length of putting a 4K 120 Hz 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 Hz 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

• 21:22Speaker 05

  Halo Infinite that's coming out next fall and that'll have 120 Hz 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 4K 60. 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.

• 22:07Speaker 05

  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 HDMI 2.1.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 22:32Speaker 05

  You know, because these other features, VRR and auto low latency mode, are not required as part of the spec. They are part of the spec, but you can say, my TV has HDMI 2.1 support, which the only qualification required is the bandwidth that can do 4K at 120 Hz. 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.

• 22:57Speaker 03

  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 VRR. 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, Amit. It's been a valuable lesson. We appreciate it.

• 23:26Speaker 05

  Of course. Happy to help.

• 23:45Nilay Patel?

  You know, when I think of the holiday spirit, I think of unwrapping a TV. That's really what the holidays mean to me.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  It's not about, it's not about the spirit of giving.

• 23:55Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  It's not about Christmas lights or cookies or family.

• 23:58Nilay Patel?

  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 gaze upon the HDMI ports of their new televisions. Here's Bill Baxter, CTO of Vizio.

• 24:30Nilay Patel?

  Bill Baxter, the CTO of Vizio. Welcome to the Vergecast HDMI Holiday Spectacular.

• 24:36Speaker 06

  Thank you very much for having us. We appreciate it.

• 24:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I hope you're in the holiday spirit. So we have been talking about HDMI 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 HDMI 2.1, 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 HDMI ports to put on a TV?

• 25:16Speaker 06

  We throw up a bunch of coins in the air and the ones that land on heads are the ones we make HDMI ports. 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, it's not great. But the, but four is the sweet spot, we think, and especially with the new features that we're releasing this year with HDMI 2.1.

• 25:57Nilay Patel?

  Well, now you gotta give me a hint on the fifth one now. You let up to it.

• 26:01Speaker 06

  It was our game low latency port. It was the fastest HDMI port. So it's complete pass through. And so there's no, no extra picture quality processing or anything like that on it.

• 26:12Nilay Patel?

  So that 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?

• 26:28Speaker 06

  So the thing about HDMI 2.1 is it's basically a basket of features that all really culminate in delivering essentially higher bitrate.

• 26:37Speaker 06

  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 bitrate audio, so you can do pass through of a large number of multichannel 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 in the living room? And so obviously, variable refresh rate is something that makes that 4K 120 experience better for gamers because it eliminates the tearing and other artifacts.

• 27:21Speaker 06

  And then you have EARC that enables us to do the high bitrate audio and run Dolli Atmos and other uncompressed through. Auto low latency is something that is important for us when you're in-game mode. So we picked the features that we think that consumers are going to most relate to from an experience perspective.

• 27:42Nilay Patel?

  One of our other guests on the Vergecast HDMI Holiday Spectacular is David Glenn, who's in charge of the HDMI 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?

• 28:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, of course. Now, 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, you know, 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,

• 28:54Speaker 06

  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 and that have take advantage of those features. So for us, it's, 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, you know, we, 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, the technology is just catching up. And even today, if you look at the testing technology, the certification technology for HDMI 2.1, it's really still quite in its infancy. So we have to

• 29:39Speaker 06

  do it based on, you know, is the market ready? Are we gonna, 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.

• 29:52Nilay Patel?

  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, 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.

• 30:15Speaker 06

  No, again, you know, it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem even for them because those, those costs are, you know, gonna 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 in specifically with consideration to console games. It's also audio and Atmos. DZIO is a leader in Atmos. We just, you know, we just released our Elevate Soundbar with the rotating up firing 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, we don't

• 30:56Speaker 06

  have any 8K TVs right now that are begging for it. So those are really the big drivers.

• 31:02Nilay Patel?

  We always talk about the TV industry as a whole kind of chased the dragon of the upgrade cycle for a long time because there were so many sales with the transition of flat panels. And then I, you know, I've had this conversation with various people at Vizio 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?

• 31:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, we survey every year, 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, we have people who have our TVs for like, you know, seven to 12 years. Like, 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 seven plus million TV sales in the last year.

• 32:15Speaker 06

  And, you know, we account for over one fifth of all the TV sales in the US over the last five years. I mean, there was a big forcing function to upgrade, but consoles will be another driver. Consoles and high bit rate audio with, with soundbars that support Atmos protocol. It's going to be a good driver for the industry going into 2021.

• 32:37Nilay Patel?

  Let me talk about Atmos for a second. And in relation to HDMI, 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 soundbar. Does that seem like the right trait? Like, I think of those as inputs. So I'm losing an input to run my soundbar.

• 32:57Speaker 06

  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. So.

• 33:08Nilay Patel?

  Those are receivers, you mean?

• 33:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, receivers, audio, 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, 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 HDMI 2.1 input. So for us, it's not a loss. You can have it both ways. So, you know, it's, it's just, 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.

• 33:52Nilay Patel?

  How far in advance do you evaluate the HDMI spec? So how, how many years ago did you know HDMI 2.1 is coming? We're going to ship a bunch of TVs with it?

• 34:01Speaker 06

  Oh, I mean, I, 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.

• 34:16Nilay Patel?

  What are the, what are the steps along that process?

• 34:19Speaker 06

  Well, you've got to drive your suppliers, your system on chip suppliers. There are, you know, other alternative sources for HDMI components, so you, you drive them. And you wait until there's a price point that makes sense for the product line. And so, you know, there, 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 an uncompressed Dolby Atmos encoding before.

• 35:00Speaker 06

  And now at this year, it's game consoles. So it was kind of like this, it was the right year to make the move for us.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  Very nice. 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 like what you're learning as far as how this is all going and how fast you're working to make sure these TVs perform as they should?

• 35:22Speaker 06

  Ah, so this is how you make the interview interesting. I see. 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 you know, it's, it's not simply an LED TV. It's a, it's a very different beast in many different ways, although you know, the same operating system runs across all of them. But we're going to continue to refine our, our OLED approach for those consumers that prefer that type of experience. You know, that the big, the big things you want to take 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

• 36:07Speaker 06

  last as long. They don't have the same service life as an LED LCD TV. So you have to really be very careful when you deliver those products to the market.

• 36:16Nilay Patel?

  Well, one of the things you're talking about is software. And it just as, 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 HDMI 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 in 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? Cause that, that's a long tail of investment for you and products

• 37:01Nilay Patel?

  that you've already put in the market. The TV makers, traditionally I don't think are doing it all.

• 37:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, I mean, we've, I think you know that we, 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, in, in hands. I mean, a Plug Fest on HDMI 2.1 is kind of a skinny Plug Fest right now.

• 37:48Speaker 06

  And, and so what you really want to do is focus on what consumers are going to go after in high volume, which is-

• 37:54Nilay Patel?

  Wait, I think I know what a Plug Fest is, but can you just say what a Plug Fest is?

• 37:58Speaker 06

  A Plug Fest is where manufacturers, whether they be, you know, TV manufacturers, peripheral manufacturers or others come together and they, they test their interoperability.

• 38:08Nilay Patel?

  So they all, they literally just plug things into each other?

• 38:10Speaker 06

  They just plug things in.

• 38:11Nilay Patel?

  This sounds like the best part. Can I come to one of these?

• 38:13Speaker 06

  You know, one of the hardest parts about the pandemic is, you know, Plug Fest being virtual means you have to ship a lot of hardware to everywhere.

• 38:23Nilay Patel?

  So you're saying right now, there's just not a, a huge sample set of HDMI 2.1 devices to plug in to see if your implementation of standard is working well?

• 38:32Speaker 06

  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.

• 38:46Speaker 03

  So I was gonna ask like how much dialogue there is like between you and Sony and Microsoft in terms of like bugs and figuring out, oh, this is actually your fault, not ours, and that kind of thing.

• 38:53Speaker 06

  Well, uh, let's see, I don't, we don't keep a running score. We might be on the wrong side of that right now. No, it's very collaborative. Look, they're, they're guarded about their, their assets. So, 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, it's a very good close collaboration.

• 39:24Nilay Patel?

  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?

• 39:41Speaker 06

  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.

• 40:24Speaker 06

  And, 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, you had even indicated, right, Neil, that people are branding essentially supersets of HDMI 2.1 features, right? And it's, 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.

• 40:55Nilay Patel?

  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, 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, 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?

• 41:32Speaker 06

  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 Xbox. 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.

• 42:06Nilay Patel?

  One of the things that strikes me about 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 playing again. Is that something you have thought about doing?

• 42:33Speaker 06

  So our UI does run at 60, up to 60 Hz. 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 bongs or black screens or whatever is essential.

• 42:54Nilay Patel?

  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...

• 43:02Speaker 06

  What are streaming boxes? I don't know what those are.

• 43:04Nilay Patel?

  Like an Apple TV or a Roku. What do you call them? What's the, what's the, what's the industry term for streaming box? Oh, you don't know because you make your own streaming stuff.

• 43:12Speaker 06

  I didn't know that.

• 43:13Nilay Patel?

  Wow. I just got owned by Bill Baxter, my own show. Yeah, I mean, but people plug a lot of those into your TVs. They have to want variable refresh. Is that coming down the line?

• 43:23Speaker 06

  Oh, I mean, look, we are the play nice company in the industry, right? So, yeah, when, 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'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.

• 43:56Nilay Patel?

  Maybe not for Netflix. But 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 HDMI features, or is that a different work stream?

• 44:17Speaker 06

  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 performant 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 US than it is today. And so, you know, 4K 120 is like 8K 60. And, you know, before you know it, people want 8K 120 for some reason. And then they'll probably just scale up to it or something.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  Here's a question. How many prompts are too many? I feel like the upper right 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?

• 45:14Nilay Patel?

  I want to know. I love the prompts.

• 45:15Speaker 06

  I got the product management guy on the, on the, on the listening in, so. Mike, take it 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 Vudu 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, the logo.

• 45:51Nilay Patel?

  I love knowing. As 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.

• 46:05Speaker 06

  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 Max. Or the OLED TV, you know, they're like, hey, I bought the TV for this stuff. Is it doing it? Do I, how do I know it's doing it? And so that's our best way to, to basically showcase it.

• 46:25Nilay Patel?

  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 wanna, I wanna run it. But we are in a transition to a software world, right? You, there are streaming apps on your platform. We are talking about game streaming apps. How relevant is the HDMI port? In, in five years, are you going to ship a TV with no ports? Cause it's all running in apps on the, on the, on the processor there?

• 46:55Speaker 06

  Well, you, you probably will remember our ill-fated attempt to remove the tuner.

• 47:00Nilay Patel?

  Yes. Well, wait, there is a couple. You removed a tuner. And a remote control.

• 47:05Speaker 06

  And the remote control, Chris. It had 11 buttons on it, at least, you know? But um, the way you have to look at this is how, what's your total addressable market? For us, we, we don't need HDMI. 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 for, 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 for, from our perspective, yeah, we don't want you to be on a external box.

• 47:48Speaker 06

  But, but that's a, it's a naive to believe that that's the world today. I think ultimately, uh, if you just follow this, this progression, that a lot of what you do now on, on HDMI goes away completely. A hundred percent. 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 switched to HDMI. But to the extent that they do, I want to make it the best experience possible.

• 48:29Nilay Patel?

  Last question, it's my leading question. Right after this, we're going to talk to David Glenn, HDMI Forum.

• 48:34Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 48:35Nilay Patel?

  What's the one thing you think I should ask the head of the HDMI Forum?

• 48:39Speaker 06

  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 Visio, 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 MMP 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, five million TVs a year with all these features, you know,

• 49:23Speaker 06

  without the proper test technologies, tools, that sort of stuff?

• 49:28Nilay Patel?

  The HDMI Forum is in charge of that?

• 49:29Speaker 06

  No, but they are with the compatibility test suite.

• 49:33Nilay Patel?

  Got it.

• 49:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 49:34Nilay Patel?

  Okay, well, happy holidays, Bill.

• 49:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 49:36Nilay Patel?

  It's good to have you here on the HDMI Holiday Spectacular. This is great. Any hints on what's coming? CESTA TV show, it's still happening. Any broad hints?

• 49:46Speaker 06

  Oh, I would get shot in the head if I said anything right now. Like, there are people with guns around me right now.

• 50:09Nilay Patel?

  What an incredible tale of Christmas spirit and adventure from Bill Baxter, CTO Visio, on this The Vergecast HDMI Holiday Spectacular. But you know what, Dieter?

• 50:21Nilay Patel?

  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 HDMI Holiday Spectacular. We need to go to the source. Of all Christmas cheer. Of all Christmas cheer. The HDMI Forum. The HDMI Forum is the industry consortium that is in charge of HDMI. That consortium is led by HDMI Forum President David Glenn. And he came down from Santa's workshop for a shockingly contentious interview about HDMI. Here he is, HDMI Forum President, David Glenn.

• 51:09Nilay Patel?

  David Glenn, you are the President of the HDMI Forum. Welcome to the Vergecast HDMI Holiday Spectacular.

• 51:15Speaker 07

  Thanks very much, Neel. Great to be here.

• 51:17Nilay Patel?

  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 HDMI Forum is and what you do as the President of this body.

• 51:29Speaker 07

  Well, the HDMI Forum is the group that is responsible for setting all future versions of HDMI 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 at the 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 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.

• 52:07Nilay Patel?

  So, the HDMI Forum is, it's a nonprofit. You actually work for AMD, if I'm getting this correct.

• 52:14Speaker 07

  Well, that's my day job, but I'm here as HDMI Forum President. And so, anything I say here will really be in that light. And if you're going to ask me AMD questions, I'm going to decline the answer, unfortunately, because that's not who I am here as. It's sort of, I have to wear two hats and that's how it works.

• 52:30Nilay Patel?

  I was, you know, I was wondering where the conflict in the HDMI Holiday Spectacular would come from. And we're right into it. But no, I just mean mechanically, your day job is at AMD.

• 52:39Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 52:39Nilay Patel?

  But you have this other important role, running the HDMI Forum. Just how does that operate? Do you, you spend Monday and Tuesday at AMD and Wednesday and Thursday at HDMI? Like, how do you balance these roles?

• 52:52Speaker 07

  No, it's more hour by hour or minute by minute than that. So, just switching hats all the time.

• 52:57Nilay Patel?

  You're the President, there's a Board of Directors. Is there an election? Is there, are there worries of election interference?

• 53:05Speaker 07

  We haven't had anything nearly as controversial as US 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 first a director and then I became president.

• 53:21Nilay Patel?

  Okay. And then my last mechanical question, and it's about AMD. So, you know.

• 53:26Speaker 07

  Oh, well, we'll see.

• 53:27Nilay Patel?

  Can you confirm or deny that you were one of the lead technical people on FreeSync and variable refresh? Because that's has a lot to do with HDMI 2.1 at this point.

• 53:37Speaker 07

  Well, I think that you could probably search for stuff about my name and FreeSync and stuff may come up. Yeah.

• 53:46Speaker 07

  But basically, variable refresh rate is is not quite FreeSync. They're somewhat different and it's a variable refresh rate is part of the HDMI 2.1 spec. And it's, 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.

• 54:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I do like that. There's like, there's already a slight edge to the holiday spectacular. This is great.

• 54:10Speaker 07

  I'll also answer it by saying you could ask me very detailed questions about VRR and I may be able to answer.

• 54:16Speaker 07

  Because I may know a lot of detail.

• 54:17Nilay Patel?

  I feel like, I feel like that's a road we're definitely going to go down. So we're at this moment HDMI 2.1. You know, it's years in the making and development. The two big game consoles are out, the PS5 and the new Xbox. There's a wave of TVs that support it. This is, is this the inflection point where we're going to see broad adoption?

• 54:38Speaker 07

  Well, yeah, I mean, it's, there's a rollout every time a new version of HDMI 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 lighter weight 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 HDMI 2, up to the 48 gigabits per second maximum that we get with HDMI 2.1.

• 55:22Speaker 07

  And that's 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, you know, a whole bunch of TV vendors already now with with these higher rates of beyond 18 gigabits per second on HDMI that are enabling use cases like 4K 120.

• 55:47Speaker 02

  So our listeners know that we pay attention to a bunch of different industry groups. There's the USB IF 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 wanted to support. Can you just walk us through the basic mechanics? Are you, do you just declare I'm in charge this this two-year period? This is what we're aiming for. How do you get to what you want this target spec to be?

• 56:25Speaker 07

  Well, no, the president is not a dictator.

• 56:30Speaker 07

  That's not how it happens.

• 56:33Speaker 07

  It is actually a democratic organization and generally the way any of the advances in HDMI happens is that, you know, one or more of the members will will say that they want to do something for the future of HDMI, 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 you know, 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 they sort of core experts become, normally it's a smaller handful of companies wrap around each feature.

• 57:17Speaker 07

  And that happened with VRR. There was a group of companies within the forum that wrapped around VRR and ALM and gaming features and trothos. 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 involved, not only involved a lot of work on the sources and sinks. It actually also involved a whole cable group. So we're sort of a whole nother group formed around, you know, how do we define a higher speed cable and what are the, all the details around that? So yeah, it's, 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, 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,

• 57:59Speaker 07

  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.

• 58:10Nilay Patel?

  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 HDMI episode, I did not complain about USB C. But like, but right, it's a new version of HDMI. You're talking about cables. The cables have to support more bandwidth now. You have kept the connector the same.

• 58:34Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 58:35Nilay Patel?

  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?

• 58:45Speaker 07

  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 to higher speeds like for 4K 120? And that, that may or may not work depending on your cable, right?

• 59:03Nilay Patel?

  Was there any, was there a conversation about changing the connector just to make the break clean?

• 59:07Speaker 07

  No, I think that, you know, we currently have a lot of desire around staying with the 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 gigabits. 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 adapter dongles to plug into your sources or plug into your TVs or, you know, have TVs have a mix of, you know,

• 59:51Speaker 07

  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 for us to get to 48 gigabits per second.

• 1:00:01Nilay Patel?

  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? How does that roll out?

• 1:00:13Speaker 07

  Uh, well, I, you know, uh, I don't really want to talk about the future because I think the 2.1 is still going to roll out for the next while. It actually has a lot of headroom in it. Uh, you know, the focus right now in, you know, holiday 2020 is about 4K 120, but there's a lot of 8K infrastructure in in the 2.1 spec as well at both 8K 60 and and even in much longer term at 8K 120. That infrastructure is already in the 2.1 spec. Uh, so you're going to see that that, you know, 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.

• 1:00:58Nilay Patel?

  I mean, that's that question in the reverse. How long ago did you start working on 2.1?

• 1:01:01Speaker 07

  Oh, well, that that was really, uh, 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.

• 1:01:14Nilay Patel?

  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 trade off that you made? A bet on one technology versus another or another approach versus another? I'm just kidding. No one ever is 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 trade offs in it. What was one bet you made here that could have gone another way?

• 1:01:39Speaker 07

  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 dual B 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, uh, we're going to have a duke them out fight about, you know, doing it our way or doing it your

• 1:02:24Speaker 07

  way. That I don't think that really happened.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  Do you have a point of view, one of the, 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 HDMI 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 allows? So I might buy a TV because it says HDMI 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, is that sort of that that's the TV maker's problem? We don't make any judgment on that. We, we talk about the port itself and the cable and the rest of it's up to y'all.

• 1:03:04Speaker 07

  Well, there's a lot to unpack in that one, Dieter. So really the spec, the way to think about the HDMI spec is it has a lot of options for HDMI implementers to, to use or not use as they choose. And each of those options really has what we call a feature name around it. Right? So there's a 4K 120 feature name, right? And the TV or the source device, you know, can choose to implement 4K 120 or not implement 4K 120. But if they do implement it, they should use the feature name is how you, you look at it. Or if they implement EARC, they should use the EARC feature name or VRR and use the VRR feature name. That's really the way to put it because in the end, the way HDMI is structured, all

• 1:03:47Speaker 07

  these things are effectively optional. You, 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. If you, even if you go back to, you know, HDMI 1.1, whatever, it was the same.

• 1:04:05Nilay Patel?

  You said there was not never really a place where there was a knockdown 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 HDMI is a superset that supports a lot of things. How did that process work?

• 1:04:28Speaker 07

  So VRR is, it's an open standard and that's what HDMI 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 HDMI cable, here's how you go about it. Right. It's not necessarily a system level standard because that's not really what HDMI does is system level standards. So you can, you know, 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 HDMI cable, but they could still be sort of a bigger system level spec around those two major technologies you were

• 1:05:12Speaker 07

  talking about. Does that kind of make sense?

• 1:05:14Nilay Patel?

  It does, and I'm enjoying the, the diffuse-ness of the description very much.

• 1:05:19Speaker 07

  Yeah. You're enjoying my struggling to remain the HDMI forum president.

• 1:05:24Nilay Patel?

  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 FreeSync and you've got a TV that supports GSync. Does HDMI get involved in helping people understand that actually the ends, the two end products might not work together?

• 1:05:46Speaker 07

  Okay. Well, if the TV says I supported, in your example, GSync, 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 interrupt with VRR. That's really the way to look at it, right? So, you know, if, if all of the source vendors say they support VRR and, and all of the sync vendors say they support VRR, then you're going to interrupt 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 G sync or free sync, but that's sort of just another way to look at the interrupt, right?

• 1:06:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So that, that kind of leads me into a question I have for every sort of standards vendor. You know, the, the Wi-Fi Alliance keeps rebranding Wi-Fi to make it easier to understand.

• 1:06:35Speaker 02

  And then they, then they make it worse and they make it harder. And it's just like a Tik Tok. Anyway, sorry. Feelings about the Wi-Fi names.

• 1:06:40Nilay Patel?

  I feel like we're just here. We've brought you here to complain about other standards organizations.

• 1:06:44Speaker 07

  That just seemed to be what's going on.

• 1:06:46Nilay Patel?

  Well, I feel like we have the same set of questions for every standards organization. So like right now, H2.1 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?

• 1:07:10Speaker 07

  I know that's not really in the area that the HDMI forum works in, I'd say. Cause we're really focused on the specs and creating that infrastructure. You know, it would be nice sometimes to, to try to make the messaging better, but that's not really where we have the focus.

• 1:07:26Nilay Patel?

  So that, that kind of leads me into the, the next thing that I often see branded and rebranded. And I, maybe the answer is the same, but every TV vendor rebrands CEC, right? CEC is like the grand dream of we're going to replace their remote control. And I rail about IR blasters on the show. I have, 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, were you 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?

• 1:08:08Speaker 07

  It's still up to the vendors is I think the bottom line answer there. I guess one way to put it 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.

• 1:08:30Speaker 07

  But that's, 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.

• 1:08:38Nilay Patel?

  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 codecs are here.

• 1:08:51Speaker 07

  And gaming.

• 1:08:52Nilay Patel?

  And gaming, right? 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. What 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?

• 1:09:14Speaker 07

  I don't know if I have an answer to that. Maybe if I had an answer, it would have been 2.1.

• 1:09:23Speaker 03

  So I've got one question. So I just bought a new LGC 10 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 how 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?

• 1:09:49Speaker 07

  Well, first of all, let's be clear. You don't call it HDMI 2.1. 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 that's sort of not how it's actually marketed. So, you know, from a procedure viewpoint, there is actually, you know, only HDMI 2.1 at this point and 4.1b, I guess, if you don't want to implement any of the HDMI form specs. So, you know, anyone who's implementing HDMI, anything in HDMI 2.0 or 2.1 is actually now following the HDMI 2.1 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

• 1:10:31Speaker 07

  features like 4K120, they advertise 4K120. To your question about the bandwidth. So let's let's be clear here, right? There's sort of the view of what do you need for a certain feature? Like for 4K120, 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 gigabits per second. I think in that case, you can do it even at lower bandwidth, 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 4K120, 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

• 1:11:16Speaker 07

  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 8K60 and even 8K120 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.

• 1:11:43Nilay Patel?

  We also talked to Vizio CTO Bill Baxter as part of the HDMI 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. It's been going on for 10 years.

• 1:12:17Speaker 07

  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, 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 cable designs have been certified in the last three months on UHS. And they're, they're definitely available in the marketplace now if you, you look for them online.

• 1:12:50Nilay Patel?

  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?

• 1:12:59Speaker 07

  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 Bluetooth. So part of the certification that every UHS cable goes through is they actually have

• 1:13:43Speaker 07

  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, 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, these chambers are meeting a lot of international standards and, and they get recalibrated quite frequently for a lot of uses. They don't, not just for HDMI cables, that these chambers get used for basically anything that produces radio waves has to get tested in these things.

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  So you talked about cables. You also presumably also certify TVs and game consoles and streaming boxes and things like that.

• 1:14:20Speaker 07

  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 you can understand all the test centers that are available for to take your product to and get it authorized or tested for conformance or whatever we call it. Yeah.

• 1:14:42Speaker 02

  So is that process getting I mean, that's the harder was the harder Bill's question. Is that process getting cheaper, faster, more accessible for 2.1?

• 1:14:50Speaker 07

  Well, I can't speak to cost, but it's certainly more accessible. Yeah, it's it's very 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.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  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?

• 1:15:17Speaker 07

  Well, I have a very good 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 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

• 1:15:56Speaker 07

  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.

• 1:16:07Speaker 02

  I have 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 HDMI 2.1 devices and cables. Do you or do you not go check your motion smoothing setting? And do you leave it on or turn it off?

• 1:16:28Speaker 07

  Well, as HDMI Forum President, I have no comment on that.

• 1:16:32Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 1:16:34Nilay Patel?

  I love it. David, this was fantastic. Truly, the Holiday Spectacular has exceeded all of my hopes and dreams. We are going to have to have you back soon. Thank you so much for joining us.

• 1:16:44Speaker 07

  Yeah, my pleasure. This was rougher than I was expecting.

• 1:17:05Nilay Patel?

  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.

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:17:39Nilay Patel?

  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 HDMI 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 Roku's, your PS5s, whatever letter of Xbox you've chosen to receive this holiday season, I hope you think of all of Santa's helpers

• 1:18:19Nilay Patel?

  working in the HDMI mines, making it so that your frames are very 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 HDMI Holiday Spectacular, Dieter, Chris, my favorite 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.