Unless you need considerable precision, "a DAC" = a handful of resistors. The original ST and Amiga only had 3 and 4 bits per channel, respectively, which don't

Unless you need considerable precision, "a DAC" = a handful of resistors. The original ST and Amiga only had 3 and 4 bits per channel, respectively, which don't especially demand a "real" DAC. And if I remember correctly, most FPGAs of that generation and market segment do have differential outputs (though probably not SERDES hard blocks), but can't quite pull off proper HDMI/DVI without an external encoder chip. There might be some way to hack a "good enough" signal for lower bitrates, but if you're going to need to half-ass the signal either way, you might as well go with the simple analog link and not the complex digital one.