5 ms·

I wish monitors in general had better (and open) firmware. It would be really cool if for example I could have my laptop plugged into my desktop's monitor and h

I wish monitors in general had better (and open) firmware. It would be really cool if for example I could have my laptop plugged into my desktop's monitor and have it show up as a "window" on my desktop. All it would take would be for some simple driver on my desktop to tell the monitor where to draw the image when I moved the window around. Basically a better version of the mostly useless PiP feature my monitor already has.

slimsag 6y ago
As with many things, this comes back to DRM. HDCP in specific.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  Monitors are generally connected through DisplayPort or Thunderbolt, not HDMI, so there's no reason for HDCP to enter here. The card in question does have a HDCP output, but advanced features are only available through DisplayPort.
  - nailer 6y ago
    > Monitors are generally connected through DisplayPort or Thunderbolt, not HDMI, so there's no reason for HDCP to enter here. HDCP runs over DP and Thunderbolt. But derefr's discussion above is accurate.
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    It might surprise you that most monitors out there, especially the cheap garbage ones from Amazon/Walmart that most consumers have in their homes, are connected via HDMI.
    - tgb 6y ago
      As someone running their monitor over HDMI, this is news to me. If it gives the resolution and framerate of the monitor, what's the difference if it's HDMI or DisplayPort?
      - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
        For you as an end consumer nothing if bandwidth is enough with either cabke, but techies like us will be sticklers that one is more open than the other, not bound by royalties and such.
        formerly_proven 6y ago
        Displayport usually has something like 50 % higher bandwidth compared to the HDMI standard of the same vintage. Which makes sense, since home video folks are fine with like 15 pictures per second and 4:0:0 chroma subsampling, but that doesn't really work for computers...
        jasomill 6y ago
        That, and some video cards support higher resolutions over DisplayPort. For example, while my 2013 Mac Pro has both HDMI and Thuderbolt/Mini DisplayPort outputs, the only way to get 2160p60 HDMI output (without chroma subsampling) is via a DisplayPort-to-HDMI 2.x adapter (and I had to try about half a dozen different adapters before I found one that does this correctly).
      - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
        Displayport used to be much better but now they both cover virtually everyones needs. Now the main difference is HDMI has a licensing fee. Some major TV companies are in the org so they don't have to pay it which is why TVs always use HDMI and GPUs usually have more displayport because those companies have to pay for hdmi.
- derefr 6y ago
  In this particular case, no, as the image wouldn't be being sent into the PC to render in its framebuffer; but rather the PC would just be drawing an empty window, and reporting the geometry of that window to the monitor. The monitor, with two HDMI leads plugged in, would be responsible for compositing the inputs together, according to the geometry the PC reported, but all internal to itself.
  - smileybarry 6y ago
    That's how hardware-accelerated video decoding used to work in Windows XP days IIRC (before GPU-based desktop composition), the video player would be a blank black square and the GPU would be told to draw the video on those coordinates. Because of how it was implemented, you could drag VLC around while the video was playing and the video would stay "behind" everything, with the VLC window acting as a "hole" through which you could see it. (So you could move the window to the left and see half a black square on the left, and the left-most half of the video on the right) Nowadays with desktop composition AKA DWM, Windows just makes sure to black out DRM content from any frames/video it sends to an app requesting to capture the screen, making sure to send the video-including composed desktop only to the display. (And if you have some GPU recording software like NVIDIA ShadowPlay, it switches off when DRM content starts playing) You can see it in action with the Netflix UWP app. Of course, a bunch of DRM-respecting software -- like Netflix in Google Chrome -- doesn't really follow that spec and can still be screenshot/video captured like any app.
    - judge2020 6y ago
      I found it odd that even Disney Plus - which I heard had the highest level security of Widevine enabled, can be screen recorded.
      - Mindwipe 6y ago
        It provides lower resolution content to those devices, capping at 720p. Which is the same as Netflix effectively, Netflix just provides higher to PCs when they can block screen recording entirely. Disney might eventually I guess.
nradov 6y ago
Just use remote control software to connect from one computer to the other and display it as a window.
- seiferteric 6y ago
  I do, but now you have latency.
  - aaronblohowiak 6y ago
    HDMI encoder will be better than remote software, in my experience (depending on the hdmi encoder)
Gehinnn 6y ago
It would be cool if the entire Onscreen Menu would be available as api. I hate using it to switch between inputs or to turn of my second monitor.
- MaPi_ 6y ago
  Look into DCC/CI, it's possible your monitor supports that already.

slimsag 6y ago

As with many things, this comes back to DRM. HDCP in specific.

freeone3000 6y ago
Monitors are generally connected through DisplayPort or Thunderbolt, not HDMI, so there's no reason for HDCP to enter here. The card in question does have a HDCP output, but advanced features are only available through DisplayPort.
- nailer 6y ago
  > Monitors are generally connected through DisplayPort or Thunderbolt, not HDMI, so there's no reason for HDCP to enter here. HDCP runs over DP and Thunderbolt. But derefr's discussion above is accurate.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  It might surprise you that most monitors out there, especially the cheap garbage ones from Amazon/Walmart that most consumers have in their homes, are connected via HDMI.
  - tgb 6y ago
    As someone running their monitor over HDMI, this is news to me. If it gives the resolution and framerate of the monitor, what's the difference if it's HDMI or DisplayPort?
    - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
      For you as an end consumer nothing if bandwidth is enough with either cabke, but techies like us will be sticklers that one is more open than the other, not bound by royalties and such.
      - formerly_proven 6y ago
        Displayport usually has something like 50 % higher bandwidth compared to the HDMI standard of the same vintage. Which makes sense, since home video folks are fine with like 15 pictures per second and 4:0:0 chroma subsampling, but that doesn't really work for computers...
      - jasomill 6y ago
        That, and some video cards support higher resolutions over DisplayPort. For example, while my 2013 Mac Pro has both HDMI and Thuderbolt/Mini DisplayPort outputs, the only way to get 2160p60 HDMI output (without chroma subsampling) is via a DisplayPort-to-HDMI 2.x adapter (and I had to try about half a dozen different adapters before I found one that does this correctly).
    - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
      Displayport used to be much better but now they both cover virtually everyones needs. Now the main difference is HDMI has a licensing fee. Some major TV companies are in the org so they don't have to pay it which is why TVs always use HDMI and GPUs usually have more displayport because those companies have to pay for hdmi.
derefr 6y ago
In this particular case, no, as the image wouldn't be being sent into the PC to render in its framebuffer; but rather the PC would just be drawing an empty window, and reporting the geometry of that window to the monitor. The monitor, with two HDMI leads plugged in, would be responsible for compositing the inputs together, according to the geometry the PC reported, but all internal to itself.
- smileybarry 6y ago
  That's how hardware-accelerated video decoding used to work in Windows XP days IIRC (before GPU-based desktop composition), the video player would be a blank black square and the GPU would be told to draw the video on those coordinates. Because of how it was implemented, you could drag VLC around while the video was playing and the video would stay "behind" everything, with the VLC window acting as a "hole" through which you could see it. (So you could move the window to the left and see half a black square on the left, and the left-most half of the video on the right) Nowadays with desktop composition AKA DWM, Windows just makes sure to black out DRM content from any frames/video it sends to an app requesting to capture the screen, making sure to send the video-including composed desktop only to the display. (And if you have some GPU recording software like NVIDIA ShadowPlay, it switches off when DRM content starts playing) You can see it in action with the Netflix UWP app. Of course, a bunch of DRM-respecting software -- like Netflix in Google Chrome -- doesn't really follow that spec and can still be screenshot/video captured like any app.
  - judge2020 6y ago
    I found it odd that even Disney Plus - which I heard had the highest level security of Widevine enabled, can be screen recorded.
    - Mindwipe 6y ago
      It provides lower resolution content to those devices, capping at 720p. Which is the same as Netflix effectively, Netflix just provides higher to PCs when they can block screen recording entirely. Disney might eventually I guess.

nradov 6y ago

Just use remote control software to connect from one computer to the other and display it as a window.

seiferteric 6y ago
I do, but now you have latency.
- aaronblohowiak 6y ago
  HDMI encoder will be better than remote software, in my experience (depending on the hdmi encoder)

Gehinnn 6y ago

It would be cool if the entire Onscreen Menu would be available as api. I hate using it to switch between inputs or to turn of my second monitor.

MaPi_ 6y ago
Look into DCC/CI, it's possible your monitor supports that already.