I do not really have a body for this. I was not aware that this is a thing and still feel like this is bs, but maybe there is an actual explanation for HDMI Forum’s decision that I am missing.
I do not really have a body for this. I was not aware that this is a thing and still feel like this is bs, but maybe there is an actual explanation for HDMI Forum’s decision that I am missing.
This is even worse than I already knew, holy shit.
4-wire USB 2.0 in a USB-C cable should be fucking illegal. Utterly counterintuitive if one stops short of reading specs and merely “keeps up” by having to use this nonsense all day every day. Learning about that alone put to bed some head-scratching confusion I’ve run into with my own stuff over the years.
The cabling problems in particular…just woof!
Well, let me show you something.
You vs the guy she told you not to worry about.
Guess which one of those is a 4-conductor USB 2 cable rated for 15 watts that came in the box with my smart phone, and which is a 3.1 cable that can carry 10Gbps USB data AND a 4k60Hz DP signal AND a USB 2.0 link for peripherals AND 100 watts of power simultaneously. Guess at their relative prices.
And this isn’t even the ultimate cable. The cable I described is 12 year old technology, they dropped the 3.1 spec in 2013! Newer cables can do 20Gbps using both lanes, carry more power, do external PCIe, all kinds of crap.
But normies who charge thay phone, eat hot chip and lie don’t want this cable. They don’t want to pay $15 for 7mm thick cable that’ll pull their Qi charger off their night stand with its weight every time they pick their phone up. They want a thin, flexible strand of spaghetti that will carry 15 watts from the wall wart behind their headboard to the charger on the night stand, successfully negotiating at least two sharp 90 degree turns.
USB-C was supposed to be the universal port. The answer to every question. Recharge your wireless earbuds, recharge your laptop, attach HIDs, very fast storage, high speed network adapters, displays, low latency teledildonics, VR headsets…it was the chosen one, it was supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them. Turns out, the port might be capable of that, but the cable is a different story. There’s 24 pins in the plug, two of which will never be connected (the four middle pins are for USB 2, and there are only 2 wires for that. The cable itself along with the chips in the connectors need to be designed for what you’re doing. And we can’t really steer around that because they’re going to keep adding tech to this connector for awhile yet.
So we’re gonna end up with cables that can do this, but not that. Some applications only require USB 2.0, but the device has a USB-C port. I’m okay with that cable existing, but the industry as a whole has done a piss poor job of selling and marking cables with their capabilities.
I bought the cable above from Cable Matters. They make good cables. They marked each end of this cable with the SS USB 10 mark on one side, and their logo on the other. It doesn’t indicate it’s video or power capacity in any way. You’re supposed to make note of that when you buy the cable, keep track of which cable that is in your collection, and remember what it can do. I’m a neckbeard with no life, and even I’m not gonna get that done.