Seriously, the idea that we know all the practically important physics there is is the kind of thing only somebody who's never done science or engineering would believe.

Industrial R&D is important, but it is in a distrant third place with respect to importance to US scientific leadership after (1) Universities operating with federal grants and (2) Federal research institutions.

It's hard to convince politicians with a zero sum mentality that the kind of public research that benefits humanity also benefits US competitiveness. The mindset shows in launching a new citizenship program for anyone who pays a million bucks while at the same time discouraging foreign graduate students from attending universtiy in the US or even continuing their university careers here. On average each talented graduate student admitted to the US to attend and elite university does way more than someone who could just buy their way in.

Stick with that thought, you're so close. Let us help you across the line:
The chances of someone being born with excellent skills is equal everywhere, so when you have a pool of 10 million people to choose from you have less of them than if you have a pool of 8 billion people to choose from. This isn't a case of making sure you have your own skills, the best results come from attracting the best skills from all over the planet.

Would America have gotten the bomb so quickly without the help of an Italian immigrant (Fermi), a Hungarian immigrant (Teller)? True excellence comes from getting the brightest minds from everywhere together, not shutting yourself out and pretending the rest of the world doesn't exist.

It's not a question of other standards bodies. It's a question of capability. The best standard in the world doesn't mean shit if my TV, AV receiver or sound bar doesn't have the input for it. Standards are dime a dozen, and everyone here is already mentioning alternatives, completely forgetting about why they haven't been implemented: living room specific feature sets. There's a reason the same company that produces monitors with display ports produces TVs with HDMI, and it has nothing to do with wanting to play more license fees.

They could just leave that up to consumers. If it's anything like their approach to the Steamdeck then they will release an open and incredibly tweakable platform which the user themselves has root access to do with as they please. I predict that a binary blob driver will be available for HDMI2.1 support on the week of release, just not one provided by Valve themselves.

Well companies aren't not going to screw up existing compatibility and features just to get one fussy customer. Dp has a long way to go before it becomes viable in the living room, but for that to happen they need to care, ... and they don't. Dp is wholly focused on everything but the living room. Even the future spec is focused on simply chaining multiple displays with more bandwidth rather than implementing feature sets that make it a viable alternative in the living room.

Two questions:
1. Why would the EU mandate a specific standard on TVs? What is the basis? The USB-C mandate was directly linked to e-waste recovery whereas that isn't a problem here. Do you think they care that a couple of gamers can't get a Steamcube working at 61 FPS?
2. Law of unintended consequences, do you realise how many things you've just broken for consumers? Suddenly consumers are left wondering why their TV remote passthrough doesn't work on some of their inputs, or why audio return isn't possible? Or why TV but not receivers, and since you can't pass through without conversion now you've introduced audio latency going from dp to eARC (one of the things that eARC specifically was designed to avoid). HDMI has staying power in the AV world because of its feature set, not because of it's inferior characteristics to DP. Before DP becomes viable for TVs in general it would need to offer comparable features.

You'd be wrong. There are many features in HDMI that have no equivalent in DP which are virtually essential in the modern AV setup, things like eARC or CDC passthrough.

DP is by far superior on an electrical signalling perspective. But the best tech means nothing if you're unable to use it effectively. At the end of the day, features win out and consumers won't be interested in replacing a couple of HDMI cables for a shitton of separate AV cables.

Actually I don't think there's actually a way to properly implement some modern AV features without HDMI, as some of the modern audio codecs require more bandwidth than what traditional audio links (not the ones bundled with video) are capable of, and the lack of two way audio features in dp open you up to a shitton of messy cabling and switching TV and AV receivers independently like we did in the late 90s Dolby Pro-Logic II days.

DP has supported the exact same DRM that HDMI has for 19 years now... I think you need to do some reading.

It is literally the selling feature for home theatre. Most people hated the fact that early HDMI *didn't* do it. Either you hate it for incompatibilities with your specific equipment or you heat it for reasons that separate you from most of the rest of the AV world.

TVs won't use DP as DP lacks many features that are essential to AV systems. E.g. eARC or CDC.

DP -> HDMI can't implement the full feature set (including no VRR meaning display tearing) and introduces latency, precisely the opposite of what you want on gaming console.

Not, it's a question of not even asked. DP and HDMI were created with fundamentally different purposes. DP hasn't even attempted to implement these features as it was never intended as a protocol for AV systems, it targeted a next generation of PC displays.

It is absolutely not. Not for a gaming rig. Dongles capable of meeting the HDMI 2.1 bandwidth requirements (active ones) introduce significant latency (you just don't notice this because the sound is also delayed) which appears to act more like input latency than what you're typically used to. Additionally you'll get tearing due to the lack of VRR support since TVs don't use Gsync or Freesync and I've yet to see a single dongle on the market that actually implements that.

You're probably best of just limiting to 4K60 or a lower resolution while gaming. Or (valve is pretty open to hacking after all) wait till a day or two after release for someone to publish the binary blob of the GPU driver that enables HDMI 2.1 support.

Two things: Just because they are active and able to push bandwidth required for high resolutions doesn't mean they support HDMI 2.1 feature sets, in fact they almost universally don't. I've never seen a dongle for instance support for VRR (which is a godsend for gaming on a TV since TVs don't usually support Freesync or Gsync), and also those dongles introduce latency. You may not notice it directly when watching movies since they delay the audio in equal measure but it has a significant affect on visual response to input - again a problem for gaming.

Then you've made a decision based on an entirely faulty premise. Firstly HDMI doesn't need 10 seconds to negotiate HDCP, and secondly DisplayPort needs the same negotiation. DP introduced HDCP in 2 decades ago.