Big Sur 11.1 fixed my monitor issues

[djc6]

I have a 2018 mac mini with two LG 27UD58P-B 4K displays - one connected via HDMI, the other USB-C. During the entire Catalina era I had monitor sleep/wake issues with the display on the HDMI port:

1. Every time I'd update the mac - 10.15.x releases, security updates requiring a reboot - I would always have to do an SMC/PRAM reset & unplugging/plugging cables to eventually coax my monitors to wake up.
2. I avoided restarting the mac for any reason because monitors often wouldn't work upon reboot
3. If the HDMI connected display wasn't working, the USB-C one wasn't particularly helpful as it was still the secondary display and I couldn't see what I was doing.
4. I had monitors set to never sleep - if they went to sleep, I wouldn't be able to wake them without doing the above dance in #1.
5. I would set screen saver instead - then I could manually turn monitors on/off, so long as there was always a picture signal being sent.​

I went from 10.15.7 -> 11.1 on Monday and it was the first time I've since Mojave that the monitors "just worked" and I didn't have to do anything when machine rebooted during update install. I'm also now able to use energy saving settings to sleep the monitor after 15 minutes - wasn't possible before!

I believe the mac mini received a firmware update during the Big Sur installation process - when it rebooted it ran for a couple seconds with fans at full speed and restarted again, indicative of past firmware updates. There is now a startup chime that wasn't there before. My MegaChips MCDP2920A4 DisplayPort 1.4 to HDMI 2.0 converter still shows firmware version 2.19 - same version I saw under Catalina 10.15.7 - so whatever fix appears to be outside of the converter firmware.