New MacBook Pro Models Include HDMI 2.0 Port Instead of HDMI 2.1

[ruka.snow]

Do those readers saturate the bandwidth of TB4? If not, this is exactly what irritates me about devices coming with only ONE Thunderbolt port: the bus is designed to be daisy-chained, but almost no hardware includes that second port to continue the chain.

CF Express B is 1700 MB/s or greater. That doesn't leave a hole lot left for daisy chaining anything when TB3 tops off at about 4500 MB/s. Maybe they could get a dual card slot version, but the current readers are already large to help dissipate the heat. Most devices I have seen on TB3 have not really left anything over to daisy chain and sadly TB4 is just a more robust TB3, so we'll be waiting on TB5 for hopefully more bandwidth.

 

[davidg4781]

Two months ago I showed up to a big presentation and discovered my HDMI dongle was broken😡. It was not a fun time. I look forward to having a built-in HDMI slot that will work with most every projector out there.

Until you find out your port is broken. 😬

 

[raybo]

Most Video & Photo Pros will not use the HDMI port even if it were 2.1
I'm personally disappointed that they even added the HDMI Port... it probably contributed to the thickness of these new machines.

The thickness is from larger battery and larger cooling system. It's probably the only way they could have fit the HDMI.

 

[ruka.snow]

Similar dilemma for me too. I haven't pulled the trigger yet but I think I'm going to justify more internal storage and just stage to internal storage instead of external first. Not sure yet, though. Certainly going to be a change in workflow. I'm having to work around not having a port I used all the time being replaced with two ports I will hardly ever use. Knowing now they are low-spec, it is even more of a let down.

The internal drive is now fast enough that you could dump two CF Express B cards onto it at the same time, but I would still feel more comfortable having it go off to my backup drives then duplicating them.

 

[oxid]

Wish they have kept the outside intact and just add the new M1 chips.

 

[unobtainium]

Coming next year: HDMI 2.1 and Face ID, you heard it here first.

 

[Arsenikdote]

CF Express B is 1700 MB/s or greater. That doesn't leave a hole lot left for daisy chaining anything when TB3 tops off at about 4500 MB/s. Maybe they could get a dual card slot version, but the current readers are already large to help dissipate the heat. Most devices I have seen on TB3 have not really left anything over to daisy chain and sadly TB4 is just a more robust TB3, so we'll be waiting on TB5 for hopefully more bandwidth.

Agreed! Daisy chaining is only worthwhile if you are not fully utilizing the bandwidth, and for professional workflows that is rarely the case. Maybe TB5 will double the bandwidth, but then again I would likely just want to use all of that to get the video off my cards/drives that much faster!! 😀

 

[Zdigital2015]

Almost everyone here here have been spinning around on their eyebrows over the past year because the new Macs didn’t have old ports.

There are two huge contingents of roughly 50/50 that are diametrically opposed to each other in philosophy that Apple is stuck trying to please. Personally, I am in the 4 TB4 port camp and no HDMI, SD, MagSafe camp, whereas others are in the must have those ports camp. We will never convince the other of our conviction, so the best we can hope for is detente. The port camp won this round.

I am also in the Touch Bar camp, so today was a victory as well…trying hard to keep from hurling vulgar insults at those people.

 

[ijordano]

Its wild to me that it even has HDMI?? If you rely that heavily on HDMI just buy an adaptor (which by now everyone owns already) and be thankful for an extra and more versatile USB C port

 

[ruka.snow]

So https://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-4-element-hub/ just became the must-have accessory for the new MBP

A hub just splits that 40 Gbps over more devices, a lot of us have devices that consume all or most of the bandwidth of one port each.

 

[davidg4781]

There are two huge contingents of roughly 50/50 that are diametrically opposed to each other in philosophy that Apple is stuck trying to please. Personally, I am in the 4 TB4 port camp and no HDMI, SD, MagSafe camp, whereas others are in the must have those ports camp. We will never convince the other of our conviction, so the best we can hope for is detente. The port camp won this round.

I am also in the Touch Bar camp, so today was a victory as well…trying hard to keep from hurling vulgar insults at those people.

I feel I’m with you, but I think I like having Touch Bar back. I’m just now sitting down to watch the keynote but it sounds like it’s needed to support higher power delivery of the Pro/Max chips.

 

[visualseed]

The whole question of Touch Bar haters deserves another similar post IMHO. Frankly, I really don't like losing it; it's very handy in those apps whose developers have embraced it.

Agree on this 100%. My only real problem with the touch bar has been where it has been poorly utilized and un-customizable. Usually by Apple itself. In places where it is embraced, it has been extremely useful.

 

[Rigby]

Its wild to me that it even has HDMI?? If you rely that heavily on HDMI just buy an adaptor (which by now everyone owns already) and be thankful for an extra and more versatile USB C port

In the business world HDMI is very commonly used to hook up a projector or big screen for presentations. I think it's a must for a "pro" laptop.

 

[ruka.snow]

Agreed! Daisy chaining is only worthwhile if you are not fully utilizing the bandwidth, and for professional workflows that is rarely the case. Maybe TB5 will double the bandwidth, but then again I would likely just want to use all of that to get the video off my cards/drives that much faster!! 😀

You can bet when TB5 comes and doubles or even quadruples the bandwidth that CF Express B on PCIe Gen 5 will also come and we'll want to dump our 7800 MB/s cards onto our 7800 MB/s external SSD's. 1700 MB/s is isn't all that quick when you are rushing to empty 8 512 GB cards.

 

[CWallace]

Coming next year: HDMI 2.1 and Face ID, you heard it here first.

Unlikely since the current FaceID module is likely too thick to fit and the focus now seems to be reducing the width of the sensor, not the depth. Same with HDMI 2.1 - it would need a dedicated controller to drive it since even moving to TB4 would not help as it is "limited" to the same 40Gbps as TB3).

 

[bradman83]

The use cases for the two devices are so completely different that this can't possibly be the reason.

"Huh, I can buy a $180 Apple TV or a $2K laptop... YEAH I'LL BUY THE LAPTOP!!111one"

I'm quite sure that was intended as sarcasm.

 

[DronesOn]

People whined so much about dongles that now we got a half baked hdmi port instead of another TB4 port 🙄

The answer is simple enough, plug in a dongle to get more ports if you need to.

I'm using three of the four ports on my 2019 16 inch pro right now. One for external storage, one for power and one for my SD Card reader. I won't need two of those ports since my 2021 16 inch pro has MagSafe 3 and a built in card reader.

That feels like a win to me.

 

[tyranne201]

no one cares. is that really necessary? i bet less than 1% of the users would actually need/use that.

 

[macrumors3000]

HDMI 2.1 will come with M2 Pro Max. Courage.

 

[ruka.snow]

The answer is simple enough, plug in a dongle to get more ports if you need to.

I'm using three of the four ports on my 2019 16 inch pro right now. One for external storage, one for power and one for my SD Card reader. I won't need two of those ports since my 2021 16 inch pro has MagSafe 3 and a built in card reader.

That feels like a win to me.

The built in SD card reader is unlikely to be as fast as your external one. If you have UHS 2 cards you can be waiting 4x or longer to empty those cards on a UHS 1 reader. The SD reader in the 2012 MBP was also UHS 1 but hopefully this one isn't nearly as crippled as that one was.

 

[theorist9]

Completely a bandwidth based decision.

There are almost certainly 4 TB4/PCIe4 channels. The fourth one is likely split between the SD card and the HDMI port (and perhaps a couple other peripherals, we'll have to see what System Information says next week). HDMI 2.1 utilizes up to 48Gb, TB4 has a 40Gb channel. You do the math. Even with the SD card using only a lane or two, a lot of the HDMI 2.1 benefits wouldn't be there.

I don't know anything about PCIe4 beyond what I just looked up (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express), but:

I assume these new MBP's have 16 PCIe4 channels, at 15.7 Gbps each, and that they currently use 4 channels (63 Gbps) for each TB4, and that the remaining 4 channels are split between the HDMI 2.0 port and the SD card reader. Based on preliminary info., the SD reader should be slow enough to be supportable with one PCIe4 lane (15.7 Gbps) (UHS-II is only 2.5 Gbps). If so, couldn't they they have used 3 PCIe lanes (47.3 Gbps) for one of the TB4's and 1 PCIe lane for the SD, leaving 4 lanes (63.0 Gbps) for HDMI 2.1?

I.e., even if 4 PCIe lanes don't not have enough bandwidth to split between SD and HDMI 2.1, they might have enough bandwidth to split between SD and TB4.

If so, the decision to use HDMI 2.0 would not have been based on internal bandwidth limitations. Rather, it could have been their intention in adding HDMI was to make life more convenient for those that use their laptops to give talks and don't want to bother with a dongle (the *overwhelming* majority of projectors these days in classrooms/conference rooms are HDMI), rather than to accommodate those with displays that require more bandwidth than is available with TB4.

It's also possible they didn't think they had a reliable 2.1 controller.

 

[Piplodocus]

Would have been nicer if doable with the bandwidth available, but I don't really care. My current monitor isn't even 4k. No doubt I'll get a far nicer monitor during the life of this beast and if it's higher than 60 Hz refresh rate I'll just plug it in one of the other 3 ports. Not exactly a deal-breaker for me. 🤷🏻‍♂️

 

[Robert.Walter]

Support for HDMI 2.1 was the only reason I thought Apple would bring back the port. Egg on my face now 🙁

It looks like they sacrificed one physical TB port for dedicated SD Card and HDMI ports running over the TB bus, instead of putting true HDMI 2.1 support that would have required 48Gbs to support all the resolutions and frame rates without compression. Ironically, you may be able to support HDMI 2.1 using a TB to HDMI dongle and DSC (Display Stream Compression). Have not confirmed this is supported yet.

Apple’s Dongle Profit Center will be glad if this is true.

 

[1BadManVan]

Laptops with dedicated Nvidia GPUs aren't also giving you Thunderbolt connectors, are they? Are PC laptops providing Thunderbolt at all?

My blade 15 has thunderbolt

 

[Kkspire]

I’d be willing to bet 100% of complainers in here wouldn’t be using HDMI 2.1 and probably don’t even know the difference. And if you’re that pro and using HDMI….. well…