The primary design goal of VGA was to display video. The primary design goal of HDMI was to prevent the display of video.
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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displayport is the modern successor to vga.
I wish DisplayPort would become the standard already. It's superior in every way.
HDMI is the microUSB of the video world and I wish it would die already in lieu of DP and USB-C/ThunderBolt.
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And to monetize the display of video. Licensing of that port's supporting technology is holding everyone back.
Every time I notice I cannot use my full refresh rate over the HDMI on my 7900xtx in Linux because of licencing issues, I get rationally pissed off.
Oh, you want to plug your own computer into your own TV using a cable you own?
Isn’t there someone you forgot to ask (and pay)?
The mighty DisplayPort: "what is this peasant behaviour I'm too royal(ty-free) to understand?"
How do I add a DP port to both my TV and my laptop?
If your laptop has USB-C it most likely already has DP out.
Your TV? message the manufacturer. tell your friends to message the manufacturer. Demand DisplayPort on TVs. Be the change you want to see in the world.
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That's one of the things I like about Displayport. It locks in but is generally not too hard to remove (depending on your monitor/PC clearance).
The other is that it doesn't involve paying ransom to the HDMI consortium...
The port is great.
Device manufacturers putting said port deep in the bowels of Erebus where no mortal man could hope to actuate the locking mechanism is less great.
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Nah, it is all about safety.
If you triple over a stretched HDMI cable it will safely disconnect.
If you triple over a stretched VGA cable... Well, may God save you and your monitor.
MY BODY IS A MACHINE THAT TURNS ELECTRICAL SIGNALS INTO COLORED PIXELS. YOU HAVE NO POWER OVER ME, MORTAL. DON'T TREAD ON ME.
If you triple over a stretched HDMI cable it will safely disconnect.
If you triple over a stretched VGA cable… Well, may God save you and your monitor.
Like 3 plugs in the same port? How do you even accomplish that?
Hah this guy doesn't know how to use the three plugs
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To be fair, VGA had 2 big ass screws on each side to hold the connection in. If you tightened them all the way down, the VGA connector was essentially part of the fucking machine at that point.
I remember wondering as a kid why those plugs needed to be screwed in like that. It seemed ridiculously overengineered.
The pixels come out otherwise.
It was! Back in the day, half the time the screws were tighter in the plug which caused the sockets to come out of the motherboard rather than unscrewing in many times during my desktop days. I fucking hated them!
Could at least straighten a bent pin, though...
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No hotplugging back then. If you pulled out the plug, gotta reboot. Idk if anything worse could happen, like damage to the hardware.
Fun fact: The connector is called a DE-15, VGA is just the protocol using it in this application.
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As someone who worked IT help desk in the mid/late aughts: fuck VGA and DVI. Let them stay dead. If I had a nickel for every time I snagged one in a desk's rat's nest on every single USB or power cable while trying to route cables, I could build me a top of the line gaming rig with 2026 prices.
The RJ plugs are my least favourite. Still snags but the plastic bit that snags is feeble enough to break off easily, and then the plug doesn't have anything holding it in to the port. And those covers usually make it harder to fit it through holes intended for ethernet cables as well as make it harder to unclip it from the port.
Like the Cisco switch that needed to be recalled due to the placement of it's reset button.
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Who screwed in vga carefully every time? Without the screws vga was worse.
You can get HDMI with a lock tab . I hate that too. Nothing worse than trying to reach behind a wall mount to squeeze the lock tab.
I did. Because something in me just won’t let something not be secured properly if a mechanism for it exists.
Sometimes you want it to disconnect instead of pull everything down with it if something gets caught on a wire.
Like a cat
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Fuck HDMI. All my homies use Displayport!
Those two screws on the VGA block are tough
I had a mobo one time that just gave up and the stand offs just screwed off with the cable. Shrug
Man, I miss those. Talk about enshittification lol
hold on, I have something for this
FOUND IT
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This isn't all that much cus of the slot and more to do with that most vga was set up with mounting screws which sadly fell out of favor with hdmi
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Kegels.
(sorry) (not sorry?)
HDMI also has a leaky hack
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/07/pulling-data-from-hdmi-rf-leakage/
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