[bobdvb]

I'll upvote you because you're mostly right.

But to be fair, there is a standard that could have been used for digital video, SDI/HD-SDI, but the transceivers were expensive and it doesn't support any form of bi-directional handshake. There was already prosumer kit, mostly in the US, which had SD-SDI connections as an alternative to component. It didn't get popular in Europe mostly because of SCART.

I was once talking with someone who was very much involved in the process of standardising TV connectivity, a senior engineer at Gennum, and he said it wouldn't have been practical and SDI couldn't have been competitive with HDMI.

Personally, I would have loved the idea of some kind of SDI with return path signalling, like a test probe connector: https://w140.com/tekwiki/images/thumb/8/86/Tek_Interface_Evo...

[samplatt]

Oh, for sure. That and ADAT are great examples of tech that worked and worked well - and maybe even instrumental in HDMI's later adoption of optical tech in their cables.