HDMI uses a digitalized form of the traditional TV signals. The format of the transmitted data still depends on the parameters that defined traditional TV signals, like video frame frequency, video line frequency, vertical and horizontal retrace intervals and so on. Such parameters are no longer essential for digital television and there is no longer any need to constrain the transmission of video signals with them.

DisplayPort uses a typical communication protocol that can carry arbitrary data packets, not much different from the protocols used on USB or Ethernet.