Is using HDMI ports on a laptops reliable?

[Mark Mulcaster]

I myself have always been told to use some form of  I/O box to connect to a grading monitor and currently using the Ultrastudio Monitor 3G for short form projects at home on my Mac.

But we’re looking at the future and a wider demand for editors and finishing artists to work from home and doing colour critical work remotely so my question was is using a HDMI port on computer connected to a hdmi port on a reference monitor going to give an accurate and reliable image to work from.  
From a budgetary perspective if the we wanted purchase several setups I’d prefer to have a more accurate monitor  first and then look at better machines if they’re needed. If some form of I/O in the middle of the chain is needed then that’s ok but the current worklaptops only have hdmi ports on them.

seeing as the clients are signing off on all manner of devices I feel more reassured when I know what I’m looking is a correctly calibrated image on a robust correction before I deliver. 
 

what’s everyone’s thoughts? 

Edited January 23, 2021 by Mark Mulcaster

[Jussi Rovanperä]

If you have means to verify that the signal coming out of the hdmi is correct, then why not?

 

 

[Bruno Mansi]

On 1/23/2021 at 12:27 PM, Mark Mulcaster said:

I myself have always been told to use some form of  I/O box to connect to a grading monitor and currently using the Ultrastudio Monitor 3G for short form projects at home on my Mac.

You've probably been told this because this this is still the most trouble-free method of not having to deal with the colour management within the GUI /OS. 

The prices of IO boxes like you mention are  very cheap these days (thanks to Blackmagic) and every recent Mac has thunderbolt, so there's no reason not to use this method.  The issue of  having reassurance in your delivery then purely rests with the monitor your using  and how well it's calibrated.

I would keep the HDMI port for extending your GUI display area, especially if you're working on a laptop.