I have no idea what goes through the minds of the nut jobs that do this shit at the companies. Its was probably for some DRM bullshit.
I decided to post this because I was currently doing some research on audio connections. Because I'm going to upgrade my monitor to a LG OLED TV later this year. And I was thinking of getting a new sound bar to go with it.
Currently I have a Yamaha sound bar connected to my PC via Digital Optical.
After some annoying hours of research I came to the conclusion of connecting my PC to the TV with HDMI (video) & Digital Optical (audio). Followed by connecting the sound bar system to the TV via EARC. Lastly I'll plug my blu-ray player into the TV so I can watch my physical movies that way instead of through my PC.
And this is still easier then how shit used to be decades ago.
You don't need the optical cable to the pc, the hdmi connection has higher bandwidth and quality over the optical. There's no case where you would want to use the optical output over your hdmi for that
I do if I want to use the sound card built into the motherboard vs using the audio chip in the video card.
In my case, my motherboard has a better audio chip than the video card.
The biggest difference is that HDMI can pass higher-resolution audio, including the formats found on Blu-ray: Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio. These formats can't get transmitted across optical.
Might want to read up. I think your card will have to be super super super old to not pass hdmi capable of that instead of optical.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/hdmi-vs-optical-which-digital-audio-connection-to-use/
(post is archived)