The USB-C Struggle is Real

Why the 'The One Connector to Rule Them All' is Coming Up Short for AV Applications

- Brandon White

USB-C: the one connector to rule them all. The compact design makes it compatible with even the slimmest mobile devices, while the dense pin-out (24 pins compared to USB Type A’s four) opens data and power transmission possibilities for extremely high-demand applications.

A USB-C port can theoretically replace ports for USB-A, USB-B, HDMI, DisplayPort, 3.5 mm audio, Ethernet, power, or all of the above, with total backward compatibility and up to 5V/240W of bi-directional power. Devices can be daisy-chained using multiple USB-C cables, massively simplifying cable management. And, of course, the Type-C connector is symmetrical, so there is no more rotating and mashing the USB connector into the port to get it inserted right-side-up. The era of true, plug-and-play connectivity has arrived!

Yeah… How’s that working out for you?

If you’ve struggled to get any benefit out of USB-C in your AV solutions, well, you’re not alone. Running through that deceptively simple connector, there is an alphabet soup of confusingly named protocols and optional features.

A USB-C port might use any transfer mode ranging from USB 2.0, with its measly 4.5W of power and 48 Mbps of data, to USB4 Gen 4 (seriously, these names), with up to 240W of power and 80 Gbps. Intel’s Thunderbolt transport protocol uses the USB-C connector as well, but not all USB-C cables are Thunderbolt-compatible. Some USB-C ports are capable of multiple transfer modes, and many host devices have multiple USB-C ports, each with different capabilities: often you don’t even know what kind of signal you’re going to get until you hook up a couple of devices and watch what happens.