I haven't pivoted since the start of the thread. There simply was not a digital solution that could negotiate then stream video and AND 2+ channels of audio, all in one cable, that was supported by more than a small fraction of consumer and industry devices at once. Firewire (which you seem fixated on), for all it's many technical superiorities, had almost zero market with Windows users, or consumers in general. Set-top boxes used it in the US, but was uncommon outside of the US. Camcorders used it, but in 2002 when HDMI came out most people were still using film camcorders IIRC; digital only really became commonplace well after HDMI gained footholds.
I'm not saying the cable itself controlled clocks and handshakes, I'm conflating terms over the last couple of comments. I'm referring to HDMI, the cable, the protocol, and the connectors. And yes - HDCP had a huge part in how HDMI was pushed, which is both bad (introducing proprietary bullshit's never great) and good (larger adoption of standards that work well in the field).
Was HDMI perfect? FAR from it. But all these "there was this tech that did THIS facet better" is missing the point that I've stated a few times. It was a good solution to a number of small problems.
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...
If the data spends more time being executed than read by humans it doesn't deserve to be human readable.
Use binary packed data and have an AI write you an interpreter for the structure.