I noticed that too. I would guess they are trying to avoid the HDMI royalty and potentially DRM issues. The connector area looks modular so hopefully they come to their senses with the production version.
- Glenn W9IQ
Actually, I'm unconvinced by the marketing value of an external display option. Surely anyone that is prepared to put a screen on their shack table would prefer to have it hooked up to a PC - far more versatile than simply dedicating it to a larger panadaptor display. I would prefer that they gave me the panadaptor data over a fast USB port and let me display it in a window on my PC.
In fact it occurs to me that they are missing an even stronger marketing option - put the PC into the radio! A Raspberry Pi Zero costs about $10 and is the size of a stick of gum, but it is a capable little device. A Pi 4 costs something like $50 and can give a mid-range PC a good run for its money. Those are one-off prices to you or me - Yaesu or ICOM could get them a lot cheaper in bulk. I would think that there is quite a big marketing advantage for the first of the big manufacturers to ship a rig that you can connect to a screen, keyboard and mouse - then boot up and have not only a nice large panadaptor display, but also your logbook, DX Cluster, WSJT-X, PSKnnn, RTTY, JS8 etc. etc. all in a single box. I would certainly look very seriously at such an option...
Martin (G8FXC)