No, but it’s the only reason for HDMI (along with AV receivers) because it’s all the manufacturers support, so all of us home theater nerds that do care about this stuff have no real* choice but to keep up with the HDMI world. Yes, you can set up a media server that streams 4K video, but you’re not going to find a DisplayPort 4K UHD player, or a 7.2 AVR that plugs into your 77” OLED and supports all of your game consoles. HDMI is just the unfortunate reality there.
That said, the tech that actually takes advantage of the new cable specs tends to lag behind significantly, and new gaming consoles that support HDMI 2.2 likely will in a limited (ultimately disappointing) capacity for years, just like previous versions.
(Also the top comment in this thread doesn’t really seem to reflect modern reality for most people I know. Most people are using their TV to stream at 1080p - 4K, not watching broadcast TV - in which case, yeah, get a $60 720p LCD or whatever, HDMI specs won’t matter to that kind of viewer. Still, subscription streaming quality definitely doesn’t take full advantage of your expensive shiny new TV the way physical media - or a media server - might, but that’s another conversation).
I actually just spent a year or so doing this during break times at work with EAC. I ripped everything to WAV because storage is cheap, it’s a bit faster, and you can tag WAV files now, so I saw little reason not to, though FLAC is usually just as good and has wider support, so it’s up to you (you can easily convert back and forth if you change your mind, since either is lossless).
The key factor with EAC is to use it with AccurateRip (which is built-in to the app, but you need to configure it with your drive properly for it to work). There’s a lot of info on configuring this online but like with anything that touches audiophile communities, there’s a lot of bullshit you have to sort through as well. You’ll see a lot of people saying to set it to the slowest option to ensure a perfect rip, but 99% of the time you don’t need to do this - AccurateRip will compare your CD to what other users have ripped and ensure a bit-perfect match. In the event you have a rare CD or it doesn’t match the database, that’s when you set EAC to run slowly (secure mode) and set it to test and verify the tracks. After ripping, I use MP3tag to search musicbrainz or Discogs to tag the tracks and it’s good to go. In the event you’ve got a slightly defective disc AccurateRip/EAC point out errors in, you can even use an app called CUEtools to scan the database and repair the files.
I was paranoid about getting everything right on my first try, since the last thing I wanted to do was rip every CD I had again (well over a thousand) due to some dumb configuration mistake, so feel free to send me a message if you’ve got any questions. I nerded out and took a stupid amount of step by step notes about what I did so if this post isn’t long and annoying enough for you, I got plenty more where that came from.