exactly. these devices protect the HDMI retimer/en-/decoder chip that surely follows somewhere downstream.
you should be able to remove them and everything should still work. (or wwork again if one is shorted, which is what most likely happened.
If removing these does not fix it, then the downstream chip has suffered. another option is that these HDMI lines have additional external filters on them, these are also famous for going bad when ESD events occur.
Make sure to replce the ESD protection Diodes if one is bad, ESD surging on HDMI is common. You should be able to use any HDMI capable ESD diodes, they usually have this denoted in the datasheet, examples have been posted.