This paper analyzes the main protection principles of HVDC transmission line protection at present, and summarizes the research contents of protection based on transient quantity and catastrophe quantity respectively. Among them, the protection of HVDC transmission lines based on transient quantity mainly introduces four methods of extracting transient information of each frequency band, current direction protection, impedance protection and traveling wave protection. The protection of HVDC transmission lines based on catastrophe quantity mainly introduces catastrophe quantity direction protection, catastrophe quantity polarity protection and impedance protection. On this basis, the characteristics of HVDC transmission line protection at this stage and the existing problems in actual operation are analyzed, the future research ideas are discussed, and the development direction is prospected.