New video connector standard coming?

[YKhan]

They're trying to replace the old VGA connector again. They've already
tried twice with the DVI and HDMI standards, neither of which are
particularly popular compared to VGA. Now those two standards will
still be with us, as yet another standard, DisplayPort, tries the same
thing against VGA. How successful will it be?

They say that the old VGA was never designed for HDTV resolutions, yet
for years it's been displaying Super VGA over the same basic connector,
and SVGA is *higher* resolution than HDTV.

New display interface standard inches closer | CNET News.com
http://news.com.com/New+display+int...loser/2100-1041_3-5838703.html?tag=html.alert

 

[Rob Stow]

They're trying to replace the old VGA connector again. They've already
tried twice with the DVI and HDMI standards, neither of which are
particularly popular compared to VGA.

DVI is pretty danged common around here. One heck of a lot of
people have video cards with one or two DVI ports and a cable
connecting to the DVI port on their LCD monitor. Most modern
video cards have no VGA ports: DVI and S-Video only.

The big problem with DVI is that it is already at the limit of
the resolutions it can handle, while monitors continue to get
bigger with higher resolutions. DisplayPort can supposedly feed
up to 10.8 Gbit/Sec to the monitors - which should be enough for
a 6 or 7 MegaPixel display at 60 Hz.

Now those two standards will
still be with us, as yet another standard, DisplayPort, tries the same
thing against VGA. How successful will it be?

Contrary to your belief, VGA is already withering on the vine.
Displacing DVI is the challenge for DisplayPort.

 

[Bob Myers]

Contrary to your belief, VGA is already withering on the vine.
Displacing DVI is the challenge for DisplayPort.

Not quite. The VGA connector is still by far the most common
(how many PCs ship with any flavor of DVI as standard equipment
on the motherboard?), and the majority of monitors sold are still
VGA only. But there's no doubt that a new connector is needed, as
VGA doesn't offer many of the features required on future interfaces
(content protection being a big one) and the DVI connector is simply
too big and expensive to get much more share than it already has.
If anything, DVI's total volumes are dropping, as the consumer
electronics industry moves to HDMI. What's really needed is an
open, industry-standard interface, with sufficient capacity, extensibility,
and features to be usable in ALL applications, and in a low-cost
physical form that's small enough to go anywhere it's needed. And
that's exactly the goal of DisplayPort.

Bob M.

 

[Joe Pfeiffer]

They're trying to replace the old VGA connector again. They've already
tried twice with the DVI and HDMI standards, neither of which are
particularly popular compared to VGA. Now those two standards will
still be with us, as yet another standard, DisplayPort, tries the same
thing against VGA. How successful will it be?

They say that the old VGA was never designed for HDTV resolutions, yet
for years it's been displaying Super VGA over the same basic connector,
and SVGA is *higher* resolution than HDTV.

Ah, but *this* new standard connector includes content protection
schemes.

 

[Rob Stow]

Ah, but *this* new standard connector includes content protection
schemes.

"Optional" content protection schemes. And we all already know
that with Vista the "optional" will be compulsory.

 

[YKhan]

Ah, but *this* new standard connector includes content protection
schemes.

So what's going to happen? It sees you playing a pirated video and it
shuts your monitor down?

Yousuf Khan

 

[Joe Pfeiffer]

So what's going to happen? It sees you playing a pirated video and it
shuts your monitor down?

Other way around -- if your monitor doesn't promise to not let you get
at the video stream to make a copy, the DVD player either refuses to
play or only provides low-resolution output.

 

[Bob Myers]

Other way around -- if your monitor doesn't promise to not let you get
at the video stream to make a copy, the DVD player either refuses to
play or only provides low-resolution output.

Something like that, but what everyone seems to be forgetting
here is that both HDMI and DVI also support content protection
already. That DisplayPort will as well is simply what should be
expected for any digital interface proposal that expects to be
accepted in any market where copyrighted content is going to
be present. This requirement is driven by the content owners, not
the interface designers.

Bob M.