Displayport

http://www.pcworld.com/article/142270/dells_displayport_folly.html

I ran into this article when searching for more information on DisplayPort.

Needless to say, I disagree with him. HDMI is not a technology for computers to use, it’s made for HDTVs, and because of such it has limitations when used on computers and computer monitors. One such that many monitors have is that even if the monitor is 1920x1200, it will max out at 1920x1080 on HDMI and can only attain its full resolution with DVI. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem I’ll admit, but DisplayPort is already landing on many computers including my own with my new HD5870 card. There are 61 cards for sale on Newegg that have this technology including cards all the way down to $53 and going all the way up to $830 dual-core 5970 monsters. There’s only a few monitors out there that support it, but that should go up as computers all across the spectrum start having these ports built in. They’re already present in some corporate thin-client units.

There’s a small premium to buying a monitor now with DisplayPort, but the same was true when monitors first came out with DVI ports compared to VGA. It’s an economy of scale thing. VGA only LCDs were more complex and expensive to produce than DVI only LCDs, but there wasn’t as much of a market at first so the price was higher. DisplayPort LCDs will be even simpler than DVI only ones and will ultimately be the same price or cheaper.

He dismisses the daisy chaining technology saying that DisplayLink for USB already does that, but neglects to mention that DisplayLink doesn’t really handle high speed graphics or decent 3d acceleration. With a good video card and DisplayPort, you could do a number of monitors all with full 3d accel and a single cable going out, greatly reducing cable clutter. That’s not to say DisplayLink is a bad standard, but it’s not meant for anywhere near the same market as DisplayPort. It’s best for small embedded systems and little auxiliary monitors that don’t need to be updated very quickly, and it should shine in that market range.

They may not be smart in removing dvi and hdmi from monitors coming out now, but it wouldn’t be hard to see that in 5 years, the vast majority of the hardware now out will be obsolete and on its way to the dustbin, while most new systems will have these ports built in.

VESA is a respected standards organization dating back to the DOS days. They are the ones who standardized VGA and video higher than VGA for use in DOS, and had many other standards that were relatively widespread back in the day. The path they’ve taken with getting it into most computers before really pushing it to monitors is a good one, and should lead to this thing at least being common, if not ubiquitous in the next decade.