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New Display Interface Standard in the Works
virgil_disgr4ce writes "The VESA standards group is designing a new display interface standard to replace both VGA and DVI. The new standard promises better bandwidth and interoperability for a ' broad application within computer monitors, TV displays, projectors, PCs and other sources of image content.'"
... submarine patents.
I'll place money on the emergence of one or more patent claims on this, if it becomes a new standard.
My blog
I doubt it.
It's only been three years...
It's not too surprising, though. DRM has to extend to display hardware for it to be any use.
Right now I'm a Windows users and I have been for many years. I've stayed with W2K because I didn't much like the direction XP took. I'm pretty sure that there is going to come a point in the future where I move to Linux, because the control the Windows OS would have over my PC is unacceptable.
Unfortunately, the majority of PC users have no idea that this issue even exists.
--
Toby
Optional unless you want to be compatible with Microsoft's new edition of Windows Media Player.
Why do you think all the manufacturers are hellbent on pushing stuff like digital TV, new audio and video standards (BluRay and this)? Because of DRM, of course. Analog is being killed on purpose and DRM is coming. There's nothing you can do about it, so get ready for DRM'd computer hardware (goodbye home-built computers and open software), speakers, TVs, monitors and stereos.
Don't think that the customer's will allow this? Just wait and see. Analog TV broadcasts will end here in 2007 and you can bet that most of the stuff will be flagged with the broadcast flag.
The owls are not what they seem
"Optional" , but how long is it going to stay that way? I'm guessing this whole interface is setup so the monitor won't show media unless it is "authenticated". So if you pop in a Divx rip, and manage to hack windows vista bad enough that it will play media without connecting to a license server, the monitor will be the last measure available to the *AA. If the monitor drivers havent been cracked as well and cant connect to said license server, it will show only a black patch where the video is supposed to be. This interface is merely another way to take control of the machine out of the user's hands.
Ofcourse all the exteme DRM in vista is "optional" now, but it only takes one person to flip a switch at MS and the entire system is locked down like a maximum security prison.
/going to stick with SVGA
Disclaimer: On the other hand, I am kind of a psycho...
Its 'optional', if you dont want to view any of the 'optional' content.
Such as streaming media, DVD, excel...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Booooooooring.
Because there aren't any Linux media hackers in the world who'll do a rip app to fool media apps into thinking it's outputting to a DRM-protected one-of-these and instead it just gets dumped to a data file for P2P.
I mean, what are the odds? DeCSS was just a fluke.
Or, to be less snide... yes, clearly this is an attempt to create a DRM-enabled display standard, the idea being to prevent people from intercepting the unencoded, unprotected signal coming out of your video card. But, as always, the client is in the hands of the enemy. All the information needed to snap this like a twig is already present on the box.
The only way DRM will ever work is government-enforced computer controls and white-listing of 'approved' software, with unapproved software being locked out (yes, there are ways even around that, but at that point it's too much trouble for John Doe to set up the whitewashing needed to run an unapproved box that looks clean to Big Brother). And even that will just force uncontrolled boxes off the Internet (as we know it) onto grey or black wireless networks outside the reach of governments.
just good that I don't care at all about copying all that shit thats on TV anyways...
Everything is interim. Wireless is an option when TeraHz Wifi is there.
.but when MS didn't give us what we wanted, we switched to Linux and Mac OS X.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire? No thanks!
resigned
From the article:
> A similar situation emerged in 1998 when consumers were initially hesitant
> to adopt a transition from CRT to LCD screens.
I don't think this was the reason for a hesitant transition of LCD,
which would work with existing interfaces. It was the price, which was
initially too high. For me, the prizes have only come down far enough
in 2001.
A new monitor interface will take longer to adapt to because it requires
both new graphics cards and new monitors and new computer projectors.
For me, an important transition was from VGA to DVI. Since my monitors
are feeded digitally, I have a much clearer picture. Still, I'm required
to use VGA, when using a video projector.
As others have pointed out, the better refresh rate or bandwidth is hardly the
reason for proposing a new standard. DRM implementations which promise to close
an analog hole, are the driving force. I doubt that encrypting the video signal
will do any good for the refresh rate. So, don't expect consumers to fall for it.
Maybe the other 99% of computer users that don't read Slashdot and Don't Care (tm) about such things?
And it'll be a big surprise to the masses when it gets here. I can almost hear the calls now. "Hey, why won't this movie play? It ran alright on my old computer." Welcome to Windows World, buckwheat. They'll be offended, huffy for a little while, have a passive-aggressive little snit by complaining to people who can't do anything about it. But after a while they'll go on their grumbly way because they haven't been investing in any alternative, learning a different OS or trying out open source alternatives.
I see the same things in my business customers all the time. Except I get to remind them that I told them it was coming a year ago and they go, "Oh, right. But I thought they were going to extend support for that another year?" No, sorry. The next question is usually, "Well, how much is it going to cost?" Then I get to listen to their passive-aggressive snit aimed at me, like I have some command over what MSFT does.
If you want off the MSFT treadmill you have to plan it, start experimenting with alternatives and roll out the change in a controlled environment. Getting huffy when you plug your new PC in and something doesn't work anymore just annoys those of us in the business.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
people would simply stop tolerating being assraped by greedy fucknuts in hollywood, but if you look at the state of the planet its pretty clear that people in general arent very smart so my hopes are pretty low..
I won't get excited until someone develops an audio/video bus where you can connect multiple input devices and multiple output devices to the same bus.
I am disgusted at purchasing a TV where I can hookup one device via HDMI and one device via component video. So just what is one to do when they have two HDMI input devices and they want to view them both on their TV?
With a well designed A/V bus, I should be able to daisy chain several input and output devices to the bus. The streams on the bus should identify themselves descriptively. So, when I am changing the input source on my TV it says "Apex DVD player" or "Motorola DVR", etc. The TV shouldn't determine how many of which types of devices can be connected--rather the bandwidth of the bus should determine how many output devices can be active at once. Beyond that, if an output device has no input devices requesting the signal, why should it be using any bandwidth?
So my DVD player, DVR, Computer, TV, and audio receiver are all hooked up to the same bus. My DVD player is playing a DVD, but noone is watching it. The audio receiver is tuned into the audio channel of the DVD. In this case, only the DVD's audio channel would be on the bus. Simple bandwidth allocation based on demand. Devices can broadcast that a signal is available without actually broadcasting the signal. Then the TV is turned on and someone is watching the DVD. Now the DVD's audio and video are being broadcast. And even though the DVD audio is destined for two devices, it is only broadcast once on the bus. Combinations could be created where say you are watching the video of your computer on your TV and you are listening to the audio from a CD player, etc.
I also have no doubt the MPAA will be very willing to show their benevolence by making the fee for this service quite small, so that families can afford to to have a copy on both their main media player as well as the children's laptops.
What were you worried about again?
Notice also how high definition == protected content.
I can't see how this will work without the cooperation from the drivers.
Yes, that's exactly the idea. Google for "Protected Media Path", drivers will be cryptograhically verified and revocable if needs be, using hardware TCPA. The authenticated driver must then authenticate the video card, and must authenticate the displays too.
See this recent Ed Felten article and the linked to Microsoft white paper on Protected Media Path.
Monitor will know that the content of a certain window is a movie being played?
Cause the 'trusted' video driver and your 'trusted' video card will ask your trusty monitor what kind of inputs and outputs it has. If your trusty monitor isn't trusted enough, your video card will downscale to a size specified by the "content owner" then upscale the content again so it will lack quality, before sending it on to be displayed. (eg like watching a 320x160 MPEG at full-screen). Your trusty video card will also switch-off or blank the content in any "bad" outputs it might have, like unprotected VGA or DVI.
Note that in this vision of the future of computers, not even your PCI bus is to be trusted if it has user-accessible slots or even motherboard traces. Your trusty graphics driver will have to encrypt the content using AES first before passing it across the bus to your graphics card (which has to decrypt it) - if the content owner demands it.
Ie, the future of computing involves your trusty computer doing massive amounts of extra work for 0 reward to you except to keep Hollywood happy.
Read the paper and be astounded.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
By not using the hardware acceleration, that does the "replace blue bits with video" bit.
What I am looking for is a way to carry video all over a new house I will be building in a few years. It turns out DVI and HDMI simple cannot run these distances. And besides that, the cabling itself is very expensive.
The traditional analog way to run video is over a 75 ohm coaxial cable, either as a baseband composite video with 2 separate audio cables, or as baseband component video (3 cables for Y, Pr, and Pb channels), or as modulated carriers suitable for cable or over-the-air (OTA) tuners. But the big question is how to advance home video distribution to the digital age. DVI and HDMI simply can't do it. I doubt DisplayPort will be able to do so, either for similar reasons. What could workd is the SDI (Serial Data Interface) and related HD upgrades used by the broadcast industry. The cabling for SDI is simple high grade 75-ohm coax and could even run a kilometer or more. The catch is that SDI is not cheap, despite the fact that technologically, it isn't really any more difficult to do than other digital technologies (it just isn't widely deployed to bring down costs). SDI also does not include any content protection methods (some would say this is a good thing).
This tendency for manufacturers to keep making all new types of connectors, and cables, and pinouts, for each new type of interfacing (USB and Firewire are other examples in a different context) just seems silly. Whatever needs to be sent or exchanged needs to simply be defined in terms of using a data bit stream, which can then be sent or exchanged over any of a number of types of physical interfaces. Follow that up with some simple high speed serial hardware interfaces (a metallic one over twisted pair, another matallic one over coax, and a fiber optic one). Done right, one type of simple and common cabling and connectors can do things from keyboards to video displays to hard drives, and even do so over a few kilometers of distance for point-to-point connections.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Time for me to make my own netowrk. Anyone who lives near me can help string up wires and we will start a new internet. Maybe call it ComputerNet.