Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Is this going to include that new DRM-inspired video technology that MS has been touting? I wondered how that would reach the market. I didn't RTFA, and I'm too tired to Google. Don't mod this up, mod up the informed replies. :) G'night.
Because as we know, every consumer loves paying for new technology, the main purpose of which is to remove features they already have! Though saying that, 99% of media purchasers will no doubt think that giving away rights is a fair compromise for not having to use an audio *and* video cable.
It's simpler.
It requires fewer wires and stuff.
It's cheaper to make.
It (optionally) supports DRM.
Sounds awesome for the manufacturers and content providers. But what do I, as a consumer, get that I don't get from DVI or HDMI?
Other than a bill for a new monitor next time I upgrade my graphics card..
http://twitter.com/onion2k
This is getting ridiculous!
My TV is already a sloppy mess full of connections. I've spent hours in the store explaining to customers (and salesdrones) what these mean and what they need. Half of those connectors should never even have been invented in the first place because a better standard already existed (Ex: VGA). I hope consumers send a huge backlash over this, because displays are expensive, and converter boxes are hard to find and even more expensive.
they can shove it directly up their ass.
they are supposed to be a technical engineering standards group DRM has nothing to do with what they do and if it is any part of the new specification then it will be proof that they sold out big time and should not be held as a respectable standards group anymore.
DRM = proof of a group becoming sell-outs.
It's the content producers who have pushed for DRM. As they see it, analog had a natural "copy prevention" element to it that copies would always be degraded compared to what they're copied from, so a fourth-generation copy would truly suck. With digital that's not the case. So they're pushing these awful, evil, hacks, and using a combination of legislation and a simple refusal to license content to systems outside of the DRM'd sphere to force manufacturers to go along with it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
All these posts seem like there is only one option...the bend over and take it option.
But there is another....
You can vote with your wallet. don't buy this crap. If you are in a coprorate purchasing position, don't buy it for your company. I would bet that ALL of us were Windows users in the early 90's....maybe a little OS/2 Warp and BeOS here and there...but when MS didn't give us what we wanted, we switched to Linux and Mac OS X.
That is the power we hold. It is the ONLY voice we have as consumer and it is the most powerful one. If you feel usage rights and too restrictive or don't like the idea of "upgrading" to a restrictive system then don't and tell sales people why you aren't givign them a commission.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
I'm going to need a THIRD monitor adapter?
:P
I'm currently using a DVI -> VGA adapter with a VGA -> Mac adapter plugged into it so I can run my 20" Apple-branded trinitron, which I've been using for years.
Some of us can't afford to buy new monitors just because the connectors change.
If you just sit there and read the screen, the content hasn't changed but the interface keeps sending the same picture over and over. With this new interface, the picture is sent once, and it only sends the changes, like let's say the pointer moving around. I'm not sure how they're going to implement this, it's not as easy as it seems, it would require a lot of work on the video chip itself.
Mostly random stuff.
If you have a homemade movie you must be able to play that. So it looks to me that a monitor with DRM is pretty much not doing anything to stop you from watching your ripped movie which has the same parameters as your homemade movie. The screendrivers do not need to be hacked for that.
The DRM probably has use in companies like for protecting documents, but I can not imagine how yet, and why that should happen at monitor level. Maybe a document can be sent around and you can open it but not display it? Pretty useless, lets not be able to open it than anyway, much more efficient.
I think they just added this DRM line for the sake of hollywood. VESA headoffice: If we add DRM to our statement of better resolutions, and bandwidth for this new standard, then we might get less opposition from Hollywood who is afraid of copies, or they might even sponsor us (evil laugh follows).
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
It would require a proper framebuffer and hardware to update on the monitor... driving the price up considerably.
I can't see this taking off - even adding a few cents onto the manufacturing cost at the low end can make or break a product... this is going to be quite a bit more than that. DVI is popular because it actually removes a step (the ADC in the monitor) so it's dirt cheap to implement and gives a gain in quality... what incentive do the manufacturers have to implement this new interface? More cost, no benefit to the consumer...
Where's the Vision in this Proposal?
It's clear that displays are not just things that we look at, but things that we interact with. Anybody who reads the news today, and anybody who has been thinking about the future for the past 3 decades should be aware that displays are, more than anything else, the ultimate input devices.
To that end there should be a provision in the proposal to support an upgradeable means of connecting a display to the network, a means of maintaining a user session, and a means of sending user input to the display, and over the network. This is functionality that each and every software program being monitored and controlled through the display will need to have and which, therefore, should be built into the display specification itself. This saves the functionality from having to be built into each and every software program independently. Naturally, all the software needed for and used in this specification should also be based on the GPL.
I only see this as being useful for medical displays, the kind of monitors with 4096x4096 resolutions and up, right now these are driven by several cards bundled together, each driving its part of the screen.
Mostly random stuff.
HDMI > Bandwidth than DVI, works for both monitors and televisions, BACKWARDS COMPATIBLE with DVI.
I don't have anything that can even handle 1080p yet. 90% of television isn't even broadcasting progressively, let alone HD res. I can't buy DVD's in HD yet.
Why do I need another cable/TV when I am far from fully utilizing the one I have?
Of course in the DMR case it needs cooperation from the drivers. The point is that the cable between the computer and monitor carries only an encrypted signal so that illegally tampering (as it surely will be) with the signal at this point (say, by plugging the monitor into a PVR instead) will show only random junk.
To display something sensible, the graphics card driver will need to obtain the encryption key from the monitor. Or possibly the key will be tied to a particular graphics card by the manufacturer.
This already happens when trying to play a DVD on a laptop while sending the video on TV-OUT. You'll see the desktop background on the TV screen, while the DVD video is replaced by a blue screen.
And this even happens to downloadable movies (like archive.org) as well.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Or you could just use a DRM-crippled computer as a gateway and put another layer over the internet, bypassing all the DRM garbage. Think of the way that something like 6in4 works to layer IPv6 over IPv4 networks.
Actually, I think it was named in a hurry. Basically, you had ITV Digital, which offered some free channels (all the terrestrial ones and the BBC ones, possibly plus some others) and some more subscription ones, all through your TV aerial.
Then that went belly-up (partly due to counterfeit viewing cards and partly to large payments for sports rights, both of which Sky may have had a hand in), and was taken over by a joint operation between the BBC and Sky and renamed Freeview.
Oh, and the signal quality's not bad - about that of a decent analog signal, if you ask me - and it has most of the channels that are worth watching. Remember, we can't get HDTV here yet *at all* (Sky will start offering it soon, and there's the possibility of terrestrial HDTV after the analog switch-off, but until then).
Bums me out how 90% of the response to this new standard is vitriol... :/ So you won't be able to play the Chinese version of Star Wars on your PC, who cares?
;)
I'm pretty jazzed, myself. DVI single link tops out at about a gigabit, or 1920 x 1200 @ 60 fps. As I recall, dual link tops out at 2048 x 1536, which means: I wonder what hacks Apple has to resort to with their 30"?
This new standard tops out at 10x the pixels of Dell's new 24" monitor running at 60 fps, which will enables us all to get displays with lots more pixels sooner.
And the new simpler, smaller port is important too. DVI has always been way too complicated (single + dual link, DVI-A, DVI-D, DVI-I) and expensive ($50 a cable).
An no video card vendor can really viably do more than dual head, b/c there just isn't space. (Yeah, the Parhelia was triple head, but where did that go... And was the third head on a daughter card?)
So, with A) Vista's display scalability making it possible for users to get more detail with more pixels rather than fonts that become so small as to be unreadable, B) this new display interface, and C) Dell's crazy determination to drive LCD prices down, I'm hoping we see some really neat stuff 5 years from now.
Like all video cards doing triple head, and monitors with the same number of pixels as Apple's 30" for $500.
I've gotten a taste of this future running dual head 24" Dells at work, and it's just plain uber-geektastic...
(Heh, and I *finally* enough screen real estate to run Dev Studio properly...
In other news - "Norwegian hackers develop an O(1) algorithm for breaking AES". .... Various three-letter intelligence agencies who might be reading this, stop this madness while you still can.
;).
AES being broken any time soon is highly unlikely, it had a very long period of peer review before Rijndael was selected (from a strong field of candidates) as the official AES cipher - including, without a doubt, extensive review by the NSA.
There will be other places to attack PMP though, particularly authentication and session key exchange. E.g. the authentication method the driver will use to authenticate your video card need not be cryptographic, but instead depend on your driver having knowledge of undisclosed nuances of your hardware. That sounds like something that will get broken on at least one graphics chip
However, PMP includes a method for Microsoft to (if needs absolutely be) revoke the driver for that particular hardware, or revoke ability to display through or on particular hardware. So if you were unfortunate you might run Windows Update one day (or have Windows run it automatically, without you having a choice) and find that suddenly those films and whatever you acquired *legally* from then on is displayed in low-quality, or maybe *not at all*.
Sounds good, doesn't it?
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.