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The State of Video Connections
mikemuch writes "Joel Durham provides a nice rundown on what's happening in video interfaces as we leave VGA behind and move through the DVI flavors, visit HDMI along the way, and look forward to UDI and DisplayPort."
Spare your eyeballs with the ad free, one page print version.
Most of my monitors are 19-inch CRT monsters. They do what I need them to do, they deliver a pretty image, but they're old. I still have a ViewSonic Optiquest V95 in service that dates back to around 1999. It's a VGA monitor, as are all of my displays. I shudder at the idea of updating them, not because of some sentimental attachment, but because connecting displays to computers has become so darned complicated.
The analog VGA was the standard for such a long time, some of us just got used to it. Today, I don't remember the last time I got a performance-grade graphics card with a VGA port on the back of it; I have a small cadre of DVI-to-VGA adapters that I use to plug in my monitors.
DVI as a standard features a number of sub-standards, some analog, some digital. Now DVI is already seeing the writing on the wall due to its limited bandwidth, just as the world grows accustomed to it. HDMI is crossing from the TV set to the computer, UDI is creeping into the market, and DisplayPort is riding over the horizon and hoping to take over the world.
What if you just want to play Supreme Commander or do your taxes? Can't you just poke a monitor cable plug into a display adapter and be done with it? Sure you can, if you know what to expect when you face the next generation of graphics-to-display connections.
VGA
Sure it's old, but it still works. Video Graphics Array (VGA) has been around since 1987, a few years after which it became the standard connection between the PC and its monitor and stayed that way for more than a decade. If you happen to purchase an analog CRT monitor, even one made today, it's likely to require a VGA connection to a computer.
The term VGA has come to mean a number of things. In one sense, it's used to refer to the actual port found on a graphics card or the corresponding plug (a 15-pin mini D-sub male) on a monitor cable. VGA is also sometimes used to describe the outdated and rarely used screen resolution of 640x480 pixels, which was once considered sharp and sexy.
VGA Connector
click on image for full view
VGA graphics cards date back to the days of ISA expansion ports. Such cards were typically capable of addressing only 256K of local memory and displaying 256 colors at 640x480 at a 70Hz refresh rate. As demand grew for higher resolutions and more robust graphics support, the original VGA spec became outmoded but the connection port was preserved.
VGA is analog. Graphics cards with VGA compatibility employ RAMDAC (random access memory digital to analog converter) chips to pipe digital graphics signals through the analog display cable. Of course, with digital displays like flat-panel monitors being all the rage, it would be even cooler to have a direct digital-to-digital connection from PC to display, wouldn't it? That's where DVI came to the rescue.
DVI
DVI stands for Digital Visual Interface. As digital flat-panel monitors started to become the rage at the tail end of the last century, the analog VGA connector quickly became inadequate for the needs of such displays. The DVI port is quite different from that of VGA: It's made up of up to 24 pins (most of which are for TMDS) and an additional five pins for analog compatibility. TMDS stands for Transition Minimized Differential Signaling; it's a high-speed serial interface used by the DVI and HDMI display standards.
DVI comes in three flavors:
* DVI-A, in which the A stands for analog. This type of DVI connection only transmits analog signals and is intended for use with CRT monitors. You almost never see DVI-A.
* DVI-D, the D meaning digital. This is purely digital, without any analog compatibility at all.
* DVI-I, with the I standing for integrated. This connection carries both analog and digital signals and can be used with either analog or digital displays. This is the most common DVI connector found on graphics cards.
To further complicate matters, DVI-D and D
On one side updating the video connector may be a necessary advancement to accomodate higher bandwidth video modes. On the other side we can only hope that system vendors don't begin bundling their desktops with their monitors and inhibiting cross-pollination by strictly enforcing IP on their video adapter design.
I would hate to see the day when I use one display device for Linux and need an entirely different device to be compatible with proprietary DRM/TC/HD output or have to buy a third party descrambler type box--because we all know what a racket those were. It'd be like early 80s cable TV wars all over again.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
What's with these never ending fscking changes? Obsolescence built in, incompatible formats, changing far too frequently. Bullshit DRM "features" in each new revision.
Please stop this crap! Just give us simple digital connectors and let the boxes talk to each other. How about something plain and simple 10Gb Ethernet?
This article pimps UDI, which uses an HDMI-backwards compatible plug and can do higher bandwidth (10.8Gbps) and HDCP (copy protection enforcement).
Unfortunately, HDCP implementation sucks. Standard procedure for the problems almost everyone has with HDCP-enabled cable boxes is to *reboot the box*. Apparently, in the exchange of encryption keys a handshake sometimes gets dropped, and nobody has a firmware solution.
Of course, even it worked right, HDCP would still suck.
VGA isn't going anywhere until we replace all our KVM rack switches and who needs HD for a TTY?
In the mean while, the inquirer continues its series of posts of articles about external video card connections.
Me? I fly with proprietary fibre solutions! Well, I would if i were dirt rich.
Having your graphics display remote from the consoles they are attached to is absolutely amazing. I wish we could wire our entire office with decent thin clients.
As I'm sure many of you have noticed, Intel and OSTG went into some kind of marketing deal with the Intel "Opinion Center" on Slashdot. There is nothing inherently wrong with that as all of the "stories" (rehashed press releases) were posted in Intel's own section; none of them were on the front page or in any of the other sections. AMD had a similar deal a while ago, but that appears to have been over for a while now. The strange thing about Intel's deal is that the link on the front page is in a somewhat prominent position and has a different color scheme in order to make it stand out. But what is more interesting is that the link IS NOT A DIRECT LINK. Instead it redirects through DoubleClick for some reason. I am not trying to make this sound sinister, but I found that a little odd.
Anyway, Intel posted a number of press releases and got a few comments here and there. But sometime last week they decided to get out of the deal. There is nothing wrong with that, but they DELETED all the previous stories and posted some lame excuse. Not that this means anything, but the comments on Intel's previous stories could still be viewed if you knew the exact url. In other words only the stories were deleted; the comments were not. This action generated a number of negative comments on the whole Intel "Opinion Center" idea. Today I went back to check on it and lo and behold they have DELETED ALL THE COMMENTS and marked the story as READ ONLY. While Slashdot claims that they can't or won't delete comments, I think it is pretty clear that things can be done if the price is right. Although I suppose we all already knew this from previous incidents, this time in particular it caught me by surprise. While a few of the comments were trolls, most of them voiced honest but negative opinions of the "Opinion Center". If you want to call it an "Opinion Center", then you should be ready to hear opinions. Otherwise just call a spade a spade: Intel "Marketing Center".
I never liked the idea in the first place, but deleting all the previous stories AND comments is really weak and speaks a lot about the integrity of both Intel and Slashdot. If you think Intel and Slashdot did the wrong thing here, please mod this post up.
No mention of Wireless HDMI?
Wizard Needs Food, Badly
Such cards were typically capable of addressing only 256K of local memory and displaying 256 colors at 640x480
My VGA card had 256k of RAM, and it did 640x480 at 16 colors. I wonder why...
640*480=307200
256k=262144 bytes
That's also why most early "VGA" games ran at 320x200x256. I understand that 640x480 is sometimes referred to as VGA regardless of color depth, but that doesn't seem to be what he's doing here.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
I wish they'd hurry up and standardise the damn things. I just bought a Chimei LCD and the cable supplied is a DVI-I to DVI-I but my video card (Xpertvision Geforce 6600GT) has a DVI-D port, and for the life of me I can't find a shop here in Australia that sells a DVI-I to DVI-D cable! I can see why so many people don't like computers. Standards like SATA (small cables!) and USB (plug just about anything in) are going the right way. Hey, why couldn't we use USB2, wouldn't ~400mbits be enough?
"Anonymous could not immediately be reached for further comment." - International Business Times
There are too many lame names for all the "standards"! They aren't self-explanatory at all.
I adblock all animated gifs.
Blessed be the prime numbered slashdotters
VGA: Totally in hardware except for the brand/model information used to determine which resolutions are supported. Analog, sometimes of low quality. Broken pins remove one color component from the screen, which inconveniences image editors (photoshoppers) until the cable is replaced. Simple to manufacture. Worked for years.
HDCP: Encrypted and decrypted; mostly in software. The encryption was designed to allow protected playback of "premium content", but is still used and wastes power even when none is played. Digital, high quality. Broken pins may have adverse effects on the encryption process and disallow any output to the display. More costly. Hyped, and I can't predict how long HDCP will live.
Next?
To truely become the standard, it must be able to be mass produced by some knock off company in China.
For that to happen, either there is no DRM, the DRM is optional, or the DRM is well known (and effectively nullified).
Remember, that HDCP/DRM means more processing, more parts, and more costs, with no quality gain. What exactly is the motivation for using it?
So VGA and DVI are the current standards for inexpensive devices.
HDMI can really never be on a low-end device, as HDCP/DRM/encryption is mandatory. Unless some variation of HDMI is used that ignores the HDCP requirement.
The same is true of UDI.
DisplayPort has optional HDCP/DRM/encryption, so that places it in the DVI category.
Of course there can be a 20 year delay effect from patents. VGA is patent free. The first digital standard to give up or loose its patents, may have an advantage.
Of course, why do we need another digital port for monitors. Some variation of Ethernet, USB, Firewire, could also do the job.
"HDMI is a purely digital standard with the capability to carry audio as well as video data. Like DVI, HDMI uses TMDS to carry digital signal data; also like DVI, HDMI is HDCP-compatible."
I seem to remember that the NextStep computers, as well as Apples had that capability as well.
Get a DVD-D to DVD-D cable, it will work fine. DVD-I is just setup to carry analogue and digital signals, your monitor doesn't need both. A D cables works fine in an I port.
Why is it that I can get wireless 50mbps streams over wireless (well, when things are working), in a generic, 802-wireless way, over a hundred yards or so, but I can't get video from my computer to my monitor, over one foot, a fraction of the bandwidth, to a wireless monitor. The time is way overdue for a ubiquitous wireless monitor spec... I'm actually surprised Apple hasn't innovated on this front (although their iMac's are an elegant alternative).
I have a wireless keyboard, wireless mouse, wireless headset for my laptop. I can understand the delay on killing the wires on power (although induction is a solution there), but where's the freakin' wireless monitors?!?!?
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
does this mean better p0rn?
2 cents,
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank
i'd hate to own a wireless monitor, only to find out i need to plug it in somewhere!
From the article it seemed like support for HDCP in UDI was optional (which would make sense being destined for computer displays, just like DVI can carry HDCP today but mostly does not).
Is there something somewhere that states UDI HDCP is mandatory for implementors?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Indeed, let's also include the graphics card with the monitor instead of the computer and run an X server on the monitor and connect it through ethernet. If we in addition connect the keyboard and mouse directly to that monitor, we could even put it remote from the actual computer if we wish to. We just need a nice name for that monitor/keyboard/mouse combination running X. Well, what about calling it "X Terminal"?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I've heard from the home theater folks that HDMI was a seriously broken implementation. v1.1 wasn't necessarily compatible from device to device, v1.2 only carried stereo, and at the time I was in the ,market, only the PS3 used v 1.3....and they weren't necessarily backwards compatible.
They ended up with the comment that the video quality wasn't up there with component.
So, were they blowing sunshine up my skirt, or is HDMI really the tarpit they describe?
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
> What are the limits to DVI?
If you RTFA it's in there.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
"Why do we need another display connector?"
If you move into TV-land you also have coaxial, composite, s-video, component, and HDMI, as well as 1/8 and 1/4" phone jacks, RCA, digital-coax, and digital-optical for audio.
My personal theory [putting on tinfoil hat] is that's it's all a vast conspiracy by the cable and connector manuafactuers. Every new connector requires new cables, adaptors, and, in the end, replacing "obsolete" equipment that can no longer talk to one other.
And why does an optical or HDMI cable of sufficient length end up costing more than most DVD players? It's a CABLE for Pete's sake.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The ideal cable for me would be one that I could pre-network the house with, so that I could choose to display the output from any of several computers in my house. That way, I could get a monster computer with gigantic fans that lives in the basement, and I could interface with it in one of several different rooms. This seems to me like the future of home computing, and I don't think any of the display connector technologies are up to it. I'm not talking about "thin client" stuff. I'm talking about one big computer with a massive graphics card which supports at least two users simultaneously, or one user that takes advanage of the system's full horsepower.
You're going to need just over 6Gb/s of data trasfer, presuming 24 bits and 10% overhead. That doesn't bode well for long runs. I presume you'll be using a computer for this (as no consumer grade video does 1080/120), so you may as well put your computer/scaler near where the projector is and plan on a network connection that will handle the compressed traffic.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I have one mod point, but I will not be using it on this post, out of fear.
What I also think will be revolutionary is the future generation of HDR monitors. Imagine being able to see truer to life color depth? It seems like we've been using the same monitor technology for so long.
okinawa japan
What bugs me about DVI is that KVM with them are still expensive. I am still using VGA with my old Belkin OmniCube KVM switches that I bought back in 2001.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
So what would it take to make a cable that accomodates long runs and can transfer over 6 Gb/s? Would long runs require an even higher bandwidth because they would need a higher overhead? And how would you accomodate that with a cable? More signal-carrying wires? And how about fiber? The line loss on that would be much smaller, but could it ever be practical?
I'm picturing a future where every household with have a big computer in the basement, perhaps doubling as a water-heater (why not put the excess heat to practical use?). Since programs of the future will be designed for parallelism, I can imagine these machines will be seriously expandable, as in, daughterboards with extra numbercrunching units. And since I expect future games will be real-time ray-traced, all that numbercrunching power will get used. But this rules out thin clients, which do the rendering where the user sits. Since the rendering will need lots of numbercrunching, it too will need to get done in the basement. Which means that modern houses will need KVM outlets wherever there is a TV or a monitor. And they will need a video cable standard compatible with all of these needs and the high resolutions/framerates of the future. The computer's graphics display might support four or eight different video-out signals simultaneously, so that every display in the house could show something different. But it probably couldn't accomodate 8 different game-players, since each would only get 1/8 of the computer's rendering power. But if you play on it alone, games would look pretty awesome. Anyway, that's how I imagine the future, and it won't be possible without a seriously high-bandwith video cable.
Since I blurted all this out, I'd appreciate reactions, if you have any - especially if you have reasons to think something about my guess is unrealistic.
HD is so over-hyped. Most people cant even tell the difference
Because that's where the big electronics stores make their profit. Ask a BestBuy employee how much that $100 monster cable costs him under the employee discount program. It'll be significantly closer to the $0 side of the range than the sticker price...
That said, there are some good companies out there that will sell perfectly good HDMI (and other) cables at reasonable prices. http://www.monoprice.com/ is one I've ordered from multiple times and had great results with. My last purchase was 10' of HDMI - I think I paid $10 shipped.
I actually was surprised to see that Target had 6' of HDMI for $15. A lot better than the $60/6' that was the best I found when I was looking for a quick cable at BestBuy...
Just do what I do. I have a media server that uses samba to share media files. I use my XBox to stream the video from my server over the LAN and display it to my TV with XBMC (XBox Media Center http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/). Although the original XBox does not do HD, the XBox 360 does. Wait a few year(s) for XBMC 360 to come out (after they figure out how to hack the damn thing to run unsigned software) and the only thing you'll have to run from your basement is an ethernet cable to the XBox 360, which then interfaces with your HD display via a short cable. I'm sure 100 meters is long enough for you to work with ;).
UDI? If another connection comes out, the back of my TV set will look like the interior of a Borg Cube.
.45 cents + shipping on ebay. And the excuse that this is "just for PCs" doesn't help since my PC's hook to my TV's (and I'm not alone any more, this is happening more often.)
By the time I got DVI on my DVD player and HTPC, I found my TV had HDMI. Now, I'm told "...it's unlikely that HDMI will become more than a footnote in the epic story of PC display technology..." Well that's just great. Yet another adapter that costs $50 at my local outlet for
Many devices today still don't support the existing connections properly, so I have little faith that new connections will improve things. Many TV's have DVI inputs but still overscan. DVDs are still encoded with interlacing. HDCP has connectivity issues like the PS3 debacle. I know people who still tell me that their s-video connection is state of the art. And while most new TVs are using composite cables, that is STILL analog and YUV based instead of digital. The industry is not ready for new connectors.
For an example of connectivity done right, look at USB 2. USB 1, USB 1.1, and USB 2 all use the same connection. The devices negotiate the appropriate speed. Ethernet does this too. Unless there is very very good reason, please don't change the physical connections. Increase the bandwidth in a backward-compatible way if necessary.
DisplayPort: 15m with 2 wires at 1080p. Demonstrated with 2 crappy wires in one of the earliest demonstrations.
For longer distances you'll have to rely on extenders.
The fight for the next-generation connector is now between HDMI and DisplayPort.
DisplayPort was in good part started as a reaction against HDMI's control by Intel & Silicon Image, and the associated licensing fees. Intel tried to counter it with UDI, basically HDMI without the licensing issues, but failed. DisplayPort had issues with the proposed DRM, proposed by Philips for a non-trivial amount of money. Much stronger than HDCP, but also more costly in silicon real estate.
Intel killed the UDI effort and pushed for HDCP to be used instead in DisplayPort. The Philips DRM remain an option, but I doubt it will ever be used since it is way more expensive and not required to comply with Hollywood's requirements. Thankfully HDCP is seen as "good enough" by the MPAA. That's nice, given how weak it really is.
Reference on UDI being dead
HDMI is trying to spin its current wins to prepare the battle against DisplayPort
Personally I am rooting for DisplayPort to kill DVI and hopefully make enough headway on TVs to also (very long term) kill HDMI. I am looking forward to DisplayPort 2.0 (expected in 2008), this should enable high-resolution displays with a single (thin) cable. Think 4K / 2160p at greater than 60Hz and greater than 24bits/pixel.
I got an HD-DVD player for Christmas. My first reaction was, "wow, this is really no better at all." A couple of weeks later, I got home from a long day of 3D modeling at work and decided to watch a movie. My eyes were so strained that I dusted off my old glasses that I haven't used since college and don't really need every day. I got to the HD-DVD logo and was blown away. Watching movies has almost completely changed for me. I would agree that many people can't tell the difference, but that doesn't mean that there isn't one.
First, I don't want to go back to VGA. I'm quite happy with my DVI, thanks. And DVI does not require HDCP -- I'll likely never see HDCP as long as I'm running Linux.
And second, I haven't looked since last year, but I suspect you're just plain wrong. My video card comes with two DVI ports, but it also comes with DVI->VGA connectors for them. My monitor comes with a DVI port, a VGA port, and a component video (RCA) port, as well as other inane things like speakers and a USB hub. For power, it uses the standard power cable that you plug into any computer.
As for fear mongering, would you kindly explain to me what the purpose of DRM can possibly be, other than to deliberately prevent me from doing certain things, so they can charge me for them? I mean, Sony can't possibly be afraid that I'm about to download 50 gigs worth of data over BitTorrent just to watch one two-hour movie, rather than renting it for a couple dollars -- and it would be even harder, and worse quality, if I ripped it through the so-called "analog hole". It seems infinitely more likely that they just want to ensure that I pay for the same movie twice -- once on Blu-Ray and once on UMD -- rather than rip the Blu-Ray, drop the quality a ton, and just copy it to a PSP (or a Video iPod)...
Cold, hard, facts: DRM sucks, and it is your fault. Yes, you, who are reading these words. Given the choice, none of us would want DRM on our media, so it is YOUR fault that it exists, because YOU are being lazy and taking a "meh, it'll work" attitude, rather than calling congressmen, the RIAA/MPAA, and your favorite artists and DEMANDING your media without DRM -- and DEMANDING the repeal of the DMCA.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Cartman: Come on! Come on! Dude, what is taking so long! I wanna play!
Maintenance Guy: Uhh, what kind of output does this have? This is some ancient Super-VHS output or somethin'. I can't connect it to your float screen.
Cartman: There's gotta be some way to hook it up! It's the freakin' future!
Maintenance Guy: It may be the future for you, but I can't hook up anything to a float screen without at least a laser-7 output.
All I wanna do is play Nintendo Wii!
The reason why companies want people to switch to digital is so they can foist their
content "protection" on us. Other than the lame Macrovision introduced a couple days ago,
they can't "protect you" from recording from an analog source, and even lame crap like
Macrovision is very easy to bypass. With digital, they can basicly 0wn the connection between
box and display and dictate what YOU can gleam from that.
FYI: A good analog recording often sounds much better than a CD, because with anolog, the
audio volume/frequency "resolution" is basicly infinite and not "stepped" like it is in
digital streams.
Knowing that with over the air DTV, there is quite a lag between the digital broadcast and the digital. I presume in the over the air TV standards, there is some encoding time lag + the decoding lag and display. Often when switching between analog and the digital on TV, I can get a repeat of an entire sentance or two. It is not limited to just a single broadcaster, but is common to all the networks. I imagine some content is originaly HD, and is then decoded in the studio and cropped for for NTSC aspect ratio and then broadcast. When this is done, the digital HD broadcast still lags the analog signal by quite a bit.
Do consumer decoder displays realy have that bad of a lag? What good is a high end graphics card able to produce 70+ FPS if they are all delayed 1.5 seconds by the display? For time critical FPS games, I think I will stick to analog for the time being until I find how much delay is introduced by decoding a HDMI signal.
Maybe this comment is FUD, but I have some uncertantity regarding the delay seen on over the air digital broadcasts. I hope someone is able to clear this up. A delayed HD movie is not a problem as long as the sound is delayed to match, but a long delay in a FPS is a showstopper.
The truth shall set you free!
I think it's downright shameful that an article like that completely ignores the best video interface in the world SDI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Digital_Interf ace
DVI (and thus HDMI) is limited to very short cables, SDI does several hundred meters.
There is no DRM on SDI.
The cable for SDI is simple coax cable, it doesn't get much cheaper or robust than this.
The connectors are BNC, also robust and cheap.
The transmitters and receivers are also relatively simple and reliable.
SDI is what is currently used for digital transmission of video in professional environments, so it's not like it's completely unknown.
I'm pretty sure SDI is what we would be using if the MPAA didn't get to write standards.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
obviously there needs to be a chip at each end to compress the signal to/from mpeg2 that'd sort out the bandwith!
comment |= (joke|irony);
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
...what I want is for my satellite box, dvd, amplifier, projector etc to all hook up intelligently to each other: no multiple remotes, no daisy-chaining scart cables, no having to switch the TV to AV1 and the amp to DVD each time - I want it to just work. I want an interconnect that can do video, audio AND control devices. I want my DVR to change my satellite box to the right channel at the right time without messing around with IR blasters and the like. No-one wants complexity, yet look at the average geeky AV setup.
I also don't want to have to buy all my AV gear from the same manufacturer to get any of this: there should be an open standard for this.
I keep hearing this and wondering if it is really better, and if so, in what way better.
IOW, what difference will I see on my screen? What should I look for to recognize signs of degradation?
I can't help but feeling that "it's better because it's -all- digital" is just BS, kind of like "but it goes all the way to 11!".
Please enlighten me. How does the degradation manifest itself?
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
That's why VESA came with it's BIOS extension, exposing much more function via the int 0x10, either as a TSR driver, or as part of the video BIOS later.
1.0 gave additional video modes, a standard mechanism for bank-switching, and other similar facilities (including saving the screen and mouse state).
2.0 gave linear frame buffers : no more paging required for 32-bits applications
3.0 gave support for hardware blitters.
also this whole extension made much more simpler modes that uses beyond 64Kb, because otherwise, the only portable way across all SVGA card and the original from IBM one was a crazy "unchained" mode which used a bizarre planar addressing mode (also called ModeX or Tweaked Mode... used to program those in assembly when i was a kid).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Why not just use ethernet? It's a standard connector. Its a well known implementation. The bandwidth keeps going up every few years. Even simple image differencing and run-length-encoding will probably shrink the bandwidth used.
It need not run on top of TCP/IP (although that would be cool). Just run the protocol as a new EtherType. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EtherType)
Mike Nahas
Don't buy cables from a store like Best Buy, ever. The markup is ridiculous. Use a company like monoprice.com, who will happily sell you your choice of a bajillion cable types for just a few bucks. Six foot HDMI? $6. Ten feet? $7. Fifteen feet? $8.
I shudder every time I see some poor sap spend $60 for a single cable at a retailer.
i don't belive DVI/HDMI carry any delays that are significant enough to be noticed.
digital TV is a totally different ball game, its optimised for bandwidth efficiancy rather than latency.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I went to a big superbowl party. The house it was hosted at was equipped with a humongous (65"ish) toshiba HDTV and a Motorola/Comcast DCT6412 HD DVR. The box was configured wrong (probably set up for his previous television) and was scaling the HD signal back down to 480p, and cropping it to 4:3 (cutting off the edges). This picture was then stretched to fill the widescreen, so we not only miss the edge of the picture, but everybody looks short and fat.
Out of the 60-odd people there, I only found three other people who recognized that we weren't seeing HD, and we were soundly voted down to take a second to fix the settings on the box. The overwhelming majority of people think anything they see on an HDTV is HDTV, even when it is cropped, stretched, 4:3 SDTV on a tv big enough to count the pixels. Most people won't know the difference if you don't stand there and flip back and forth between SD and HD for them.
I hate those adapter things, they always feel like they are going to snap off those pins.
hmm, they've always seemed pretty firm to me, in fact very similar to the old 25-9 way serial adaptors and DVI has never seemed like a damage prone connector standard to me either (its very similar to the D connectors and only once have i seen a pin bent on one of those)
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Indeed, let's also include the graphics card with the monitor instead of the computer and run an X server on the monitor and connect it through ethernet. If we in addition connect the keyboard and mouse directly to that monitor, we could even put it remote from the actual computer if we wish to. We just need a nice name for that monitor/keyboard/mouse combination running X. Well, what about calling it "X Terminal"? [wikipedia.org]
and lets do that while running 3D games or playing videos.
1024x768*24*60=1,132,462,080bits/sec
and thats a pretty low end display
the fact is that neither firewire 800 or gigabit ethernet is enough to support a new frame every refresh for even a fairly low end display nowadays (unless you use compression but that causes nasty latency).
10 gigabit ethernet would do it, so would an external variant of PCI-EXPRESS (i've seen pictures of a professional video processing box that brought PCI-EXPRESS out to an external cable). but both of theese require connectors that are even more exotic than those currently used for digital video.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
TV lags because it is HEAVILY compressed with MPEG2. The maximum bandwidth of an ATSC signal is 19.4mbps, where an uncompressed 1080i feed would be in the 2.2gbps range. 2.2gbps would be infeasible for broadcast TV, but works perfectly with a desktop-level interface such as DVI.
DVI and HDMI connections are completely uncompressed and thus do not introduce any measurable lag. Without having to decode an analog signal, the argument could be made that a DVI/HDMI signal to a digital display such as a LCD, DLP, or Plasma will have slightly less lag than VGA. Of course, the flip side of that is VGA still being the better choice for interfacing with CRTs.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
I know this topic is somewhat off topic, but ill ask anyway.
I study, and work part time as a graphics designer. A couple of years ago I got a Sony GDM F520 monitor (21" triniton). A couple days ago, it started blinking i green when turned on - or at random. The effect usually goes away quick, but i fear its dying.
First off; is it worth getting repaired? I loved this monitor - but ive read that many people have had issues with it.
2: What's a good alternative? Is there any reason not to go flatscreen - and if not; what to pick? (hopefully, todays alternatives arent as pricy)
- Mad, ingenous - they've both left you puzzled -
Back when Lance was trying for his 7th in a row we (or I) decided to upgrade us digital (for the OL channel that has since moved to the lower 71, lol).
Imagine our surprise when several upper channels never resolved their display despite their promise to do so. The next day it was different channels with the same attitude. And the problem had legs.
I called a techie. They came out and confirmed there was interference and said I should shorten coax cable runs (that had worked fine before digital with the new 27" TV). They did their usual make-him-a-better-cable and I figured we were all better.
The same channel problems returned and grew worse.
After a few months of this (and right when the HBO channels were going to start costing extra) I called and cancelled the whole thing back to analog. What a relief!
It turned out there were other cable issues which a future techie fixed by redoing all the coax connectors but we are more than happy with our rarely pixelated analog channels. [There was too much eff-wording and not enough effn on the HBO channels anyway]
My point? Our analog TVs handled the crap signal quality many times better than digital. Two of three TVs never showed image problems while the digital setup couldn't display whole channels for days at a time.
Digital is like the radial tire, apparently better performance until you overload the tire and then the performance is dangerously worse. Overloaded bias plys make for fun driving, just ask any 40+ year old teenager.
I come here for the love