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Apple's Mini DisplayPort Officially Adopted By VESA
DJRumpy writes "The Video Electronics Standard Association officially issued its Mini DisplayPort standard Tuesday, based on the technology licensed from Apple. VESA said that all devices using the Mini DisplayPort connector must meet the specifications required by the DisplayPort 1.1a standard, and cables that support the standard must also meet specific electrical specifications. It's a formal confirmation of the news from earlier this year, when VESA announced the Mini DisplayPort connector would be included in the forthcoming DisplayPort 1.2 specification."
Multi-channel support. With DisplayPort, you can daisy-chain multiple displays on the one bus. It can also be used to transmit data signals of various types (which HDMI can do, but in a much more limited fashion). And the DisplayPort connectors are much better than the HDMI ones. It's just a thoroughly more modern standard.
... and then they built the supercollider.
...it supports audio over the connection (Mini-DP doesn't)...
Actually the DisplayPort (and now Mini DisplayPort) standard DOES support audio, it's simply that Apple's DisplayPort offerings are not taking advantage of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort
Audio is an optional component in mini-DisplayPort.
I presume that supporting audio would be done in the display output controller, so within the graphical portion of the computer (integrated within the 9400M, or discrete GPU). Maybe NVIDIA products don't support audio over DP themselves, or more likely Apple hasn't done the drivers to copy audio to the GPU from the audio controller for output via DP?
HDMI's signaling is basically a single DVI link, and isn't rated to push anything past 1920x1200
And just to complete the thought: the Mini DiplayPort goes to 2560x1600 and goes up to 8.64 Gbits/second. That's about twice as fast as the HDMI 1.2.
HDMI 1.3 is actually comparable to Mini DisplayPort, with very similar specifications in terms of bandwidth.
What's wrong with having a VGA output? Many older projectors and monitors, which are still perfectly functional and don't need to be replaced, use VGA. Why force people to buy a new monitor and a new projector just because they got a new laptop/PC?
Let me introduce you to a new concept - an adapter cable. They cost 20 or 30 bucks at most, and are available for older display technologies and with either male or female style vga/dvi/whatever connectors.
#DeleteChrome
HDMI is basically a single link DVI signal along with a digital audio stream. Both the audio and video gets their own pins and wires. But display port is a packet based system so audo, video and other signals can be multiplexed across the same set of wires. Display port 1.1 allows for eight 24 bit 192kHz digital audio channels. There can be 1, 2 or 4 digital lanes, similar to how PCI express works, more lanes = more bandwidth. The maximum bandwidth is over 8Gbps (3 meter cable limit)and there is also a 1mbps aux channel. A single display port cable can deliver a 2560x1600 60 Hz 30 bpp video signal. Dual link DVI port can do the same but it cant scale as well as display port will.
The HDMI connector is mechanically flimsy and can be easily damaged by the heavy shielded cables that hang from them of if yanked on. Display port is designed for those heavy cables and resists tugging and pulling that would otherwise damage an HDMI connector. Its also screw-less connector so no more fiddling with thumb screws.