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Apple's Mini DisplayPort Officially Adopted By VESA

Posted by timothy on from the good-for-tiny-pictures dept.

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."

6 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. HDMI? by ramk13 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What happened to HDMI? Lots of monitors and computers already have it, it supports audio over the connection (Mini-DP doesn't), and it can support the resolutions the article mentions. There's even already a mini version of it in use. It's a standard in home video and had plenty of adoption with computers. Is there something that Mini-DP does that HDMI doesn't?

    1. Re:HDMI? by profplump · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I know Apple's laptops don't currently send audio over Mini-DP, but I thought the protocol/cable supported audio, even if Apple isn't using it.

      Am I just wrong?

    2. Re:HDMI? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Finally, the hardware is more expensive to produce and more complex.

      Except that if you want backwards compatibility with DVI then you already have all of that hardware. If you want to be able to plug in a DP to DVI adaptor then you need all of that hardware plus all of the DisplayPort electronics.

      It's a more modern standard, but historically more modern standards that aren't designed with legacy compatibility in mind have not done well. Maybe DisplayPort will get enough backing to buck that trend, but in the meantime expect a horrible mess of analogue VGA, HDMI/DVI, and DisplayPort for consumers.

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    3. Re:HDMI? by Telvin_3d · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, it 'can' be voided, but it is not necessarily voided.

      Realistically, this won't stop any company with a serious case against Apple. Yes, Apple could use it as an excuse to pull the Display Port licence, but I can guarantee that the company would keep using it and that it would just get added to the lawsuit. And then if Apple loses they have to pay for the original infraction as well as a bunch of extra damages for trying to be dicks about the Display Port licence plus potentially losing control of the licence terms.

      On the other hand, I suspect it has some very real applications against true patent trolls.

  2. Serial latency by Estanislao+Mart�nez · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yeah, just like people using serial ports to program Cisco gear or people in EE using serial ports to program microcontrollers by plugging the RX and TX pins directly to a serial port.

    IIRC, serial ports offer lower latency than USB, and certain real-time guarantees. So, for example, you use a GPS unit with a serial port connection to deliver a pulse-per-second output to your computer, which ntpd can then use to calibrate your clock pretty accurately. It works much worse with USB.

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  3. HDMI doesn't work by awtbfb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm all in favor of something that does the job better than HDMI. If you need closed captioning in the US, HDMI doesn't work for you. It omits the necessary data from the video source.