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Displayport V1.2 To Take Giant Leap Over HDMI
An anonymous reader writes "With HDMI becoming increasingly common, Displayport has been slow to emerge as a widely used connection interface, but a plethora of new features in the new v1.2 standard could see that change. As well as doubling the data rate of the existing v1.1a standard to 21.6 Gbps, the update allows for multiple monitors to be connected to a single Displayport connector and adds support for transporting USB data at up to 720Mbps, enabling embedded webcams, speakers and USB hubs over a single cable. Ethernet data is also supported. The improved data rate will allow for richer, larger and higher resolution displays, and the new version is also backward compatible with the current display technology, so all the ports, cables and devices will be interchangeable, although they will revert to the lowest common denominator."
HDMI is fine
Ethernet is fine
No more "super cables" for the sake of another super cable so i have to replace everything i own just to run a damned super cable.
Thanks.
Can't I just have a general-purpose 21.6Gbps hardware interface, with "supplemental built in support" for any video-specific items?
Sure, if I need 21.6Gbps for video, great, but if I don't, it sure would be nice to use the same wire to run arbitrary data between my data-storage box and my set-top box or security system or set-top box and a TV or other equipment.
Oh, yes, I know about 10+Gbps Ethernet equipment. I figure though if this is going to be priced for the home market, it will likely be more cost-effective than super-speed Ethernet over short distances.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I wonder how long it will last as the "standard" with Light Peak allegedly only a year away? Source: http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/None/1813.htm
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I hate Apple as much as the next guy, but not mentioning them at all in the summary is a bit... crude. Also, here's a list of all the new stuff (taken from http://www.hardmac.com/news/2010/01/11/displayport-1-2-validated).
* Doubling bandwidth mostly to support 3D: 21.6 Gbits/s.
* Connect even more monitors from a single DisplayPort. Dedicated hubs should soon be available.
* As for the HDMI, transport USB data between a computer and a display, supporting Display USB functions such as a webcam and USB hub.
* Connect to display with 3840 x 2400 resolution at 60Hz, or a 3D display (120Hz) at 2560 x 1600.
* Audio Copy Protection and category codes
* High definition audio formats (such as Dolby MAT, DTS HD, all BD formats,etc.)
* Synchronization assist between audio and video, multiple audio channels, and multiple audio sink devices using Global Time Code (GTC)
DisplayPort seems like one of those technologies that have great mind share, as well as some advantages over the competing technology, but will never gain mainstream adoption (See: Firewire).
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
Has Monster started producing these yet? I cant wait to get some high-quality cables!
shouldn't fiber be the ultimate?
"I'm sorry, ma'am, you'll have to increase the radius of the curve of that cable going from your computer to your monitor, the index of refraction is too small for they way you have your cable coiled up."
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
All my cables are obsolete again!
I for one am very glad to be getting rid of HDMI/DVI/VGA cables and have just one cable to rule them all!
The surest solution to this problem: yet another cable!
This problem was solved a few years ago. Look up ClearCurve. They clad the fibre in tiny reflectors that recover the stray signal.
One of the big ones, a reason that Display Port was developed to begin with, is HDMI needs additional chips/control circuits on the transmitting and receiving end to deal with encoding and decoding. Display Port is directly compatible with the display panels themselves and as such needs less hardware. It can be used internally in a laptop as the bus to the integrated display, and as output to another display. All in all it equals the ability to make smaller and slimmer displays because there's less in them.
Another somewhat related is Display Port doesn't cost any royalties. HDMI does. Added together it can lead to reduced costs. Less stuff in the display and less licensing fees equals less cost.
The bandwidth thing is a potential issue too. Even HDMI 1.4 doesn't have near as high a bandwidth (1.4 is actually the same bandwidth as 1.3). Now it doesn't matter a whole lot at the moment, but could in a few years. If we see more high refresh displays, which are useful for 3D and also look nicer, as well as higher resolutions we are going to hit in to bandwidth limits. Would be good to have a connector that is going to scale up to those.
...why we don't just do all this crap over an optical link?
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
This sounds like nothing more than a standard for a docking station cable. If they can't get the cable/connector price down to a real low level, I don't see it having any other use. I guess it would be kind of neat to have your monitor act as your docking station, but that isn't exactly earth-shattering.
HDMI needs additional chips/control circuits on the transmitting and receiving end to deal with encoding and decoding. Display Port is directly compatible with the display panels themselves and as such
...can't display motion pictures published by six American companies. Home users who expect to watch high-definition feature films will choose an interconnect that does "encoding and decoding" because the publishers of feature films on high-definition home video demand "encoding and decoding" for digital restrictions management. Sure, DisplayPort 1.1 and later allow for DPCP, but then you lose the advantage of no "encoding and decoding".
My "Display" has a webcam and speakers. It is not some futuristic device.
It would be nice if it only needed one cable instead of three to hook it up to the computer.
They've fixed that in the mean time with auto-termination and minimum requirements in the specs. Currently it's all Serial from Serial ATA over Serial Attached SCSI to PCI-Express and DisplayPort.
The speeds are way too fast to have multiple parallel lines with different hardware and lane or cord lengths synchronized against a single clock.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Is it a lack of engineering foresight, or is it a cable war with companies jockeying for position?
I've noticed that new Dells are now coming with DisplayPort, and discovered that Dell was one of the instigators.
Another unrelated observation: this could obsolete USB, and thus USB thumb drives, and thus yet another data storage format becomes oprhaned. This was inevitable. USB has had a good 14 year run so far. It couldn't last forever, despite what people thought about USB "being different this time" regarding being able to access old data -- that somehow it was going to be different from floppies and tapes.
Okay, I have a new rule: You're not allowed to define a new standard until after you've thought about how people will migrate to it from their existing stuff.
Once upon a time, we had VGA. This was a pretty simple analogue signal, which was great for driving a CRT. At high resolutions it got a bit blurry though and it was a bit silly to convert a digital signal to analogue and back for displaying on a TFT. So then we had DVI. The DVI connector incorporated the VGA signal as well as a new, digital, one. If you got a new display that supported DVI then you could connect it to your old computer with a very cheap (i.e. containing no electronics) adaptor. Then, when you got a new video card that supported DVI, you just threw away the adaptor and used the digital signal.
After a while, most things used the digital signal, so you started getting DVI-D devices, where the analogue pins weren't connected to anything. Then came HDMI, which used exactly the same signal as DVI-D. You could, once again, connect HDMI devices to DVI-D devices with a trivial adaptor. Because these adaptors are cheap, a few months after they're introduced you can usually find someone who has one if you need one and forget yours.
But now we have DisplayPort. It is digital, but it uses a completely different kind of signal to HDMI / DVI-D. If you want to connect a DisplayPort device to something that only supports VGA or HDMI then you need an expensive adaptor that decodes a frame in one format into a buffer then reencodes it in the other format.
So the migration path from DVI to DisplayPort is for graphics cards to be able to produce both kinds of signal and for monitors to be able to accept both kind. This immediately eliminates two of the big advantages of DisplayPort: no license fees and simpler electronics. Add to that the fact that you have three kinds of connector for DisplayPort (DisplayPort, Mini DisplayPort and Micro DisplayPort), so you probably need an adaptor anyway, just to plug one DisplayPort device into another, and it's easier to just use HDMI.
This is a shame, because DisplayPort is a much better spec than HDMI.
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Oh, the fixes of SATA and SAS are rather distinct from the SCSI problems: neither of those are normally used outside the box, nor do either of those use an arbitrary set of multiple connectors. My concern here is whether this new technology, by doing a "dumb down to slowest speed", is going to repeat some of the big problems of external SCSI. Some of those problems occurred with USB as well, with USB 1.1 devices messing up whole chains of USB 2.0 devices.
DisplayPort 1.1+ includes HDCP just like HDMI does. It is enabled on all Apple products, and Blu-ray manufacturers are required to enable it as well. Thus any display manufacturer that wants to work with those segment of the markets will also include HDCP support.
He's also refused to add Blu-Ray playback to Macs because, in his own words, the DRM requirements are "a bag of hurt." The Bluray licensing body has some ridiculous requirements for audio and video drivers, and that will keep them off Macs...which is fine with Jobs, since he'd rather "sell" you a movie from the iTunes store anyway.
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With digital video you can use a nice long extension cable with no loss of quality.
Have you ever actually tried this? DVI and HDMI are balanced connections, and they were never designed for long runs-more than 6 feet will sometimes get "sparkle" from digital artifacts. VGA works much better for long runs, although it's preferable to break it out into 5 full sized coax cables. This is not an option with HDMI, and that's a big reason why a lot of installers hate messing with it.
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Most projectors in offices take VGA, so if you have place/money for one connector on your laptop you put VGA on it.