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Goodbye, VGA
jones_supa writes "Leading PC companies have expressed their will to finally start kicking out legacy display interfaces. Intel plans to end support of LVDS in 2013 and VGA in 2015 in its PC client processors and chipsets. While the large installed base of existing VGA monitors and projectors will likely keep VGA on PC back panels beyond 2015, PC and display panel makers are in strong support of this transition. The DisplayPort connector interface provides backwards and forwards compatibility by supporting VGA and DVI output via certified adapters, while also providing new capabilities such as single connector multi-monitor support."
it likely will end up that if users want to watch new movies, they have to upgrade the computer, video card, and monitor to support the copy protection.
Proabably some will. Most will just figure out that it's way cheaper to head for TPB or the likes, get movies in a format their hardware supports and that's also more flexible when it comes to the storage medium it can reside on.
Sometimes I wonder what's the advantage of those "copy protected" devices I hear about. I can't see a single good thing in them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What's wrong with PS/2 connectors? I prefer them, unlike USB they don't require polling as they are interrupt driven. When I can choose, I take PS/2 over USB for keyboards and mice. Saves USB ports too for other duties.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Or you could, I dunno, get a USB keyboard that has two or four USB ports on it, itself. Try doing that with PS2.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Intel will drop VGA from their chipsets and this will be a boon for video card makers. Video card makers already cater to the those who need better video, or different ports, or more ports, or whatever. As long as monitors include a VGA port, card makers will, too. Intel has the luxury of being able to drop it. It will save them money. They also know that no one is being left behind thanks to card makers. It is a win for both sides.
Bearded Dragon
Often, if an LCD goes after just a few years, it's due to a bad capacitor or two on the motherboard.
If you do a bit of research and find out what the requirements for the capacitors are (usually low-ESR, etc), the cost for each capacitor is under $1, and anyone with basic desoldering skills can replace them.
analog video is video you can't 'control'. no DRM (or none that is hard).
its not at all surprising people of interest want to kill it.
they are convincing people to abandon spdif, for audio, too. the new kids who are brought up with hdmi think there's nothing wrong with it. in fact, the way they mixed audio and video made the whole combo stream all DRMed. we once had mostly free and clear spdif (scms ignored since it was defeatable easily) and then they upped the bitrate so that spdif toslink and copper paths would not easily (or at all) carry the new digital audio formats (blu ray audio and so on). the new codecs are using bitstream audio for all channels which is HUGE overkill for sound tracks on movies, but its a middle finger from the entertainment industry saying 'at least we get to fill up your disks with more bits than we needed'. effectively a DOS attack from them to you, stealing your disk space when you do direct BD rips or keep BD copies around.
hdmi audio is now in the so-called 'protected path' and that's never a good thing for consumers. spdif audio was never in any protected path and that's why they are trying to kill it.
vga video is also not in a protected path and so they also want to kill it.
it really is all about 'migrating the user away' from the open formats and onto closed, controlled ones.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
LCDs can last a damn long time. We've got some at work going on 9 years now, still working fine, still good image quality. I get a little tired of the "All old stuff was better and lasted longer, new stuff sucks." No. Wrong. This is just more looking at the past with rose coloured glasses.
For one, you only see examples today of the stuff that lasted, not the stuff that broke. The stuff that broke was thrown away. So sure, if you find a CRT in service now, it lasted a long time. However that doesn't mean that there aren't a thousand more in a land fill that broke.
Also, for brand new stuff you cannot very well demand to know its lifetime and failure rate as it is new, it hasn't been tested. I can't tell you if a specific device will last 20 years until 20 years have gone by.
In the case of monitors, LCDs are actually far more reliable in the long run. As you note, much of what can go wrong is cheap to fix, and fixable by a consumer. Caps aside (which are more rare to break these days) the main thing to go is the backlight. It will usually go out somewhere in the 8-12 year range, though it could be longer for less used devices. Good news is that isn't expensive to replace. Get a new one and things work again.
What's more, other than lower brightness due to the backlight fading, LCDs don't lose image quality with time. Replace a backlight in a 10 year old LCD and it looks as good as it ever did. Not as good as current LCDs, the tech has progressed, but the image will still be stable, with perfect focus and geometry. CRTs start to suck as they get old. They fade too, but they also lose focus, geometry control, image stability and so on. They can be pretty poor looking after a decade.
Look past personal examples to the general trend and you find LCDs are nice and reliable. Some break, but then so did some CRTs. The tech overall is very reliable, and much easier to repair minor flaws.