Dell, HP, Lenovo Announce New Display Protocol

An anonymous reader writes "If HDMI, DVI and UDI weren't enough for you, several major PC manufacturers have announced a joint alliance to come up with another display adapter, creatively named Displayport. The new method is backwards compatible with DVI, but offers double the bandwidth."

uh

[rushmeat]

Another toy, Will help destroy, The elder race of man. Thank you Geddy. So, now the average consumer is even more confused when they go to the store?

Backwards compatible

[notanatheist]

More importantly than being backward compatible with DVI is well it accept a DVI-VGA adapter. You're not taking my kick ass 17" IBM tubes from my workbench any time soon. LCD is just not dependable for working at various resolutions.

little hint in TFA...

[zogger]

It looks more like they are planning some craptacular (via a scam chip buried someplace in the machine) way to make it impossible to view their (someone "their's") expensive "intellectual property" unless it is in the approved format of the week. Crack one level, you still have to view it, only to meet the new craptacular connection and monitor, tough noogies again. Call it defense of profits in depth, hard wired. Hit 'em in the hardware, hit 'em in the software, double nail them with laws, eventually they have 99% of the people buffaloed into economic submission..

Of course, that is a real wild guess....I am just a skeptic by nature when it comes to this sort of thing - "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 7,963 times, shame on me" deal.. "New and Improved" - from big industry sources, most always translates as "a new conjob they have come up with and an improved way to keep sucking dollars out of your wallet"

Re:Bandwidth...

[dreemernj]

QXGA is actually higher than the res you mention. I think its 3840x2400. Tiny difference but it supports your point even further. These companies are interested in this port and its extra bandwidth because they are already working on the monitors that wouold make use of it.

Personally I am all for this. 1) backwards compatibility is friendly and 2) I've seen the best HD TV can do and I want better.

Screwing it up again?!?

[egarland]

DVI was braindead from the start. The protocol limited connections to 1600x1200 (1920x1200 if you pushed it). Their solution to higher resolutions is dual link which suffered from a chicken and egg problem. With no monitors supporting it no video cards bothered to add support. With no video cards to drive them, nobody bothered creating monitors that would take advantage of dual link. Most video cards still don't bother to support it.

LCD technology scales up much more cost effectively than CRT did so with the advent of LCD, the economics of big screen displays were about to get much better. At the time LCDs started becoming popular, I was working on a 21" CRT at 1600x1200. Unfortunately, because of the limitations of single link DVI, while 24, 26 and 28" monitors may have been cost effective to create, interfacing them with a computer was impractical. Instead you see the abomination of people sitting in front of 2 smaller monitors. Apple finally broke the chicken and egg problem with their 30" Apple Cinema display. They built dual link into their entire product line in preparation for it's launch. Dell now sells a 30" LCD for PCs as well and finally the latest generation of ultra-high end video cards now mostly support dual link. With this hurdle overcome, DVI is finally set to become a good digital display standard.

From what I understand this new standard will be incapable of driving monitors at resolutions above what these 30" displays can do now. That's nice but DVI is there and prepared to surpass that. Why create a new standard that limits display size to a resolution that was reached a year before the standard is even released, especially when dual link support is finally taking hold and the original limitations of DVI are starting to melt away. While I would like to see DVI replaced with something smaller and more capable, this new standard seems even more short sighted as the original DVI standard to me (since they don't even provide a path to higher resolutions).

Make it support up to 42" displays (20gb/s) and you've got a standard that makes sense. Otherwise.. lets just stick with DVI.

Re:Copy Protection Optional

[kfg]

Kinda like breathing, although there are few who elect not to do it.

KFG

Re:little hint in TFA...

[drivekiller]

Yes, but is this such a big deal? Corporate product needs passive receivers; real culture invites active participation. When corporate media is controlled end-to-end, it will die because it will never be a part of the culture in any meaningful way. You see it on tv and then it goes away, an endless stream of effectively identical units whose sole purpose is to put eyes in front of commercials. Just tune out. You'll be so much happier.

Re:DRM aspects

[rolfwind]

A protected digital interface that can be easily deployed on a PC enables broad access to premium content sources such as high-definition movies.

That's funny, my computers can access premium content now..... without phoning home to see if it's okay.

Why are computer manufacturers so ready to jump in bed with the RIAA/MPAA? If they don't cooperate, will the RIAA/MPAA suddenly decide not to play in the computer arena anymore? I'd like to see that happening. The most I see happening is the RIAA/MPAA bitching and moaning and at the end of the day doing business as usual.

Re:Pointless aspects

[JWW]

No I wouldn't, becuase I won't by any of that content.

To use your car anaolgy, it would be like car manufactures being forced to make cars that couldn't speed. And yes that would cause one hell of an uproar. So I, like everyone else will bitch about HDCP crap.

DRM has a NEGATIVE value to the consumer, the only way to get consumers to buy it is to force them. It really pisses me off. We could be in the middle of a true revolution in digital content, but the "Content Providers" are such greedy bastards they need to "protect their revenue", all while failing to realize that if they just went along with what everyone wanted, they could actually, eventually make MORE money (see the VCR for an historical example they themselves experienced, but are unable, do to their stupidity to apply to this situation).

And true there really is a digital content revolution going on right now, but its wayyy behind where it could (or should) be.

tune out to stay sane

[zogger]

Pretty much already done did that. I don't get any new media discs,well, a very few, I restrict my purchases now to used primarily or the severely marked down bargain bins, and those are around maybe 4 units per annum I give my GF as cheap gifts (she likes movies way more than I do). I only watch a very few selected shows on TV, and even those most irregularly, primarily I catch the local weather, and watch a few selected olympic sports when they come around and an occassional nature special or news special. In other words, not enough commercials exposure to matter really. Maybe catch around 4 movies a year on tape, usually just rainy day watch something I already have. Music-meh, stopped going to concerts around the time ticket prices were headed towards ten bucks a show, which will really date me now. Recorded music, about the same as vids now, maybe half a dozen a year used CDs, a little OTA fm music in the car. Downloads-zero, either vids or music, none. I read news and opinion on the net, and the rest of the time my "culture" consists of being outside and doing outside stuff, either working or playing around with my hobbies.

I am more concerned over the political ramifications of locked down hardware and software. I don't like them taking away the gadgeteer's factor, the tinkerer's drive, making being curious and innovative a *crime*. trashing your "fair use" as a regular joe to take a wrench to your machine and make it "yours". I don't code myself but I totally "get" what drives open source coders, and agree with it. I build my own systems from normal parts, and I am not looking forward to having to jump through engineering hoops to maintain parity with whatever "openness" we have in hardware now, and be looking over my shoulder the whole time. I don't like the fact that big media and big news is falling into fewer and fewer hands, and that government is now in the stealth news business as official..well, brainwashing is the word, as official brainwashing policy.

And so on. Even though an individual may be able to counter this or that threat to his freedom through personal leet skills, we all have to work together, pool resources, be relentless, and try to respect and help the other guy maintain HIS freedoms as well. We will either all win or all lose in this game, so it is better, IMO, to always fall on the side of openness and freedom. If that changes some "business models" in society, I don't care, society still marches on, and some business models might be needing some changing anyway. There is no "right" to perpetual profits at the expense of other's freedoms, and limiting technological advances to only certain very wealthy segments of society who can control the actual law making process or who set up cartels to force you into accepting what you know is counterproductive for the advancement of Humans is..well, it's just not very cool. "Treacherous Computing" is very well named in this respect. Just say NO.

Re:who can afford 42"

[egarland]

Why bother making a standard support something that only 1% of people will use when they can just buy that extra $150 card
that supports the 3000x2000 42" res using some uber custom special dual/tripple dvi hybrid.

The problem is if a monitor requires a special custom video card and cable you have the chicken and egg problem again. The barrier to creating monitors bigger than 30" will be so high they won't be created at any price point unless/until there is a huge demand. Also, since such a system wouldn't be interoperable with most video cards on the market it's a bad purchasing option for most people and I wouldn't want to buy one.

The problem isn't the 1% that want to run a 32" monitor now, it's the 10% that would get one in 5 years if there were any on the market, but won't be.

And again.. why replace a standard with a new incompatible one that's less flexible and capable? If they were proposing this as the original DVI it sounds like it would have been a great standard, but we already have DVI.

problem is not with the display size

[man_ls]

The problem isn't with the display size.

The problem is the fact that I can only have one display accelerated at a time. I purchased a second graphics card with its own accelerator to run my second display, thinking that this would get around the limitation -- but low and behold, on my P4-820 with 2GB of RAM, and an X800 XL + 9250, I still can't watch a DVD and play a DirectX game at the same time in full-motion. Or really do anything.

For a lot of people, the path to better computing is to add monitors -- it allows you to logically partition your work area spatially to a greater degree than just one monitor does. But if you can't do accelerated tasks on both monitors, you effectively only have 1 in a lot of situations.

That just doesn't cut it for me. Software rendering of DVDs, TV, videos, etc. all on my 2ndary display is not acceptable. But there's nothing I can do about it.

Re:Pointless aspects

[ultranova]

DRM on the output channel prevents all of the "analog" (I know, most new video outputs are digital, but the same methods apply) hacks from extracting the content from the DRM.

No it doesn't. Open up your nice LCD screen and intercept the signal in the cables / rails / whatever that lead to the liquid crystal dots.

Too much work for Joe Sixpack, you say. But Joe doesn't need to do it. It's enough that someone, anyone, does it, and then all the Joes in the world can download it from the friendly neighborhood torrent tracker.

The harder you make breaking the restrictions, the more face hackers gain from doing so.

Re:problem is not with the display size

[Com2Kid]

That is a Windows thing most likely. (Unless you are using *nix, in which case it is a "magic line in some config file" thing)

Windows uses a magic color for its hardware accelerated overlay.

You can actually set this color on the fly, rather fun. :-D WinAmp takes advantage of this, if you ever want the background of a Word file you are working on to be a bit more interesting, set the overlay color to White.

Any ways.

Notice that I said "a magic color".

Singular.

DOH.

Some companies (Nvidia, ATI) have developed workarounds for this, but you may or may not have 100% compatibility with existing software. I cannot say for sure how their implementations work (though it only takes about half a brain cell to make a damn good guess).

I believe Microsoft is fixing this issue in Vista, and will support multiple hardware accelerated overlays, even on a single screen.

Re:Copy Protection Optional

[verbatim_verbose]

Unfortunately it's not going to be _your_ option. The fact that it's optional for companies to deploy does us no good.

Re:DRM aspects

[Zeinfeld]

DisplayPort is, as I understand, a direct competitor to HDMI.

Not quite, its more of a sidegrade. DisplayPort is a direct competitor to UDI which is an Intel scheme to do the same thing.

Both have 'content protection'. I don't know why folk get so up tight about it. There is no way it can possibly work. Copy protection is break once run anywhere. The copyright pirates are going to quickly take apart a display and extract the keys, once they do thay they can do anything they like.

What I am more anoyed about is that this standard does not solve my real problem, cable clutter (extended rant on blog [blogspot.com]).

The DisplayPort people have half a clue, they have included an audio channel so I don't have to run two sets of cables between my computer and my monitor. But where is the USB? they keyboard/mouse connector? Power to drive an attached laptop?.

There is a pretty small chance that I will be buying a screen so large that DVI is inadequate in the next year or two. I now have cable clutter in three different rooms. Cable clutter is pretty much a universal pain point for every computer user. And don't get me started on those shitty brick adaptors that they now use instead of building power supplies into printers, monitors or the like. At the back of my desk I have a ten way power strip and six adapter bricks. There is another ten way power strip under the printer table.

I currently have two laptops by the same manufacturer that both require a different docking station. Its completely unnecessary, there should have been a standard ten years ago, but that would end the racket of selling $350 docking stations and $100 travel adaptors.

The other way this is a huge lose is that it is still electrical. I have a $90 DVI cable. My son's complete PC cost less than $500. If they made the move to an optical interconnect one cable would meet every need - today or in the future. There would be no problem running cables 100ft or longer. Fibre is now standard for audio interconnect, why not use it for video???

The problem is that the driving force behind the initiative is the percieved need to support bigger displays rather looking at what the majority of customers actually want.