DisplayPort's back -- with Dell, HP, and Lenovo
Ruh roh, just when you knew for a fact you were all settled in with the latest generation of video interconnects for your laptops and peripherals, then VESA comes along and gets three of the most influential companies in the PC business, Dell, HP, and Lenovo, to rally behind its new video interface: DisplayPort. Ok, so it's not that new (we wrote about it last year), but it looks like it's finally ready to rumble starting May 8th. We called up VESA to get the skinny on the port, and they were kind enough to hit us up with that graphic and the following deets: it'll not be backward compatible with with DVI / VGA (ouch), it'll have wire-line encryption developed by Philips -- that's not compatible with HDCP (double ouch), but has a very small plug and scales well (eh). So why create DisplayPort when we've all already settled into DVI / HDMI with or without HDCP for plugging in our plasma or LCD TVs or monitors? Well, because VESA wanted the market to have a unified, license-free video interconnect standard that did a few things current systems don't do, like have a standard low power, low pin count, low profile connector for use on portable device internals and external monitors alike, or scale indefinitely to resolutions, color depths, and refresh rates possibly yet unthought of by systems integrators. Ok, fair enough, but where were these guys in 2001, huh? You know how we feel about nascent standards trying to butt in once we've all finally gotten settled on something decent.
