Apple's Mini DisplayPort Officially Adopted By VESA 160
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."
Re:HDMI? (Score:4, Informative)
Don't the newer specs of HDMI exceed 1920x1200?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdmi#Version_Comparison [wikipedia.org]
And according to the same article (maybe I should read more before posting) DP is actually royalty free whereas HDMI isn't...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdmi#Relationship_with_DisplayPort [wikipedia.org]
Re:HDMI? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:HDMI? (Score:4, Informative)
...it supports audio over the connection (Mini-DP doesn't)...
Actually the DisplayPort (and now Mini DisplayPort) standard DOES support audio, it's simply that Apple's DisplayPort offerings are not taking advantage of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort [wikipedia.org]
Re:HDMI? (Score:4, Informative)
What happened to HDMI?
It was made long before DisplayPort as a DVI replacement. HDMI requires royalties and licensing (DP does not). It is also using a CRT-like raster scan and needs a heartbeat, with sound being transmitted during "blanking" (DP transmits data packets and has an embedded clock). Finally, the hardware is more expensive to produce and more complex.
I'm sure someone knows more - this is what I remember reading some time ago...
Re:HDMI? (Score:2, Informative)
There is also a dual-link version of HDMI with a different connector. With the double bandwith it is basically equivalent to quad-DVI. Again, nothing really uses it.
Re:HDMI? (Score:4, Informative)
Audio is an optional component in mini-DisplayPort.
I presume that supporting audio would be done in the display output controller, so within the graphical portion of the computer (integrated within the 9400M, or discrete GPU). Maybe NVIDIA products don't support audio over DP themselves, or more likely Apple hasn't done the drivers to copy audio to the GPU from the audio controller for output via DP?
Re:HDMI? (Score:5, Informative)
HDMI's signaling is basically a single DVI link, and isn't rated to push anything past 1920x1200
And just to complete the thought: the Mini DiplayPort goes to 2560x1600 and goes up to 8.64 Gbits/second. That's about twice as fast as the HDMI 1.2.
HDMI 1.3 is actually comparable to Mini DisplayPort, with very similar specifications in terms of bandwidth.
Re:HDMI? (Score:3, Informative)
Apple fucked that one up by charging $20 or so per Firewire device for the longest time
Actually, it was $1 per controller. With USB being pushed for replacing keyboards and mice, you couldn't build a computer without USB and expect it to sell, but you could build one without FireWire. If you'd wanted to build FireWire keyboards and mice, you'd have needed a controller (including the $1 license fee, plus the cost of the controller silicon) in each one, which would have made them much more expensive ($1 is a lot on a device that costs $1-2 to make).
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:5, Informative)
What's wrong with having a VGA output? Many older projectors and monitors, which are still perfectly functional and don't need to be replaced, use VGA. Why force people to buy a new monitor and a new projector just because they got a new laptop/PC?
Let me introduce you to a new concept - an adapter cable [amazon.com]. They cost 20 or 30 bucks at most, and are available for older display technologies and with either male or female style vga/dvi/whatever connectors.
Re:HDMI? (Score:4, Informative)
it supports audio over the connection (Mini-DP doesn't),
Display port does support audio. I don't know if its actually implemented anywhere though. Are you sure mini-DP doesn't?
Is there something that Mini-DP does that HDMI doesn't?
At the electrical level they work quite differently and displayport is much more better suited for certain tasks like embedded applications, laptop screens, etc. Its like SATA vs PATA in some respects with displayport being SATA. It can use fewer wires.
Displayport is also license free, while HDMI requires a license. That, of course, makes displayport a bit cheaper.
Overall displayport is the superior technology in nearly every respect. But HDMI was out first and is the more established one. If displayport had been out of the gate first, hdmi wouldn't exist.
Re:HDMI? (Score:5, Informative)
HDMI is basically a single link DVI signal along with a digital audio stream. Both the audio and video gets their own pins and wires. But display port is a packet based system so audo, video and other signals can be multiplexed across the same set of wires. Display port 1.1 allows for eight 24 bit 192kHz digital audio channels. There can be 1, 2 or 4 digital lanes, similar to how PCI express works, more lanes = more bandwidth. The maximum bandwidth is over 8Gbps (3 meter cable limit)and there is also a 1mbps aux channel. A single display port cable can deliver a 2560x1600 60 Hz 30 bpp video signal. Dual link DVI port can do the same but it cant scale as well as display port will.
The HDMI connector is mechanically flimsy and can be easily damaged by the heavy shielded cables that hang from them of if yanked on. Display port is designed for those heavy cables and resists tugging and pulling that would otherwise damage an HDMI connector. Its also screw-less connector so no more fiddling with thumb screws.
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:3, Informative)
What? There's no need to buy a new monitor or projector. DVI/DisplayPort will drive a VGA device without any problems at all. But the reverse is not true. It really is bizarre that they still make laptops with just VGA output, when the digital alternatives offer VGA and more, with smaller connectors.
This is only true for DVI-I (Integrated) ports. DVI-D (Digital) doesn't have the VGA (analog) output. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface [wikipedia.org] for details
Too bad (Score:1, Informative)
Too bad they still haven't fixed the out of sync issues with the mini display port to dual link dvi adapters. You STILL can't have a reliable connection with your macbook and a 30" monitor.
Re:HDMI? (Score:4, Informative)
HDMI is basically a single link DVI signal along with a digital audio stream. Both the audio and video gets their own pins and wires. But display port is a packet based system so audo, video and other signals can be multiplexed across the same set of wires.
DVI, HDMI, and DP are all packet based systems. DVI and HDMI have three lanes (DVI-DL has six) and DP has four lanes. All of them send all data over all lanes. There is no specialization of the data channels.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:3, Informative)
Adapter (Score:3, Informative)
If only it were as simple as getting one adapter cable. John Graham-Cumming explains the situation -- with the recent proliferation of standards, you need a bundle [jgc.org] of adapters to handle all the combinations.
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:3, Informative)
Actually I'd use a USB attached one, personally. I have a few and they're quite handy.
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:3, Informative)
The adapters are fine, software-wise, if you use Linux or another OS with a generic USB-to-serial driver. They're a bit hit-and-miss in Windows, but you probably don't care about that anyway.
It's just not reasonable to carry around a USB-to-serial plus serial-to-RJ45 for the various vendors. Why can't they agree on a serial-over-RJ45 standard anyway? But that's a different rant. Anyway, always having to juggle two cables is too inconvenient and time-wasting. I'm definitely not getting rid of a real serial port until all network equipment comes with USB sockets or proper ethernet management ports.
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:2, Informative)
HDMI is adaptable only to DVI-D, and more and more laptops are coming with HDMI out...
Re:HDMI? (Score:3, Informative)
Do you mean a VGA port, or electrical VGA signalling support? If you mean the former, possibly not. If you mean the latter, then the answer is 'definitely yes'. I've only ever seen a couple of graphics cards that only support DVI-D and not DVI-I, which contains a VGA signal embedded in the DVI signal (and can be converted to a VGA signal with a trivial adaptor that just connects some of the DVI pins to VGA pins).
SATA was designed to be identical in software to IDE, so an OS with IDE support could run SATA drives (just without all of the features enabled), making migration trivial. It's quite unusual for someone to upgrade their disks and computers independently, while upgrading monitors and projectors separately from laptops is very common, so the situation isn't really the same. If you get a DisplayPort display, then you'll want it to also support DVI to work with your old computer. If you get a DisplayPort computer you'll want it to support DVI (and maybe VGA) to work with all of the existing devices that have been deployed. If you get a new computer with SATA, you probably don't care that you can't plug your old ATA disks into it.