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:5, Insightful)
IIRC, HDMI's signaling is basically a single DVI link, and isn't rated to push anything past 1920x1200. Pretty much anything higher requires a dual-link DVI connection, which involves more complex cabling and signal routing on the board.
DisplayPort is a much smaller connector and has an overall smaller PCB footprint, as well as using a thinner cable. I suspect that if Intel doesn't manage to run it by the wayside in a year's time with Lights Peak, you -might- see video cards with combination Mini DisplayPort + HDMI outputs.
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:4, Insightful)
Agree fully. I still drop my jaw everytime I see a laptop from the past 3-4 years still sporting a friggin' VGA connector, or even worse, from some "PC" manufacturers, a parallel port.
Sadly, there will always be that crowd of conservative oddballs and anal retentives, barking like old dogs refusing to learn how to sit, for keeping old standards, trying to justify it by reasons of pointless, smelly compatibility that is long past its expiry date.....and everyone knows they are the ones who contribute to nothing but stagnation, not the ones who help driving the world forward.
Yeah, just like people using serial ports to program Cisco gear or people in EE using serial ports to program microcontrollers by plugging the RX and TX pins directly to a serial port. And what about those people presenting their research at conferences around the world wanting to use a display connector that's supported on every single projector around the world in all convention centres instead of carrying a suitcase of adapters. We all know those aren't the people who help drive the world forwards, right?
Re:HDMI? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with any modern connector is licensing. Every time you buy a cable, or a device with {XYZ connector}, some smug bastard gets paid for "inventing" that connector. It's rarely about "what is technically superior", usually it's "what's the cheapest standard we can shove down people's throats".
Licensing is why today's computers have umpteen slow inefficient USB ports, and zero or one Firewire ports. Apple fucked that one up by charging $20 or so per Firewire device for the longest time, they only lowered the licensing fee long after the war was lost.
The thing about VESA though, none of the major manufacturers really give a crap what VESA thinks. VESA dreams up these "standards", charges a lot of money for the specs, which results in them being largely ignored. The freebies they offer are mostly crap, either obsolete or just plain old stupid. They're like the IEEE's retarded step-cousin, on crack.
Re:HDMI? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:5, Insightful)
Why force people to buy a new monitor and a new projector just because they got a new laptop/PC?
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.
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, just like people using serial ports to program Cisco gear or people in EE using serial ports to program microcontrollers by plugging the RX and TX pins directly to a serial port.
Specialists will always need specialist equipment. The vast majority of us don't.
And what about those people presenting their research at conferences around the world wanting to use a display connector that's supported on every single projector around the world in all convention centres instead of carrying a suitcase of adapters.
As one of those people, I can confirm that we normally carry our presentations (ppt or pdf) on a USB stick instead. Much easire than fiddling around with display connections between each talk. Most conferences don't allow you to use your own computer.
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:HDMI? (Score:3, Insightful)
it's like open source, if you want a lot of code that has been tested to work then you have to give something back as well
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:1, Insightful)
it saddens me when i see people who not only fail to see farther than their own noses (the hardware they personally deal in), but also forget to look back in history (the hardware we used, grew out of, and abandoned in favor of something better - our own progress).
by your arguments, we would never have arrived to where we were 10 years ago with Fast Ethernet, VGA, serial and parallel connectors, USB1.0, parallel ATA etc., and we wouldn't be where we are today, with DisplayPort, DVI, serial ATA, optical/gigabit Ethernet and 802.11 wireless, USB2/3 etc. - all of the latter being technologies that i'm certain you enjoy thoroughly, in loving favor of the alternatives you had 10 years ago.
and i'm sure even you can figure out that if we stick with your rationale, we won't arrive at tomorrow's technology either.
I didn't argue against new standards, as much as you seem to want to put words in my mouth, but rather at you saying that because we use some older standards because we need things to work instead of using the new whizbang technology we're just a "crowd of conservative oddballs and anal retentives, barking like old dogs refusing to learn how to sit, for keeping old standards, trying to justify it by reasons of pointless, smelly compatibility that is long past its expiry date."
There are other things than just the consumer market and some of us have specialized equipment for which older interfaces are needed because replacing the equipment for no reason other than "it uses the new connector/interface" is simply ridiculous.
Re:HDMI? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope. DisplayPort supports both HDCP and the stronger AES based DPCP.
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea is that the new standard goes on the laptop, and from that nicely small connector, you can adapt to any standard, including new ones with much higher capacity.
Want a VGA adapter? Done. Want ah DVI adapter? Done. Each $30 at the Apple Store, and soon probably cheaper elsewhere. Other adapters possible. More capacity in the standard, for other folks who want to hook up to something else. Small connection to help keep your laptop small.
The only reason you actually need an ungainly VGA connector on your laptop is if you either refuse to pay $30 for an adapter, or you expect that you might lose the adapter yet still have your laptop for that super-important presentation.
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure. The 95% of the time that I carry my laptop for my own use only, I have a slimmer machine that I throw in my backpack. That's convenient.
When I might make a presentation, I can throw in a small cable and I have full-sized VGA. Another small cable gives me full-sized DVI. Other cables will come that provide other standards/sizes.
When I'm going to a conference where I will make a presentation, I'll have my big laptop bag with all of those connectors, and I'll have a USB stick with my presentations on it, and a DVD, too, burned in PDF as a lowest-common-denominator.
Lugging around a laptop with a VGA (which size) port and also a DVI (which size) port on it all the time is inconvenient.
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:1, Insightful)
These are a small percentage of people, however. And for a few dollars extra they can easily use USB to serial port adapters, or DVI/HDMI/mDP to VGA adapters. But they are driving costs up for *everybody* else.
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me give you a history lesson. For a while there, Apple used to provide industry-standard display ports on their computers. They even included DVI to VGA adapters for people with "older" technologies. Then they started slapping this new port on their laptops. So now I can no longer plug a monitor directly into the computer. I have to attach an adapter to it. An adapter I have to carry around and keep track of. And I have to buy separate VGA and DVI adapters because apple's DVI adapter is digital-only. No fair using your existing DVI to VGA adapter. So now customers have to pay an extra $60 (if you buy apple-branded adapters) to get the same functionality that used to be included in the base price of the machine.
How the hell is THAT progress?
I don't give a damn if they've paid enough money to get their new port adopted by VESA. It's not a standard used by display manufacturers. It's just another cable to buy and another adapter to throw in the kit.
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess you have never used jtag.
It's very easy to create a simple device to reflash firmware via a parallel port.
For example adding the codes to your hardware to a one for all universal remote.
Or recovering from a failed flash of some firmware.
It can be quite difficult to recreate a fully working parallel port via usb.
Another fun thing is to use the data lines for I/o controlling what ever you want.
I don't expect many people to appreciate the uses of the parallel and serial ports but on slashdot ? ...
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I hope it catches on (Score:1, Insightful)
Let me give you a history lesson. For a while there, Apple used to provide industry-standard display ports on their computers. They even included DVI to VGA adapters for people with "older" technologies. Then they started slapping this new port on their laptops.
Well you are in luck. This very article shows that this new port is now an industry standard ;)