VGA and DVI Ports To Be Phased Out Over Next 5 Years 704
angry tapir writes "Legacy VGA and DVI display ports are likely to be phased out in PCs over the next five years, according to a study by NPD In-Stat. Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are ending chipset support for VGA by 2015. The VGA interface was originally introduced in 1986 and DVI was introduced in 1999."
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
The one that was introduced 13 years later is being phased out at the same time as the one that was introduced thirty-six years ago? How odd.
HDMI fasteners? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:why phase out DVI? (Score:5, Interesting)
The port connector might be 'huge' by your standard, but at least it won't get out by itself, from either the computer or the monitors. I'm using 3 30" monitor in 2560x1600, and the images are always perfect, switch on immediatly too.
On a TV gaming setup in the basement with HDMI, when there's way too much bass and the TV is vibrating with the sound (older retroprojection TV in which there is a lot of air), there happens some time where the security signal is lost and we lose the image for a few seconds, until it synchronize back. Doesn't happen with the DVI connector, which is a big plus for them.
Anyway, what was your point about the dual link DVI being a PITA ?
Re:why phase out DVI? (Score:3, Interesting)
I just had a funny thought last night...
Say you're a consumer electronics manufacturer, like, oh, Sony, and you make audio, then later video recording devices "for the masses," you sell them in quantity, get them in the hands of Joe Average, and let him record whatever he wants, which you know is about 98.9% copies of commercial works and 1% his garage band (playing cover tunes without a license) or 2 year old reciting the cereal commercial from T.V., and 0.1% actual, legitimate use.
So, what's your next move? Why, get into the commercial content industry, of course... music, movies, basically anything that makes something worthy of copying with the very same consumer electronics you've successfully sold for the last decade or three... It's a booming industry, lots of money to make there.
And, then what? Well, of course, you go and clamp down on all this horrid copyright infringement that you yourself have been enabling and implicitly promoting for 50 years.
Entrapment is (rarely, but sometimes) a valid argument against the police, why not corporations?
Projectors (Score:4, Interesting)
I travel to give the occasional presentation and I think I've only seen one or two projectors in the past 5 years that had something other than a VGA input. This is probably why many business laptops still have VGA outputs at the expense of providing others like DisplayPort, DVI, or HDMI.
The other problem is that monitors and projectors long outlive their PC contemporaries. I've got a 20" Dell LCD that I purchased in 2003 that's still going strong today. It has VGA and DVI inputs, since only in the past few years have HDMI and DisplayPort become standard on monitors.
I'm rather partial to DisplayPort and Thunderbolt since the connectors are smaller and don't have pins that are easily bent, but these outputs aren't too common in laptops, unless you have a Mac.
Re:why phase out DVI? (Score:3, Interesting)
This could be solved without actually modifying the HDMI "connector" itself - just some body work around it.
No technical reason you couldn't put securing screws around an HDMI connector, is what I mean.
Re:why phase out DVI? (Score:4, Interesting)
That is why it is being killed off.
Puts me in mind of the wonderful move to SATA connectors .. you know, those damn things which come loose and you have to shut down, open cabinet and push back in place? Honestly, what a horrible connector. HDMI impresses me as another connector which is weak. The next standard will probably have a built in spring for pushing it out at various intervals (usually while you are in the middle of that big presentation, like I was on Wednesday and the video cable to the projector kept falling out.)
Re:Business use laptops and projectors (Score:5, Interesting)
There is little support for HDMI within the seminar room equipment available, it's practically all VGA only. It's only very high end kit which has HDMI support.
If you add to that most, if not all, "presenter" units (that is the back-lit camera systems people can use to show objects or hand-written notes) are VGA output only, the only real solution is analogue video, even though it doesn't travel long distances well (though this can be worked around with video senders).
The reason I know this is that only a couple of years ago I was on a committee running the kitting out of some lecture theatres and seminar rooms. None of the tendering A/V companies could supply a complete system using DVI, HDMI or any other digital video technology even though we asked them to look into it.
VGA is *THE* de-facto lowest common denominator computer video format, it's likely to stay that way for a *VERY* long time.
Re:All about HDCP (Score:5, Interesting)
*is* there usb over hdmi? I know they hacked it to support ethernet.
as for audio, here's some semi-hidden truth: audio is multiplexed in (not literally but close enough) to the digital stream. ie, they take digital video (dvi is fine for that and *always* has been) and then they do a data stream *merge* and create a new binary stream that is a+v. audio comes from 2-channel spdif or multichannel dd/dts.
here's the part that annoys the hell out of me (and should, you, too): those two streams did NOT have to be mixed. video could have gone down the cable in one wire set (like dvi) and audio could have been run in a single coax cable or fiber (spdif or toslink, which all modern home stereos support as audio inputs).
this means that you ONCE did have control over your a and v. you could patch in or out, anything, at any time. no fancy equipment needed. running audio as audio wiring and video as video wiring is just two cables and it was never a big deal to run those 2 in the back of your stereo or tv console. the rgb multi bnc cable madness of analog video *was* nuts and did need cleaning up, but once you go digital, 2 small wires or 1 is not a big deal.
but to 'content guys' they saw an opportunity to swoop in and fuck things up. they mixed the 2 physical streams into a new one and encoded it. 'hdmi-audio' is then born. and it sucks.
you can currently get 24bit audio with 192k and higher bitrates on stereo. I suspect you can do full multichannel on a single coax cable, too; and perhaps on a higher grade fiber (not toslink) as well. there is still no reason to have to weave in audio to video and encrypt the whole thing as a 'secure bundle'. it really messes up higher end audio systems that use outboard DACs. getting audio out of hdmi is expensive and that is totally uncalled for.
dvi is perfectly fine for video but if they are 'coming' for dvi, I bet they are going to try to cut out or cut back on digital audio (as regular pure audio, or as audio that accompanies a video stream). I actually care more about audio than video and so I really do insist on my audio stream staying separate. and its easy, today; you run a HTPC with an spdif-out sound card and you point your app's 'sound card' at the spdif card. if they are shooting for 'no more hdmi' I bet they are not long for 'no more spdif'. spdif is (can be) bit-perfect and so I realize its a continual annoyance to 'content creators'. I hope I'm wrong about a future attempt to grab digital audio as its own wiring (sans video).
Re:30 Years of VGA (Score:5, Interesting)
USB and the mini and micro variants are a success story if anything. The plugs are electrically identical, just physically smaller, and they're industry-standard. Meanwhile Apple was coming up with all kinds of crazy stupid proprietary shit (going so far as the infamous Charger Resistor Trick) and many other manufacturers were making proprietary connectors for individual device models.
easy solution, HDMI/DVI adapter (Score:5, Interesting)
Since DVI-D is just HDMI minus the audio, you can get cheap passive HDMI-to-DVI adapters. They work fine for connecting DVI monitors to HDMI video sources, or vice versa. No quality loss.
Re:why phase out DVI? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep. Hollywood and Big Media will be pushing for a monitor standard which detects uncertified video, blocks it, reports you and sets your house on fire.
That's pretty overkill, and probably only represents *AA's starting position in the bargaining. I'm sure they'd be happy with just detonating the explosive slave collar [wikia.com], if they can get the mandate for that piece of content-protection hardware added in the next round of copyright protection legislation.
Seems I read a story in the news yestiddy - MegaUpload cost them $500 Million in losses due to piracy. Really? How did they come to that figure? Wild guess? Actual accounting? Is anyone here just blindly accepting that figure? Don't talk to me about overkill when it comes to Big Media and Hollywood (Hollywood even - legendary for Hollywood Accounting and such phrases as, "Yes the picture did gross $784 Million, but after production, distribution, marketing, promotional activities, etc, etc, etc, we lost money on the picture, which is why you are not getting a 5% of Net, because there is none. By the way, are you available for the Sequel? It'll be collassal!") $500 Million .. sure. And I'm an Asthmahound Chihuahua named 'Stimpy'.
Re:Projectors (Score:4, Interesting)
Corporate projectors will often have a lot of different inputs, but as a general rule of thumb, the only cable connected will be VGA. For corporate presentations it's still VGA all the way. (Have seen Mac users learn this the hard way.)