De Zeurkous - I approve in principle of a SCSI/1394-based protocol, but the re-tooling to produce this from the existing displays is significant. Likewise, I approve of a subset of displays running with display commands (in the manner of X terminals), but it gets difficult to do this when the whole display is being updated - short of lossy video compression, the amount of work required to produce an arbitrary image on the screen (e.g. during the playing of a game) easily exceeds the memory requirements of sending the image in its raw format. For a point-to-point protocol, there's little benefit in reducing the bandwidth some of the time at the cost of complicating the protocol; nothing will be using the spare bandwidth. Obviously the situation is different if the display is streamed over a shared network.
Something supporting higher total resolutions/colour depth and multiple displays, better connection distances, better connectors and a more flexible protocol *would* be a good thing, but the trick is to achieve some of these without making any of the others worse than we've got already - and *enough* better (or future-proof) that the consumer both has a benefit to upgrading and evidence that they won't need to do so again immediately after. If this isn't the case, the benefits of a new connector don't outweigh the costs of switching. I don't say that we should stay with HDMI (or DVI) forever, just that we should wait until the replacement is worthwhile - and I don't think that's true of DisplayPort. I'll reserve judgement on a 1394-video connector (not the existing compressed scheme) until someone comes up with a detailed proposal, but - much though I like the idea of a more elegant standard - I won't advocate it unless there's actually an end-user benefit. Matching the capabilities of DVI with a "cleaner" protocol isn't enough.
A J - I sympathise (especially about the patent rant), but I really think a digital connection is a good idea. There are real problems with running a CRT through a switch or longish cable at much over UXGA resolution, and VGA inputs on LCDs have to do a lot of work to convert the signal back to digital (before, admittedly, making it analogue again). SCART isn't universal (at least in the US), and I have to admit that - nice though it is on a TV - it's a bit bulky for the back of a PC (I've no idea what its signal quality tolerances are). I think it's too early to throw away analogue completely, and certainly too early to throw away a signal that can be converted to analogue easily (as DVI-D and HDMI can), but keeping digital from the frame buffer to the display does seem more practical. There are reasons for going with YCrCb (better use of the bandwidth), even if it requires some conversion at both ends, but for computer displays I suspect we're mostly talking RGB for *any* standard these days.
A fibre-optic standard would be nicer, and I'd hoped that DisplayPort might go down this route (or UDI, for that matter), but having copper *and* fibre is the worst of both worlds. We're back to fibre being useful only for the minority with the need for longer cable runs, just like dual-link DVI is useful only for the minority with high resolution/colour displays, and not making it the default will result in incompatibility, confusion, and unnecessarily high prices. Again.
It appears that the display industry is too busy trying to work its way through the standards messes that it makes for itself to learn not to do it again. I'd like to think that the consumers could put their foot down at some point, but I suspect they'll be too confused by now to have a chance - all that's happening is that everyone's holding off buying *anything*.
Register
I'd love to agree with you, but...
De Zeurkous - I approve in principle of a SCSI/1394-based protocol, but the re-tooling to produce this from the existing displays is significant. Likewise, I approve of a subset of displays running with display commands (in the manner of X terminals), but it gets difficult to do this when the whole display is being updated - short of lossy video compression, the amount of work required to produce an arbitrary image on the screen (e.g. during the playing of a game) easily exceeds the memory requirements of sending the image in its raw format. For a point-to-point protocol, there's little benefit in reducing the bandwidth some of the time at the cost of complicating the protocol; nothing will be using the spare bandwidth. Obviously the situation is different if the display is streamed over a shared network.
Something supporting higher total resolutions/colour depth and multiple displays, better connection distances, better connectors and a more flexible protocol *would* be a good thing, but the trick is to achieve some of these without making any of the others worse than we've got already - and *enough* better (or future-proof) that the consumer both has a benefit to upgrading and evidence that they won't need to do so again immediately after. If this isn't the case, the benefits of a new connector don't outweigh the costs of switching. I don't say that we should stay with HDMI (or DVI) forever, just that we should wait until the replacement is worthwhile - and I don't think that's true of DisplayPort. I'll reserve judgement on a 1394-video connector (not the existing compressed scheme) until someone comes up with a detailed proposal, but - much though I like the idea of a more elegant standard - I won't advocate it unless there's actually an end-user benefit. Matching the capabilities of DVI with a "cleaner" protocol isn't enough.
A J - I sympathise (especially about the patent rant), but I really think a digital connection is a good idea. There are real problems with running a CRT through a switch or longish cable at much over UXGA resolution, and VGA inputs on LCDs have to do a lot of work to convert the signal back to digital (before, admittedly, making it analogue again). SCART isn't universal (at least in the US), and I have to admit that - nice though it is on a TV - it's a bit bulky for the back of a PC (I've no idea what its signal quality tolerances are). I think it's too early to throw away analogue completely, and certainly too early to throw away a signal that can be converted to analogue easily (as DVI-D and HDMI can), but keeping digital from the frame buffer to the display does seem more practical. There are reasons for going with YCrCb (better use of the bandwidth), even if it requires some conversion at both ends, but for computer displays I suspect we're mostly talking RGB for *any* standard these days.
A fibre-optic standard would be nicer, and I'd hoped that DisplayPort might go down this route (or UDI, for that matter), but having copper *and* fibre is the worst of both worlds. We're back to fibre being useful only for the minority with the need for longer cable runs, just like dual-link DVI is useful only for the minority with high resolution/colour displays, and not making it the default will result in incompatibility, confusion, and unnecessarily high prices. Again.
It appears that the display industry is too busy trying to work its way through the standards messes that it makes for itself to learn not to do it again. I'd like to think that the consumers could put their foot down at some point, but I suspect they'll be too confused by now to have a chance - all that's happening is that everyone's holding off buying *anything*.
Cheery, innit?
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Fluppeteer