[Discuss] Large DVI monitor

[bogstad at pobox.com (Bill Bogstad)]

2011/8/8 Shankar Viswanathan <shankar.viswan at gmail.com>:
> 2011/8/7 Shirley M?rquez D?lcey <mark at buttery.org>:
>>> Recent high-end Radeon and NVidia video cards tend to come with
>>> DisplayPort, too.
>>
>> I haven't seen that; the ones I've seen come with HDMI rather than
>> DisplayPort. That doesn't mean that all of them do, but if I'm spending I'd
>> rather have an HDMI port. DisplayPort never really caught on with anybody
>> other than Apple, and it strikes me as a standard that has no good reason
>> for existence; what technical advantage does it have over the more widely
>> adopted HDMI? (I'm prepared to be enlightened if it actually has one.)
>
> DP has two main differences compared to HDMI, one non-technical and
> one technical:
> ?1. DP is an open royalty-free standard supported by VESA, HDMI has
> royalties per connector. One is free to extend the DP standard for
> customized applications (e.g. embedded markets)
> ?2. DP allows for a 720Mbps AUX channel that could be used for data
> transfer. Most practical use is for touchscreens, DPMS and for using
> it for USB data (think USB hubs in the monitor without needing a
> separate USB cable). HDMI allows for a relatively low-speed "Consumer
> Electronics Control" channel and is used by several consumer
> electronics vendors for vendor-specific remote controls (e.g. Sony
> BluRay player talking to Sony TV or Sony A/V receiver). DP also
> supports multiple audio/video streams over the same cable.
>
> Practically, you'll find most computer/graphics card vendors
> supporting both DP & HDMI, though some may have only DP ports and ask
> you to buy a separate DP -> HDMI dongle to connect to your TV (thus
> passing the HDMI royalty fee to the dongle). IMHO, the DP connector is
> more robust compared to HDMI.
>
> A point to note is that both standards are continually evolving, and
> the technical differences between the two are getting blurred with
> each revision.

I've been following this discussion and been confused because I don't
think I've ever even seen a card with a DP port.   I did a quick
survey of graphics cards available on-line at Microcenter and I think
I know why.   None of the cheapest ten graphics cards had DP (some had
DVI as well as HDMI).   More then 50% of the most expensive cards had
DP.  I'm not into heavy graphics/gaming so in my universe DP doesn't
exist.  That's a bit surprising if DP is royalty free, but it is what
it is.

Bill Bogstad