[Discuss] Large DVI monitor

[Shankar Viswanathan]

2011/8/7 Shirley Márquez Dúlcey <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.

Hope this helps,
Shankar