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HD Video and Audio to Your iPod

by Tim Stevens on April 4, 2007 at 10:47 AM

Just when you thought upgrading all your computer and audio-video (AV) devices to use HDMI was the way to future-proof yourself, along comes a new standard to muddy the water. Called DisplayPort, this new interface has been approved by VESA, the Video Electronics Standards Association, an organization that reigns over these sorts of things. DisplayPort is a small AV connection standard (or, "interface") much like HDMI that enables clean, pure digital signals to go straight from your device to your display.

DisplayPort replaces DVI, the largely PC-based standard that itself superseded VGA, a plug dating back to the early days of home computing (yet still widely in use for many PC monitors). While DVI delivers digital video just fine, its clunky size makes it impractical for mobile devices and it lacks audio capabilities. DisplayPort offers twice the speed of DVI for ultra-high resolutions and boasts svelte packaging, which means we could start seeing high quality outputs appear on iPods, smart phones, and PDAs. It also delivers HDCP protection, a must for playing protected Blu-ray and HD-DVD content, should those portable Blu-ray players hit the market in the future. Finally, with digital audio capabilities, the potential is there to get 5.1 (or better) audio from your devices, all on this one cable.

Despite the similarities between DisplayPort and HDMI, the intent seems to be for the two standards to exist in some sort of begrudging harmony, HDMI ruling the home theater side of things and DisplayPort taking over the PC and mobile devices side. Having two standards that do effectively the same thing is a bit of a drag, but the good news is that cheap adapters will enable those with DVI- or HDMI-equipped devices to keep on computing. Computer- and chip-makers are set to start implementing DisplayPort-compatible desktops and laptops by the end of this year, but if we've learned anything from the slow up-take of DVI (which dates back to 1999), you won't have to worry about your current stuff going obsolete anytime soon.

From Engadget


Tags: DisplayPort, DVI, VGA

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