DisplayPort 1.1 gets ratified

PREPARE FOR an onslaught of new graphics card revisions. Just when you thought HDMI was starting to ramp up, DisplayPort has had its latest specification ratified for use in CE products.

DP, as we amusingly nickname it, supports double the bandwidth of DVI, whilst using a connector more suited to inclusion on small, portable devices.

It's very easy to liken DisplayPort to a royalty-free version of HDMI, but... who are we kidding? It's really is just a royalty-free version of HDMI, designed so that Intel et al can avoid paying thousands of dollars every year to a company that isn't 'one of them'.

Like all goody-two-shoes connector specs, DP supports HDCP for next-gen optical media DRM, so the Hollywood studios can quite happily support it.

So what happens now? Well, given that HDMI has already achieved a pretty decent market penetration in consumer devices, it seems likely that it will live on in consumer players and TVs. However, when it comes to PCs and notebooks, it rather looks like DVI and VGA could be replaced by DisplayPort over the next few years, much as DVI has replaced VGA during the last few.

Thankfully, DVI, HDMI and DP are all electrically compatible, making for a mean business for vendors selling conversion cables.

As computing goes increasingly mobile, the clunkiness of DVI has become apparent, with its inability to fit on many thin and light notebooks, resulting in a number of proprietary connectors with DVI breakout boxes. As DisplayPort becomes standard, expect to see it slotted onto notebooks just like USB ports. µ