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280

Use DisplayPort everywhere, drop HDMI. (Prefer free/libre standards over closed protocols)

280 points posted to Monitors and Displays, Desktops and Laptops by freemenow Mar 5 **REVIEWED**

Use DisplayPort on all your new products. DisplayPort is a solid and clean standard, easily espandable and is going to last way more than clunky hack-ish protocols like HDMI or DVI.

Drop HDMI from all your products. Now. It is going to be a legacy connector in a year or two. The HDMI is an expensive closed patented protocol. The HDMI licensing consortium asks for an annual fee + per-device royalty. DisplayPort is a free open standard, developed by VESA and available for free, with no strings attached.

For backward compatibility there are many converters available, one can connect DisplayPort computers to their old VGA, DVI or HDMI monitors without problems.

Sources:
DisplayPort free standard: http://www.displayport.org/technical/
HDMI royalty scheme: http://www.hdmi.org/manufacturer/terms.aspx


Please see matt_d's comment

matt_d
Mar 5		 Dell was a founding member of DisplayPort, and it's starting to be included in our monitors and

http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/76242 includes some links to Dell's DisplayPort efforts.
freemenow
Mar 5		 Dell highlights why DisplayPort is better than HDMI: http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/02/19/46464.aspx
jorge
Mar 5		 Looks like DP is the way to go

Any products that have it already?
zanlok
Mar 5		 that d2d post is awesome.. I've never liked hdmi anyways..
more reading to come, but I'll bet I'll be a huge DP fan by the end of the day..
matt_d
Mar 5		 jorge: the 3008WFP LCD monitor is now shipping, which has DP.
winoffice
Mar 6		 New televisions popularly use HDMI, and I suspect that even newer monitors might be using it. Almost all other manufacturers use HDMI these days, as far as I know. For Dell to abandon HDMI would instantly make them incompatible with those who uses it.
freemenow
Mar 6		 @winoffice: There are adapters for DisplayPort -> HDMI conversion. There is no need to waste space (on the laptop/desktop) and money (costumers' money) on a soon-to-be-secondary port.
winoffice
Mar 13		 @freemenow: "There are adapters for DisplayPort -> HDMI conversion. There is no need to waste space (on the laptop/desktop) and money (costumers' money) on a soon-to-be-secondary port."

But if one of my televisions or monitors uses HDMI but not DisplayPort, then I will have to spend extra money on a DisplayPort to HDMI converter. So it is just replacing one "waste of money" with another. I do not want to be forced into spending extra money on a converter.
fxi
Mar 14		 Better yet, with the improved space savings of using displayport, give us two displayports so we can drive two monitors, both high res so there is no longer the dual monitor advantage to desktops...
freemenow
Mar 15		 @fxi: A single DisplayPort connector on your laptop can drive more than one display

Right now there are part of the DisplayPort spec dealing with this feature and reserving codes needed to send more than one video stream over a single out-port. Currently the spec is still a bit fuzzy on this topic and this feature it is not supported by any graphic card, On the other hand, with HDMI it will *never* be possible to drive more than one monitor with a single HDMI port.
fxi
Mar 15		 That's true, but it can't drive a large 30" display @ 10 bit color AND a smaller secondary display also @ 10bit color. HDMI, agreed will never be up to multimonitor spec and really would be better done as an adapter off of a Displayport output.
jackie_c
May 29		 Changed status to **REVIEWED**.
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