HDMI coming for PC.....ugh.

[Morbo]

http://www.vesa.org/press/displayportaug.htm

"The plan in May was to submit a comprehensive version of the interface proposal to VESA during the third quarter for ratification and adoption," said Ian Miller, chairman of VESA. "The group has met its internal timetable and delivered to us a very comprehensive specification, which VESA will now administer and provide a forum for future revisions."

DisplayPort allows high quality audio to be available to the display device over the same cable as the video signal. It delivers true plug-and-play with robust interoperability, and is cost-competitive with existing digital display interconnects. Designed to be available throughout the industry as an open, extensible standard, DisplayPort is expected to accelerate adoption of protected digital outputs on PCs to support viewing high definition and other types of protected content through an optional content protection capability, while enabling higher levels of display performance.

DisplayPort enables a common interface approach across both internal connections, such as interfaces within a PC or monitor, and external display connections, including interfaces between a PC and monitor or projector, between a PC and TV or between a device such as DVD player and TV display. The standard includes an optional digital audio capability so high definition digital audio and video can be streamed over the interface, and it provides performance scalability so the next generation of displays can feature higher color depths, refresh rates, and display resolutions. It also features a small, user-friendly connector optimized for use on thin profile notebooks in addition to allowing multiple connectors on a graphics card.

This is outrageous... They are REALLY trying now to reign in the PC.. :mad:

[Revgen]

Yep.

Tech companies are feeling the pressure of lobbyists like the MPAA and RIAA who have a lot of clout in both the House and the Senate. Tech companies are worried that political leaders will try and regulate them if they don't regulate themselves.

I can't say that I really blame them.

[Atamido]

It's like DVI/HDMI, but not compatible with anything... This would be dead before it hit the shelf but it looks like ATI and nVidia are key developers of it, so expect it to become an actual standard.

One of the key features of this new standard is that it selectively updates on the parts of the screen that have changed, meaning it should need less bandwidth. What people don't seem to understand is that full motion video rarely has parts of the screen that are perfectly identical from one frame to the next, and a FPS game will never have more than 95% if you are moving, so you still have to plan for maximum screen updates unless you plan on lagging or not actually transmitting video 100% how it should look. (1920x1080x24bx60fps = ~3Gbps, not including the audio it can send).

The bigger question is why don't they just use something like 10Gb ethernet? It exists so there is already silicon, would provide bandwidth to spare, and it is super easy to get the cabling. And you could do ethernet over optical fiber and completely crush any distance or interference problems.

[Doom9]

The bigger question is why don't they just use something like 10Gb ethernet?Because it doesn't have copy protection built-in? Most of these new standards are centered around that, the rest doesnt really matter. Since your audio will go to the receiver rather than the TV anyway, combining audio and video in one cable doesn't make that much sense.. imagine going to a projector mounted on the ceiling.. your receiver is very likely not going to be there, so the optical cable between your DVD player / HDTV Receiver to the stereo would be more convenient.

Good point on the selective updates :)

[Koepi]

Thank god HDCP is just stupid and will be broken relatively fast ;-) (At least some people claim that on hacker-meetings...)
Also remember these fine boxes which convert HDMI to DVI and have one unscrambled output.

Since the renewability-feature of HDMI seems to be more or less a fake (how do they upgrade the revokation lists? it seems to happen only if you connect them to other [newer] HDMI devices), I certainly doubt that there will be revoked (display) devices. I'll just wait and see what happens. As usual "they" will terribly fail to expel the consumers, the question is how much effort you have to spend to circumvent the new copy protection and drm schemes.

Just my 2 cents.

Cheers
Koepi

[fisix]

Good point on the selective updates :)
doom9->
i'm going to put this here, though it is commentary on the front page news:

HDMI doesn't necessarily have to have HDCP implemented with it. there's at least one sony tv with hdmi and no hdcp out there (and i'm sure some poor soul bought one).

also, i agree completely that it doesn't make sense to have an hdmi (or any other combo av scheme) output on a computer video card that isn't specifically a special 'media' version or something. furthermore, it will be very very silly if they try to make all computer screens employ hdcp. the hdcp licensing fees alone will make it an option to at least some of the hardware manuf. (tiawan, china), and i bet most buyers will gravitate to the more open hardware.

the skinny is that ms vista will have os support for the CP stuff. and of course the vid card drivers will, but i have faith that anything they cook up will be easily circumvented ala dvdidle etc.

and for reference, (this needs a long explaination) we have an upconverting dvd player connected through dvi to an hdcp capable projector. when the hdcp handshake gets buggy (it often does), regular dvds won't play upconverted, but crouching tiger hidden dragon will. i don't know if the hdcp is activated/deactivated with the presence of macrovision or dvd encryption (the CTHD dvd has neither), but since this is a phillips dvd player, my guess is that this activation trigger will be similar with other implementations, and maybe even with full blown hd-dvds, even with all their extra content protection crap.

this leads me to believe that stripping off the activation trigger will allow unhindered video transfer from a protected card to a protected/unprotected display, and unless there exists some dedicated physical connection between the video card and the disk reader that hasn't been mentioned in the news yet, there will be a software avenue available for removing the trigger (even if it means a non-real-time rip procedure).

and if anything has been learned by the past responses to DRM/CP, software exploits will quickly be developed. heck, even if there is a hardware block, the xbox scene has taught us that even hardware workarounds aren't far off.

they could even be legal... there is talk that linux won't be able to support hdcp because there is a licen$e involved. it would be legal under fair use to employ a work around if that work around could be argued as facilitating the ability to run linux (a substantial, uninfringing use). that argument is what keeps xbox chips legal. or at least grey legal.

[fisix]

Since the renewability-feature of HDMI seems to be more or less a fake (how do they upgrade the revokation lists? it seems to happen only if you connect them to other [newer] HDMI devices), I certainly doubt that there will be revoked (display) devices.
correct me if i'm misunderstanding your words:

the revocation lists are kept online. they expect any device that might need the list to be able to contact the online repository every time a hd-dvd disk is played. that means you can't play hd-dvds without a phoneline or direct internet link. that's my understanding.

also, hdmi/dvi displays all seem to have some sort of rewritable rom that contains various info about the display. one way to access/change it on computer displays is the viewsonic edid editor. i'm not sure 1) if this is really possible or 2) if all tv displays also have the rom, or 3) if the rom contains the 'number', but this ability to change the info might extend to changing whatever 'number' places you in/out of the revo lists. so this could allow you to spoof a valid number for a disallowed display. it might also be an avenue for a manufacturor to revalidate a display through something like a firmware upgrade.

either way, i agree that the revocation seems like an empty threat as far as displays are concerned. and i find it very hard to believe that STBs will really require constant revalidation, but thats what i've heard from reliable but possibly confused sources. certainly, this seems to be the case if the hd-dvd is played using windows media player.

[Latexxx]

correct me if i'm misunderstanding your words:

the revocation lists are kept online. they expect any device that might need the list to be able to contact the online repository every time a hd-dvd disk is played. that means you can't play hd-dvds without a phoneline or direct internet link. that's my understanding.
No. Revocation lists will be on new hd dvd and blu-ray discs. They aren't so stupid that they would force everybody to connect their player to the internet.

[SeeMoreDigital]

I guess it was only a matter of time before this was to happen!

If/when/should Blu-ray or HD-DVD drives ever make it into our PC's it's logical to assume "the-powers-at-be" don't want us to back them up over a none High-Def Copyright Protected connection, such as DVI.

Nothing like covering all be bases.... Bummer!

[Koepi]

No. Revocation lists will be on new hd dvd and blu-ray discs. They aren't so stupid that they would force everybody to connect their player to the internet.

Actually, as far as I looked into the standards, there is no such thing as device revocation lists for HDMI specified in AACS. So HD-DVD and Blu-ray media do not contain these lists -- they have other lists (for AACS devices, _not_ HDMI displays) though, which are odd enough.

[fisix]

i found the below:

HDCP provides authentication, encryption, and revocation. Specialized circuitry in the playback device and in the display monitor encrypts video data before it is sent over the link. When an HDCP enabled HDMI output senses that the connected monitor does not support HDCP, it lowers the image quality of protected content. The HDCP key exchange process verifies that a receiving device is authorized to display or record video. It uses an array of forty 56-bit secret device keys and a 40-bit key selection vector -- all supplied by the HDCP licensing entity. If the security of a display device is compromised, its key selection vector is placed on the revocation list. The host device has the responsibility of maintaining the revocation list, which is updated by system renewability messages (SRMs) carried by newer devices and by video content. Once the authority of the receiving device has been established, the video is encrypted by an exclusive-or operation with a stream cipher generated from keys exchanged during the authentication process. If a display device with no decryption ability attempts to display encrypted content, it appears as random noise.

but at least some of this is speculation, not experience. for example, hdcp implementations rarely automatically lower image quality, they just kill the video signal entirely. i did read more on the STB HD-DVD players and how they update their internal revocation lists. so far the concensus is that the disks will carry the lists and autoupdate upon play. but as i said before, i've heard that there at least has been some consideration of the lists being updated in ways that require some kind of connection to the outside world. i admit that the most plausible prediction would be that hd-dvd players would update upon disk play, and that cable or satellite boxes would update through some broadcast medium... and that that was where the confusion came from. the question for computer playback is still up in the air, though. everything i've heard says that it will require an internet connection with realtime registration/validation.

[wmansir]

Here's a related article on Vista (http://news.com.com/Hollywood%2C+Microsoft+align+on+new+Windows/2100-1025_3-5844393.html)'s new copy protection mechanisms, including trusted a/v ports. It's a mainstream article, so there's no real technical details.

[Latexxx]

Here's a related article on Vista (http://news.com.com/Hollywood%2C+Microsoft+align+on+new+Windows/2100-1025_3-5844393.html)'s new copy protection mechanisms, including trusted a/v ports. It's a mainstream article, so there's no real technical details.
Some technical information: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/stream/output_protect.mspx

[Solo]

Source (http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_nvidia_hdcp_support/default.asp)

You want to know a secret? None of the current ATI or NVIDIA graphics cards will support the full capabilities of Windows Vista.

But let’s start from the beginning. This story starts with my upcoming LCD Monitor Round-Up. As you know, a good monitor should last several years and outlive every other component in your PC, other than perhaps a keyboard or a mouse. So, when it came time to do another review of LCD monitors, my attention turned towards “Windows Vista-ready” monitors: those with HDCP. After all, it makes no sense to recommend a monitor that will go obsolete in just a few months.

At the time I started my article, there were only 10 PC monitors with DVI/HDCP support (we’re reviewing 5 of them). I was disappointed, but what was surprising is that many of these monitor manufacturers weren’t advertising their HDCP support. For monitors, HDCP support is the most important feature for having a “future proof” solution.

What is HDCP?

HDCP stands for High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection and is an Intel-initiated program that was developed with Silicon Image. This content protection system is mandatory for high-definition playback of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs. If you want to watch movies at 1980x1080, your system will need to support HDCP. If you don’t have HDCP support, you’ll only get a quarter of the resolution. A 75% loss in pixel density is a pretty big deal – Wouldn’t you be angry if your car was advertised as doing 16 mpg, and you only got 4 mpg? Or if you bought a 2 GHz CPU and found out that it only ran at 500 MHz?

As part of the Windows-Vista Ready Monitor article, I was going to publish a list of all of the graphics cards that currently support HDCP. I mean, I remember GPUs dating as far back as the Radeon 8500 that had boasted of HDCP support.

Turns out, we were all deceived.

GPU Support for HDCP

Although ATI has had “HDCP support” in their GPUs since the Radeon 8500, and NVIDIA has had “HDCP support” in their GPUs since the GeForce FX5700, it turns out that things are more complicated -- just because the GPU itself supports HDCP doesn’t mean that the graphics card can output a DVI/HDCP compliant stream. There needs to be additional support at the board level, which includes licensing the HDCP decoding keys from the Digital Content Protection, LLC (a spin-off corporation within the walls of Intel).

After some investigation, Brandon and I determined that there is no shipping retail add-in board with HDCP decoding keys. Simply put, none of the AGP or PCI-E graphics cards that you can buy today support HDCP.

I did not believe this at first. Surely, I was misinterpreting the content of the emails I was receiving. After all, everyone is hyping up H.264 support and HD-DVD/Blu-Ray playback. When I go to http://www.ati.com/products/RadeonX1900/specs.html I see HDCP support listed. Am I supposed to know that the board doesn’t support it because I can go to http://www.ati.com/products/radeonx1900/ra...0xtx/specs.html (http://www.ati.com/products/radeonx1900/radeonx1900xtx/specs.html) and see that HDCP is omitted? If that’s the case, am I supposed to know that the board has “48 shader processors” when it’s only listed in the GPU specifications page?

What we’ve confirmed

We’ve been able to confirm that none of the Built-by-ATI Radeons support HDCP. If you’ve just spent $1000 on a pair of Radeon X1900 XT graphics cards expecting to be able to playback HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies at 1920x1080 resolution in the future, you’ve just wasted your money.

NVIDIA, being a GPU manufacturer was unable to discuss the plans of board manufacturers. We contacted all six of NVIDIA’s Tier-1 board partners. None of the GeForce 6 or 7 video cards available on the market, including the most recently released GeForce 7800GS, have HDCP support. So if you just spent $1500 on a pair of 7800GTX 512MB GPUs expecting to be able to play 1920x1080 HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies in the future, you’ve just wasted your money.

How can these companies be so oblivious? Playing Devil’s Advocate, I thought to myself that maybe, just maybe, by the time Windows Vista comes out, most people are going to upgrade their GPU. If the HDCP support was very expensive, then paying for the HDCP license now would be like paying for something you don’t use. So I dug around for HDCP licensing costs. Turns out, that the answer is available at the HDMI website. HDCP licensing requires a $15,000 annual fee and a per-device fee of $0.005, i.e. a fraction of a cent. That’s not too expensive. There goes that argument.

Upgrade path for HDCP?


Video cards are the only components in a PC that have gone up in price over time. Yet manufacturers are trying to sell video cards that don’t support HDCP? The technology has been around for years. Microsoft made it public in March 2005 that HDCP would be required for Windows Vista – certainly the video card manufacturers were given this info before the public were. Moreover, what about companies who are already paying the $15,000 annual company fee because they produce HDCP-compliant products for televisions?

Despite my discovery that HDCP licensing is fairly cheap, I’m still trying to find an answer. There must be a silver lining somewhere. Maybe, just maybe, existing cards can be retrofitted for HDCP support. Maybe it’s simply a matter of a BIOS flash where each board gets its own serial number. If that were true, the worse case scenario would be that customers would pay a few bucks for the HDCP license.

Turns out that this was also wishful thinking.

An ATI representative said: “People will not be able to turn on HDCP through a software patch since the HDCP keys need to be present during the manufacturing. We are rolling out HDCP through OEMs at this time but we have not finalized our retail plans yet.”

As I pressed for more information about potential retail plans (i.e. trade-in programs, whether existing boards already have traces for the HDCP hardware where it can be plugged in), I got only a vague response:

“We cannot get into more detail at this time, as any further discussion would get into our trade secrets. However, we do promise to give you a full update on our retail plans once they are finalized.”

I’m not going to speculate on whether ATI’s reticence is because they’re trying to downplay a big fiasco, or if they’re trying to keep their super generous solution secret to throw off the competition. There’s actually no way to know.

Well, what about NVIDIA? They were actually very direct: “The boards themselves must be designed with an extra chip when the board is manufactured. The extra chip stores a crypto key, and you cannot retrofit an existing board after the board is produced.”

Wow. You can pick your favorite expletive.

The blame game

Blame Canada?

As ATI is a GPU and board manufacturer, I’m disappointed that Built-by-ATI video cards lack HDCP support. Think about it. The GPU engineers are smart enough to know that their GPUs need to support HDCP, but their board engineers aren’t? Is it even possible to build a GPU without thinking about the board that has to go along with it? ATI is extremely reticent to give us any more details about “Retail Plans.” Maybe ATI owners will get lucky, and ATI will have some sort of free upgrade program. Maybe ATI owners will get shafted, and buyers of X1900XT’s are going to find themselves with a video card that cannot play HD-DVD or Blu-Ray at 1920x1080. Who knows?

Blame Santa Clara?

What about NVIDIA? Personally, I think they have the least blood on their hand for two reasons. One, they aren’t a board manufacturer. That excuse alone wouldn’t be good enough for me though.

What really gets them off the hook is that NVIDIA has been offering their board manufacturing partners designs with HDCP support since May 2005. Likewise, NVIDIA has actually shipped HDCP-enabled GeForce 6200 and 6600’s in Sony Media Center PCs. Those boards just aren’t manufactured at retail. In retrospect, they did their part. It was the board manufacturers who failed us. I don’t need to name names, because they ALL failed us.

Blame the other Santa Clara company?

HDCP is the brain-child of Intel, and now belongs to a spin-off company, Digital Content Protection, LLC. They’re the ones who profit off all of the licensing fees. If HDCP licensing were cheaper, might we have seen more PC products with HDCP support? Possibly. It still seems to me that HDCP has relatively benign pricing when it comes to licensing. It's half a cent per item. If you compare that to licensing fees for HDMI, you'll see that while both have the same $15,000 annual fee, HDMI licensing is 4 cents/per unit (if you use the maximum discount as an example). Should we blame Intel for creating HDCP in the first place? I don’t think so. HDCP was a technology made in response to Hollywood’s requests. Blue laser technology can only go so far without content.

Blame Hollywood?

HDCP is an artificial requirement – there’s no reason why HD-DVD or Blu-Ray needs content protection. Although the movie industry is among the wealthiest of all industries, Hollywood has made things tougher in their paranoia of software piracy. Can we blame Hollywood for demanding HDCP? Maybe a little bit, but they’re not responsible for this current fiasco. Movie studios have done their fair part to make high-definition home video a possibility. From the get go, Hollywood made it clear that content protection was going to be necessary for high-definition video and they gave the electronics industry ample warning. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are coming in 2006. Television manufacturers have been putting HDCP into HDTVs from as far back as 2002. While Hollywood is certainly responsible for pressuring Microsoft into requiring HDCP for Windows Vista, they set their ground rules early on.

Is it our fault?

Think about it. If consumers and reviewers didn’t use the terms GPU and graphics card interchangeably, this wouldn’t be a problem. When it was disclosed that Microsoft required HDCP for high-definition HD-DVD or Blu-Ray playback in Windows Vista, everyone turned their attention to monitors, assuming that GPUs would support it. We all know the what happens when you assume. Likewise, why didn’t reviewers investigate if features in a GPU actually made it to the board level? Most importantly, we as consumers never clamored for HDCP support.

So in a way, even consumers are at fault, right? No way. Only the truly twisted would claim that the victims brought it upon themselves. Do any of us “ask” for Direct3D or OpenGL support? It’s a given. Consumers never demanded HDCP support because it was already thought to be there.
Alan's thoughts

This is a tough situation. The PC world simply isn’t ready for high-definition video playback via HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. There failures occurred at so many different levels. I’ve probably burned a few bridges in this article, and I probably won’t be reviewing any video cards in the near future. Nonetheless, this was a train that had already left the station. Keeping quiet about the problem wouldn’t have stopped the customer outrage when Windows Vista was released. The solution to this problem isn’t technical. It’s political. I hope that board manufacturers will own up to the challenge and explain their actions to their customers.

Brandon’s thoughts

Without a doubt, this is huge, startling news. As much as ATI and NVIDIA have been promoting H.264 decoding with their latest GPUs, it’s pretty shocking to see that apparently none of the shipping retail cards on the market have been built to take advantage of it. To add insult to injury, it appears that a line of Sony GeForce 6200s and 6600s offer HDCP support, yet the latest high-end GeForce 7800 GTX cards don’t. How’s that for irony?

While some of you may not plan on upgrading to Vista at the end of this year, this is eventually going to affect you if you ever planned on watching hi-def movies on your PC in the future. Microsoft will eventually end support for Windows XP; already, their Games Division is planning Vista-exclusive titles such as Halo 2. It will only be a matter of time before other software developers follow suit, forcing anyone who’s remotely interested in gaming to upgrade to Windows Vista.

Anyone with a GeForce 6/7 or Radeon X1K card who was planning on buying a BD-ROM or HD-DVD drive later this year for their PC may want to hold off on that purchase. Quite frankly, this article should affect the purchasing decisions of potentially anyone in the market for a new PC or graphics card right now that’s even remotely interested in watching hi-def movies on their PC sometime in the future.


Scary huh ???

[Doom9]

It gets even better if you have the Dell or Apple 30" display.. even though the Dell supports HDCP via DVI, there is not a single HDCP device that supports dual link DVI.
I don't think you should hold off from buying.. instead raise hell if you can't play their crap.. there's nothing better than a lot of pissed off people.. see Sony and their rootkit.

[Solo]

Hehe I just answered my own question I had ...



Source (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29655)

High-end large scale PC LCD futures unfold

From 24 to 30 inches and beyond

By Nebojsa Novakovic: Monday 13 February 2006, 07:23
THE BENEFITS of multiple LCD panel fabs churning out ever-large panels are trickling down to both TV and PC monitor users. With prices falling, it is a good time to have a really large LCD monitor for your high-resolution graphics, whether at home or at the office - if the boss obliges, that is. If not the gargantuan 30-inch Apple or Dell display, than at least the more 'ordinary', 23 to 24-inch WUXGA (1920x1200) class of monitors.

24-inchers for HDTV

Such screens are a good match right now since they nicely accomodate full-size 1080i / 1080p HDTV display (1920x1080) at precise pixel for pixel fit, yet still with some extra space free for menus and buttons of your favourite H.264 or WMV-HD media player. Watching such HD video on this kind of monitor, with matched pixels and no interpolation, is a feast for the eyes wary & tired of the DVDs and VCDs of the present. Also, two pages of text / DTP / PDF / HTML web page data can be edited side-by-side at the same time at a high resolution. The 96 dpi pixel raster density of the 24-inch models (or 100 dpi on the 23-inch ones) is also a nice match for the default Windows 96 dpi font resolution.

If you have HDCP content protection as well, then you're ready too for Windoze Vista rip-off season, where you may have to pay through your nose for the new "well-protected" BD or HD-DVD content to enjoy on that LCD. And if your monitor, like most current models, doesn't have HDCP? Well, then await the "solution" by some smart coders, either under current Windows XP, or under Linux, of course. Just like any such "protection", HDCP will be broken, and its presence will at the end of the day affect and inconvenience law-abiding legal user flock far more than those bent on and capable of hacking it to pieces.

On top of that, these high-end units will have all the other bells and whistles you may want: multiple DVI and VGA inputs, tilt and swivel and portrait modes, as well as elegant design with thin edges. Some models, like long-time 24-inch reference in this class, Dell 2405FPW, claim incredible (for a LCD) 1000:1 contrast ratio and 500 cd/m2 brightness - while I didn't go the Tom's Hardware way and actually measure it up, this monitor, which I am using right now, does have one of the best pictures I've ever seen on any LCD, and that is while keeping the brightness at minimum and contrast in the mid range. Other similar models in this classfrom Samsung, Viewsonic, LG and so on are pretty close in the claimed picture quality parameters.

Right now, they are not up to speed compared to their smaller 19-inch cousins: 16 ms declared response time is the current standard here - enough to watch the HD movies or for 3-D design, but not for the fastest paced 3-D games. Also, the colour gamut leaves more to be desired, as with most LCDs - maybe the move to 10-bit per colour definition or different backlighting techniques would help. Another problem that increases proportionally with the LCD screen size is ensuring that the backlighting is uniformly bright across the whole display, avoiding the problems of slightly varying intensity that sometimes plague large monitors. The white intensity should be consistent everywhere.

Finally, the performance: most of these monitors are rated at around 16 ms (or 12 ms gray-to-gray) response time - sufficient for playback in HD video for both 1080i-60 and 1080p-30 fps - but not for 1080p-60 fps HD video. When playing fast-paced 3-D games though, not only in many case the screen can only make use of 1600x1200 regular-format size, but the games, while playable, will definitely have visible slight drag in rapid-moving sequences.

And, talking about the price, Dell was the first to break the US$ 1,000 barrier on the (discounted) price of its monitor - in Taipei, you can also find the 23-inch Acer model in shops for around US$ 800 now. So, yes, they are affordable if you want them. I don't expect this price to fall much further, maybe US$ 700 (the current 20-inch LCD price) is a reasonable minimum for a 23-inch or 24-inch WUXGA display. What vendors and users should focus on is better performance. A 12 ms standard or 8 ms gray-to-gray response time, if really working, would give you sufficient speed for even a 1080p60 display. And more features: how about two switchable DVI inputs from two high-performance PCs?

The 30+ inch class: Beyond HD
The WUXGA 1920x1200 at 60 Hz refresh is the maximum that the current single-channel DVI can provide - Display Port and other proposed next-generation video links may solve that problem in the future, but for now, if you want more, you need to go by dual-link (or dual dual-link like in the case of IBM T221!) DVI. The current cream-of the crop, (still too) expensive Apple and Dell 30-inch units provide 2560x1600 resolution at nearly 3x the price of the 24-inch display, yet still keeping the 96 dpi pixel raster density.

There are a few problems here. Firstly, they can't display full-screen 1080i or 1080p HDTV without blurry interpolation - yes, they can do 720p very nicely and sharply with 2x2 double pixels for each 720p pixel, but well, you're not buying this kind of super display to watch 720p video, which many much smaller (and much cheaper - we're talking one-fifth of the 30-incher's US$ 3K+ price tag) screens can take care of very well anyway?

Secondly, the assumption is that such screens are going to either professionals with specific jobs and clear return on investment expected (including the high expectations from the product), or high-end hobbyists with money to burn (and sometimes even higher expectations from their gear due to the often-inherent perfectionist madness). If you're one of these, editing your 10-megapixel photos or multiple HDTV video streams or what nots, those huge 96 dpi pixels stare prominently at you - the preference would be something a bit more dense to fit those big images better.

Now, remember the IBM T221 model, which we reviewed here over two years ago? The Quad W-UXGA resolution, or stunning 3840x2400, for a 22-inch display, or an ultrasharp 204 dpi? When you keep in mind it is real pixels, and not dot dithering like on most colour laser or ink-jet printers, for your photos or renderings this would be a printout quality equivalent of a true 1,200 dpi colour laser printer! In its heyday at that time, you could get the high-end T221DG5 model for as low as US$ 5,000 subsidised price if you were an IBM partner in specific industries.

Yes, the 204 dpi was kinda TOO DENSE for regular work, as you really had hard time seeing the pixels on this screen - I used the monitor for several months, and had to set my Windows fonts to 144 dpi to be able to see the icon displays and menus without magnifying glass, And yes, it did need two dual-link DVI ports in parallel from a single card just to get a 48 Hz refresh, and yes, IBM all but abandoned these excellent displays in the post-coital bliss with Lenovo - but this is the monitor that shows where we should go.

At that resolution, you can not only have a great 9.2 megapixel photo editing screen, but also natively reproduce all smaller resolutions including all HDTV formats at or near full-screen, without pixel interpolation - so whichever signal you put in, it will be sharp: the 1080i / 1080p will be displayed with 2x2 screen pixel matrix for each video pixel, the 720p will do fine with 3x3 screen pixels for each video dot, and so on even to the 480p, which will use 5x5 screen pixels for each video dot. Not to mention all the computer resolutions from 1920x1200 down, displayed sharply without interpolation.

Now, imagine that 3840x2400 resolution on a 30-inch display the size of Apple CinemaHD, giving you an impressive (yet not magnifying glass-requiring) 150 dpi pixel density? To me, this format, and not the 2560x1600, is the major next step after the standard WUXGA. Why? Well, now you don't need to look for very high end professional OpenGL card to get two dual-link DVI ports on a single card anymore: ATI Radeon X1800 or better will do just fine, as long as the graphics driver allows a virtual dual-monitor configuration with proper genlock / framelock between the outputs to prevent frame tearing when, say, watching a 4K-resolution IMAX video, or handling a real-time 3-D city walkthrough, across the whole screen. That was all already done on Nvidia, ATI and 3DLabs OpenGL cards years ago, since Quadro FX1000 days. Also, 150 dpi pixel density may be more manageable from the manufacturing yield point of view - after all, such pixel density is common in notebook screens too.

At this resolution, you won't be watching HD or DVD video without switching into a lower resolution mode, so there is no requirement for absolutely fast refresh - 48 Hz or 50 Hz refresh, in sync with cinema or European TV refresh is doable with two dual-link DVIs - you can always have 60 and 75 Hz at lower resolutions when playing videos or games. Talking about games, it would be interesting to compare 3840x2400 without antialiasing vs 1920x1200 with antialiasing. Personally, if 50 Hz is enough for the game refresh, I'd rather go with pure 3840x2400; the X1900XTX might even be able to throw some antialiasing for a good measure at decent performance here, but that would stretch the 512 MB video memory to the maximum due to the huge resulting frame buffer size.

So, nothing new to invent there, it's up to the first vendor to get out and do it - combine the 30-inch size with Quad WUXGA resolution, and current twin dual-link DVI cards, and you have the ideal Super-LCD display! µ

[fields_g]

After the firingsquad article, http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_nvidia_hdcp_support/, changes have started to come about in the advertising of cards. http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=851 has showed examples of ATI changing the specs today on the cards they sell. This, however, hasn't filtered down to their board manufactures.

I've seen too many comments from people on other sites saying "WHO CARES!!! Why would I want to run HD-DVD content on my computer?" I think I'm preaching to the DOOM9 choir on this one though when I say... HDTV's are evolving into nothing but Hi Def computer displays. A multimedia computer is going to be your HD content player. It will pull from a cable/SAT card, dvd, or streaming IP network, or even (gasp) local hard drive. If we are going to be forced to have HDCP in the mix, we MUST know what ACTUALLY will work when we are planning for the not so far future.

BTW... I especially like that ATI was selling their own boards as HDCP ready even when they didn't install the HDCP crypto key chip.

[communist]

Looks like its not too bad after all, according to this article (http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/69983) at heise.de first devices will use a non-final (interim) version of AACS (0.91) which will allow output over VGA / DVI regardless of HDCP being present on the latter or not - BUT, the content providers can choose to lower res for analog output or prohibit it all (digital only - flag). This is all because there are practically no HDCP enabled (encumbered) graphic cards available on the market.

[Doom9]

has reality finally dawned upon them? Did you already see the angry people burning HD DVD and Blu-ray discs on the front lawn of MPAA central? While you can count on GFX cards eventually supporting HDCP, the screens will remain a sticky issue.. most screens last longer than GFX cards.. so those HDCP enabler boxes are still a good thing to have. While I've been going through screens almost as fast as GFX cards since 2000, I think the 3007FPW settles that now.. there's no larger screen on the horizon that does 96 dpi and a 13xx screen is just no solution.. 2560x1600 is an awsome resolution to have.. finally there's too much screen space even for a development environment.

[Shinigami-Sama]

yeah, and what about laptop users? I have a full desktop replacement laptop, AKA persario R4350C, so did they even think about that too, or were they magicly planing on the laptop makers to make everything fit their perfect plans too, cause it's pretty easy to swap out a card, but how about a laptop gpu, unless you use a AlienWare, but really...

[Doom9]

you can't quite put a HD DVD or Blu-ray drive in an existing PC.. swapping drives is something rather rare so they just force you to buy a new notebook altogether.

[Shinigami-Sama]

yeah thats what I was getting at, love how they always seem to think everyone will beable to go out and buy new hardware for every little thing thye come out with, I love it

[Doom9]

well.. you gotta swap out your GFX card every now and then as well to play the latest games.. that's not so much of a stretch. The end of the protected video path is really the biggest problem.. even the most avid gamer won't swap out his screen every 6 month. After 3 years, a PC is ripe for replacement, but a screen has barely begun to age (even though I've had 6 screens in 6 years.. I'm an exception and since there's no dell 3207fps or 3707fps even my monitor consumption will slow down). I dare presume that my current screen will see quad cores running at some 4 GHz each or something like it. But my 7800GT, even though very powerful at this moment, will make way to the generation after the 7900 (which likely will have HDCP).
Vista will trigger another wave of hardware renewals especially at home but also in the office. Those companies that did not make the move to XP will soon run out of support for their W2K installations (NT is already a dead end.. I've seen large scale NT migrations in the past two years) so Vista wil be a viable choice for them, and Vista needs new hardware (but the flatscreens will stay good).