December 21, 1998
Flat-panel fiasco: Lack of standards could slow acceptance of high-tech monitors
By Bob O'Donnell
One of the more interesting developments occurring in the computer hardware business
these days is the growing interest in flat-panel monitors for desktop PC systems. As
prices on these displays have dropped from stratospheric to almost reasonable levels,
there's been a corresponding increase in both interest and sales.
It's not hard to figure out why. Flat-panel displays with active-matrix, or thin-film
transistor, screens are brighter and more crisp than traditional CRT monitors, take up
less desk space, and are much lighter and easier to move around. Given the choice, I'm
sure most computer users would undoubtedly prefer a flat-panel monitor to a tube-based
unit.
One area of flat-panel displays that hasn't gotten a lot of attention is the mechanism
used to connect to your PC's video card. Most existing flat panels use a regular, analog
VGA connector, but there's been a great deal of interest expressed in having a direct
digital connection between the video card and the flat-panel display. After all, many
flat-panel displays operate digitally, so it seems a shame to convert the digital video
signal on the video card into analog and then back into digital once it gets to the
display. Not only does it add cost for the extra digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital
converters, but it can also have an impact on the overall image quality because of the
bits that are inevitably lost in these two conversions.
Mindful of that, the Video Electronics Standards Association -- the same organization
that's the "keeper" of other important video standards such as VGA, Super VGA,
XGA, etc. -- developed a new digital connection standard and associated connector called
Plug & Display, or P&D, for digital flat-panel monitors. Not only does this
standard offer a standardized mechanism for transferring a digital version of the
computer's video signal, but it also tips the hat to the past by incorporating pins that
can carry analog signals (to maintain backwards compatibility), and it nods to the future
by including pins that can carry Universal Serial Bus (USB) and IEEE 1394 signals. With
those connections, you can incorporate speakers, a video camera, and more into the
monitor, and have it all connect to your PC with a single cable. I don't claim to be an
expert in this area, but it looks like a very solid and robust standard.
Unfortunately, some PC vendors decided it was a bit too robust. Apparently concerned
that including USB and IEEE 1394 support was too complicated and potentially too
expensive, they opted instead for a simplified version that only carried the digital video
signals. The result is the Digital Flat Panel connector, currently used by Compaq and a
few other vendors, which -- although technically a subset -- is incompatible with P&D.
On top of this, other companies decided that instead of adopting a new standard, they
wanted to leverage the existing digital connection mechanism used in notebook computers to
connect their displays to their internal video cards, a standard that's generally referred
to as LDI or OpenLDI. Silicon Graphics' impressive new 1600SW wide-screen flat-panel monitor,
for example, uses this third standard.
In recognition of this confusion, several industry players -- led by Intel -- formed
the Digital Display Working Group to attempt to solve the problem. Unfortunately, it's not
clear that the group is having much success, and there are even some concerns that a
fourth "compromise" standard may come out of it.
The bottom line is that the digital flat-panel connection outlook is a mess. Graphics
cards manufacturers are trying to figure out which standard they should support, and
end-users hoping to get a simple digital connection can do nothing but scratch their
heads. Once again, it's a classic case of the computer industry shooting itself in the
foot.
Fortunately, very few flat-panel displays actually offer digital connectors at the
moment, but given the confusion in this area, that may remain the case for several years
to come. And that, in my opinion, would be a true shame. I, for one, hope that the
industry can take a long-term view, adopt the impressive P&D standard, and move on to
bigger and more important challenges.
©
Copyright 1998, by InfoWorld Publishing Corp., a
subsidiary of IDG Communications, Inc. Reprinted from InfoWorld,
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