Intel and AMD sign death warrant for VGA port

[xarden]

Our dyno place has a PC that uses 2 serial ports (Yea, the rs232 kind) and a vga video card. The purpose of that computer is to only ever read, display and print the dyno readouts. Nothing else. Convince them why they should upgrade.

Add that to your examples list, Toughbook.

 

[Maxxwire]

chev65- If you are using HDMI at its mandated 720 or 1080 lines of resolution on a monitor with a matching screen resolution then it looks absolutely great! My ATI graphics card has the ability to resize from 768 to 720 lines, but the picture looks like it has fine cracks in it like an old oil painting.

The reason I am currently using VGA converted from the DVI port is because there are no set restrictions like HDMI has and the graphics card is allowed to send exact 768 line resolution graphics to the monitor which on my Bravia looks indistinguishable from the Cinema 30 DVI monitor in the other computer lab although 40-50 MB PSD format photos do look somewhat better on the Apple Cinema 30, but there is no descernable difference with .jpeg photos.

~Maxx~
.

 

[chrysalis]

I assume DVI is also going, to me sounds like they want to lock in copy protection which is what HDMI offers.

 

[Maxxwire]

Forcing HDMI use across the board also creates a nightmare in the Win 7 audio stack if people don't have HDMI compliant amplification because neither the SPDIF nor analog audio that older audio gear uses can be listened to simultaneously with HDMI audio like they can be with DVI or VGA which have no accompanying audio content.

~Maxx~
.

 

[xarden]

Forcing HDMI use across the board also creates a nightmare in the Win 7 audio stack if people don't have HDMI compliant amplification because neither the SPDIF nor analog audio that older audio gear uses can be listened to simultaneously with HDMI audio like they can be with DVI or VGA which have no accompanying audio content.

~Maxx~
.

Yes actually... I used to have my ladyfriend's hdmi TV as a monitor and could not use spdif at the same time. I had to then use a toslink from the tv to my amp just to get sound. And there was noticeable latency that way. I resorted back to dvi, and I couldnt tell the difference with video quality between the two.

 

[Maxxwire]

xarden- Concerning Optical Toslink I recently got a new $35.05 65 strand Glass Conductor Optical Digital Toslink to connect my Sony Receiver to my computer's sound card and it sounds ever so much better than the $80 molded plastic conductor Toslink that I used in the past.

~Maxx~
.

 

[chev65]

chev65- If you are using HDMI at its mandated 720 or 1080 lines of resolution on a monitor with a matching screen resolution then it looks absolutely great! My ATI graphics card has the ability to resize from 768 to 720 lines, but the picture looks like it has fine cracks in it like an old oil painting.

The reason I am currently using VGA converted from the DVI port is because there are no set restrictions like HDMI has and the graphics card is allowed to send exact 768 line resolution graphics to the monitor which on my Bravia looks indistinguishable from the Cinema 30 DVI monitor in the other computer lab although 40-50 MB PSD format photos do look somewhat better on the Apple Cinema 30, but there is no descernable difference with .jpeg photos.

~Maxx~
.

For me the DVI to VGA gave me all the resolution options so I could resize it to fit the screen but the image quality was grainy compared to the HDMI. The native resolution on my bravia is 1024x768.

 

[Maxxwire]

Sometimes there's just no explaining these differences. The Chinese have a saying...

Different is just Different.

~Maxx~
.

 

[Johnathan Lyman]

<rant>

It's about time. I'd hate to see DVI go but VGA's end of life is also 4 years from now. You all can't seriously say that people who have all this equipment that relies on VGA will still have it in 4 years with the way technology changes so much?

And I can't remember who it was that mentioned the dymo that has rs232 but to you I say that the technology world has its own darwinism/natural selection. If you fall behind, you fall off and there's no getting back on.

Personally, I couldn't care less. at $110, 97% of all new LCD monitors I've seen have DVI, even my low-end HP S2031 that i spent $85 for on sale. IF DVI goes, too, oh well. It's nothing new either. I'm not going to worry about having an HDMI or DP monitor in five years. If I upgrade my mobo/video card and my only option is DP or HDMI, then I worry about it then.

*sigh* Eventually old stuff has to be cut off. I can imagine that when floppies shrunk or were eradicated as well, people moaned and b*tched about that, too.

</rant>

 

[thefabe]

I didn't read every post but we're talking 4 years from now. At the rate things are going now who knows where things will be then.
Seems like a natural progression to me.
Fabe

 

[arkhi]

time to throw away those $1000 projectors from our 50 classrooms... oh wai-

~Merry Christmas

 

[Hikertrash]

Monitors are chicken feed compared to projectors. Like many other companies we have more than a dozen here and I would describe them as exactly the opposite of cheap. If PCs aren't going to have any VGA-outs anymore then each and every single one of those several-thousand-dollar projectors are going to be rendered into very expensive paperweights.

Adapter cables are fairly cheap. HDMI > VGA will work.

 

[Hikertrash]

I personally hate the way HDMI looks on HDTV. It looks... Off. I don't know, but I don't like it.

When I got my new Win 7 computer I was looking forward to using HDMI with my 32" Sony Bravia and so I bought a new high quality Belkin Pure AV Silver Series HDMI cable, but I was in for a big surprise!

When I connected my computer to the Bravia using the HDMI cable the image was so severely overscanned that I could barely even see the window controls in the upper right hand corner of the screen and no matter how I adjusted my AMD 5570 graphics card to return to the 1366 X 768 screen size the Bravia displayed hard to read text and distortion artifacts across the entire display. What I later discovered was that HDMI has been mandated to output only 720 or 1080 lines of resolution and correcting the overscannresultec......

I have no idea what's mandated or really how it works but I run a cheap gold connections HDMI cable (Amazon) from my laptop to a 32" Vizio HDTV and the picture is exceptional.

The only think I can think of is to make sure you make sure the display settings are set to the Bravia's native resolution and not those of your PC monitor.

 

[xarden]

xarden- Concerning Optical Toslink I recently got a new $35.05 65 strand Glass Conductor Optical Digital Toslink to connect my Sony Receiver to my computer's sound card and it sounds ever so much better than the $80 molded plastic conductor Toslink that I used in the past.

~Maxx~
.

Oh yes, Im not disputing that. It sounds great when I have my Onkyo connected through toslink to my soundcard. (I prefer using spdif for so Im using that instead now)
What I meant, was when I used HDMI, I basically couldnt use my sound card. The audio was going through the hdmi cable to the TV instead. Then from the TV to the amplifier. It was the conversions there that caused the latency.

I was later told all I needed to do was disable the audio over hdmi function?
It doesnt matter now, the (ex)gf moved out and took the tv.

@jelyman,
Actually, industrial standards are to use RS232 serial at 9200(0) baud, because it is reliable over longer distances than you can run a USB cable for.
In places like steel mills and factories, and our dyno workshop, where theres a lot of EMI's, heat, vibrations, noise, there is a lot of infrastructure build on this because... well it is reliable.
These places dont care for P4's or i7's. They care for what does the job for what the job requires. A dummy terminal with a 486 is all thats needed to retract an anchor and move a crane, and all displayed on a green and black CGA crt screen.

But I agree with you from a consumer, or hightech industry point of view.

 

[Maxxwire]

Oh yes, Im not disputing that. It sounds great when I have my Onkyo connected through toslink to my soundcard. (I prefer using spdif for so Im using that instead now)

The traditional thought was that Digital coax is better than Optical Toslink because it only had a 6 Mhz bandwidth and so I was using S/PDIF over a $225 Audioquest .9999 fine silver dual conductor Digital coax cable until I discovered Glass conductor Optical Toslink...

This is not a common low bandwidth plastic conductor Toslink this Glass Toslink has a 65 strand Glass Fiber conductor Toslink that sells for only $35.

~Maxx~
.

 

[raliy2k]

R.i.p vga.

 

[Maxxwire]

I have no idea what's mandated or really how it works but I run a cheap gold connections HDMI cable (Amazon) from my laptop to a 32" Vizio HDTV and the picture is exceptional.

After finding out that the hard way that HDMI is mandated to 720 and 1080 lines of resolution and could not produce even a decent picture on my 768 line Bravia I took the Belkin Pure AV HDMI wire which has silver soldered connections and 4 layers of shielding, anti-resonance sheathing and dual ferrite RFI filtering in addition to its gold plated terminations which are as wide as a US quarter and used it to replace the flimsy poorly shielded HDMI wire that had been between the HD cable box and the 50" Sony HDTV in the living room and it has never looked so good in fact it now looks spectacular in comparison to the way it looked using the former poorly built wire by comparison !

~Maxx~
.

 

[EvilOzzmess]

Part of the impetus for the depreciation of VGA is the ongoing push for 3D displays in both TV and PC markets. On the TV front, the 3D panels require the latest HDMI spec, with its support for more bandwidth. And in PCs, GPU makers and monitor makers would both like to see gamers don shutter glasses and make the jump to true 3D gaming. Indeed, even in the handheld space, parallax barrier technology will bring 3D (sans glasses) to the smallest displays this coming year.
Of course, whether consumers care as much about 3D as device makers do is an open question. Sales of 3D panels have been disappointing so far, and all the major 3D TV makers are bracing for a lackluster holiday season. But if the public does decide to take the 3D plunge at some point, at least they won't have a legacy graphics port holding them back.

This bit concerns me greatly, never mind the VGA phase-out itself!

I'm one of many people who simply cannot and will never be able to see man-made 3D picture. I was born with a condition known as "Strabismus" and which, because surgical treatment failed to correct the problem with discrepancies in visual input from both eyes, developed into "Ambylopia" and which basically means that part of my visual cortex (dealing in "depth perception") never developed, atrophied and for all intensive purposes, died.

The reason I cannot see in man-made 3D is because my depth-perception (one in the same which is exploited to create the 3D effect and nothing else) just isn't there anymore. The last time I was able to see 3D before that part of my brain "died" was in the fall of 1998 and it is never coming back. There is simply no fix known to man or medicine that will cure this ailment and there damn well likely never will be.

So, now I am wondering what is going to happen with people like me, who (again) cannot and will never be able to see in 3D, when 3D-viewing becomes the new standard for everything - TV, movies, games, and even computing altogether. Are we just going to be swept under the rug when they decide 2D has to die out, too??? :shock:


Sorry to take this a bit off-topic, but... I think you can see my point and its relevance to this discussion. If THIS is truly the (sole) reason they are deciding to "phase out" VGA and possibly other interface connections, or else entire technologies of yesterday and the present, for those of the future (3D)... it doesn't look good for people like me. Not good at all.


Having said that, and to get back on-topic, I see absolutely no difference in picture quality between VGA and HDMI on my PCs and external monitors. None at all. The only portion of my vision which is "impaired" is that which deals purely on "depth-perception", again as I have said, and which has no forbearance between my abilities to distinguish between VGA and HDMI picture-quality and because my devices are strictly 2D, 3D has nothing to do with them at all.

So what is the real advantage of removing a less expensive connection interface in favor of more expensive ones, which claim to be "better"? Well I just answered that in the question itself...

MONEY!!!

:banghead:

 

[Johnathan Lyman]

I'm one of many people who simply cannot and will never be able to see man-made 3D picture. I was born with a condition known as "Strabismus" and which, because surgical treatment failed to correct the problem with discrepancies in visual input from both eyes, developed into "Ambylopia" and which basically means that part of my visual cortex (dealing in "depth perception") never developed, atrophied and for all intensive purposes, died.

The reason I cannot see in man-made 3D is because my depth-perception (one in the same which is exploited to create the 3D effect and nothing else) just isn't there anymore. The last time I was able to see 3D before that part of my brain "died" was in the fall of 1998 and it is never coming back. There is simply no fix known to man or medicine that will cure this ailment and there damn well likely never will be.

So, now I am wondering what is going to happen with people like me, who (again) cannot and will never be able to see in 3D, when 3D-viewing becomes the new standard for everything - TV, movies, games, and even computing altogether. Are we just going to be swept under the rug when they decide 2D has to die out, too??? :shock:

I'm really sorry to hear that. 8 out of 10 times, you're not missing anything. For me, 3D is tough as my eyes don't do well with contacts and the mix between my near-sightedness and my astigmatism on both axes in both eyes, 3D is a chore.

And I severely doubt it will become standard. It'll be an option, I'm sure, but not everything will benefit from 3D: the news, game shows, documentaries, as examples.

I saw Jackass in 3D and while it was "cool", it was un-necessary.

I really wouldn't worry about it.