The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) has announced the development of a new digital display interface specification for broad application within most forms of displays, including LCD, plasma, CRT, PCs, and projection displays.

Known as DisplayPort, the interface specification will accelerate the adoption of protected digital outputs on PCs to broadly support viewing of high definition and other types of protected content through an optional content protection capability, while enabling higher levels of display performance.

The standard will be designed to enable a common interface approach across both internal and external display connections. Internal connections include display interfaces within a notebook PC or within an LCD display. External display connections include the interface between a source device such as a desktop PC, set-top box, DVD player, or game console, and a display device such as a direct-view flat-panel or projection display for viewing video and graphics.

The DisplayPort standard will also include an optional digital audio capability allowing streaming of high definition digital audio/video content over the interface, and provides performance scalability to enable the next generation of displays featuring higher color depths, refresh rates, and display resolutions.

A group of companies, ATI Technologies, Dell Inc., Genesis Microchip, Hewlett-Packard, Molex Incorporated, NVIDIA, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, and Tyco Electronics are close to completing the development of a detailed proposal.

It is the goal of this group to submit a comprehensive version of the DisplayPort interface proposal to VESA in the third quarter of 2005. Pending ratification and adoption by VESA, the group intends that the DisplayPort interface standard be available to the industry as an open, extensible standard.

www.vesa.org