Despite the generic sounding name, DisplayPort is a new standardized connector and protocol designed to connect computers to digital displays. It was developed by VESA, a group of companies working on defining various display-related technologies since the Super VGA era in the 80s.

In many respects, DisplayPort is a competitive technology to DVI and HDMI. The DisplayPort group claims various technical advantages over DVI, such as the protocol being packet based (similar to the TCP/IP protocol that is driving the Internet and most other networks), it is scalable so that it can be enhanced in the future without breaking compatibility, and it can daisy-chain multiple displays over 1 connector at the computer’s end. Most importantly, they claim lower cost, due to the lack of a step-in fee (like the $10,000 required for HDMI). And because of technical reasons that go beyond the scope of this blog and certainly my technical expertise, it requires less components in a display monitor, as the digital video format can be sent directly to the LCD panel, further reducing cost.

However, most of these improvements are bearly real advantages to general users, and I expect more political reasons to be the real motivator fot its supporters to push this standard over the DVI and HDMI conntectors. A different share of the IP fees and licensing are more likely reasons.

What does this all mean for the consumer? Well, for starters it is yet another connector bus, meaning new cables and connectors. DisplayPort connectors on a computer can optionally carry a DVI (and even VGA) signal as well, officially called Multimode by the DisplayPort group. This means that by attaching a suitable adapter (which might be a bit expansive, as some voltage level adjustment is needed to convert the signal), you can connect such a Multimode DisplayPort connector to your standard DVI, HDMI or VGA display. Thankfully, the new Apple notebooks offer such a port, so that you can still use your existing displays. Note however, that Multimode is not required by the spec, so some DisplayPort computers cannot be connected to non-DisplayPort monitors. Due to the higher bandwith of DisplayPort compared to DVI and by using the slightly more expansive adapter cable, all of the new MacBooks (including the 13″) can now even drive dual-link DVI displays, such as Apple’s big 30″ Cinema Display, up to 2560×1600 resolutions. Apple sells all the adapters.

Another thing to bear in mind is that such a converting adapter can be used to connect a DisplayPort computer to a non-DisplayPort display, but that such adapter are not available the other way around, as far as I could find out. This means that Apple’s new 24″ LED Cinema Display can not be connected to any of its computers other than the new 13″ and 15″ MacBooks, and this November’s new MacBook Air. I’m sure this will generate a lot of confusion, especially since Apple is not clearly stating this lack of legacy compatibility on its web site. I do think however that all of Apple’s computers (including the iMac, Mac Pro and whatever will finally succeed the aging Mac mini) will move over to DisplayPort in the near future.

And finally, it is worthy to note that Apple is using a conector they dubbed Mini DisplayPort. This is different from the standard DisplayPort connectors that are being advocated by VESA. For now, it is unclear whether this Mini variant is an Apple propetary option, or a format proposed by the DisplayPort group. In the past, the Mini DVI and Micro DVI ports (the latter of which only ever was used on the first generation MacBook Air) were also Apple inventions, and required an adapter to connect to a standard DVI port.

Let’s hope that DisplayPort will eventually be worth the hassle of introducing yet another connection method, that is only partly compatible with older equipment, and which will for sure generate a lot of confusion in the market place. Some manufacturer’s are also jumping on the DisplayPort bandwagon, including Dell, Lenovo and Nvidia, but by completely replacing the former connectors with this new one on all of its new laptops, Apple is making the boldest move. Then again, Apple has done things like this before, like abandoning serial, parallel and SCSI ports in favour of that new standard called USB when they introduced the first iMac in 1998. And we know how the popularity of that connection method eventually turned out.

Update December 1, 2008: Mini DisplayPort indeed seems to be an Apple development, however the company has announced that they will license the specification for free to other manufacturers willing to incorporate it into their products.

Then came DVD in early 1997. The first mainstream video format to offer real, anamorphic, wide screen video. The DVD specification cleverly defines that a player must be capable of compressing and letterboxing a wide screen DVD when a traditional 4:3 is connected, while outputting the uncompressed, full frame wide screen image to a wide screen TV. Unfortunately, the type of TV set that is connected to the player needs to be manually selected by the user. Ususally, this setting is burried deep down into the player’s setup menu. And since outputting an uncompressed anamorphic image to a traditional TV would result in deeply distorted pictures, but outputting a compressed letterboxed image to a widescreen TV does no harm to the aspect ratio, all manufacturer’s decided to set the player to “4:3 TV” by default.

And here lies the current problem. In Europe, the majority of consumers own some sort of wide screen TV (either a traditional CRT, or a flat screen), and almost all of them have their set connected to a DVD player. However, most consumers are unable to set their DVD players output to “16:9 TV”, and most are even completely unaware of the possibility to change this setting. This means that these consumers are wachting DVDs on their wide screen TV in a letterboxed format, which is usually “zoomed” into by the TV filling up the entire screen, resulting in an image resolution approximately 33% less than what could be. Again, this is a shame. However, at least the image aspect ration keeps to be correct. As there is no standardized why by which a TV could identity itself as either a 4:3 or a wide screen TV to a player (at least when not connected via the new digital HDMI connector), the player can not act accordingly by itself. Some players force the user to go trough an initial setup wizard upon first connection, which is the best way to solve this problem and make the consumer set the correct options.

These days, there is a growing number of video equipment that can be set to either wide screen or 4:3. Think of modern video consoles (like the Nintendo Wii). Again: consumers owning such a device but who didn’t select the appropriate settings, are missing out on a significant amount of picture quality.

But things get really ugly when you consider this. Sometimes, I stumble upon people who own a playback device like a digital set top box, which has been set to 4:3 (hence outputting a compressed, letterbox image with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen), while their TV has been set to an anamorphic full picture. On most TVs, this setting is called “wide” or “wide screen”, so I understand the confusion. After all, the consumer thinks that this is the optimal setting for their wide screen TV. The result is a letterboxed image that is stretched from side to side, including the black bars. So this not only completely distroys the image aspect ratio (with images looking extremely wide and “fat”), but also sacrifices a lot of screen real estate by wasting it with black bars. And please note: This is not a hypothetical story. I see this kind of set up more often that you can imagine.

The question is: Can the consumer be blamed? Of course he can’t. Things like picture aspect ratio are relatively new, and were completely unheard of in the 40 years of television that preceeded the introduction of wide screen TVs. People are simply not used to having to make these settings, and old habits die hard.  We can only hope that eventually this problem fades away, by the introduction of more flat screens with HDMI connectors, and more set top boxes, DVD players and game consoles offering this type of connection. As after all, HDMI is able to determine the screens aspect ratio. But given the life time of consumer electronics for a lot of consumers, it might take a decade or more before it has replaced the complete installed base of analogue connectors.

That’s about video. Now, let’s leave the discussion about how a consumer should figure out the difference between Dolby Pro-logic, Dolby Pro-logic II, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS, DTS HD, DTS Master Audio and PCM for another time.

I hooked up the player to my Philips Full HD LCD television, which is about one year old. Much to my surprise, the picture quality of a Blu-ray title (in this case the magnificant documentary “Earth”) did not overwelm me in the way I expected. Specifically, the picture contained, in my opinion, a lot of musquito noise in darker areas, and also the movement was a little jittery. When trying a DVD, I noticed some of the same effects: noise and lack of sharpness, and not perfect motion. Of course this qualification might be due to me being over sensitive to video quality, however I was pretty sure that both the TV and this generally well reviewed player should be capable of delivering more. Especially since the picture quality of my relatively cheap 1080p upscaling DVD player was free from these effects when used with my TV. So I was determined to finetune the new player and the TV to get the results I expected.

So I started wading trough the endless menus full of picture “enhancement” settings and options that both the player and the TV offer. I was really, really amazed at the endless rows of choices to choose from. Next to the various sliders for sharpness, contrast, brightness, saturation and such, the TV also offers me the option to set “Perfect Pixel Engine HD” on or of, set “HD Natural Motion” to off, minimum or maximum, choose whether or not to use “100 Hz Clear LCD”, and furthermore has settings for things like “dynamic contrast”, noise reduction, MPEG artefact reduction, colour optimization and “Active Control”. And this is just the TV! On to the Sony Blu-ray player. After selecting the relatively obvious output port and desired resolution settins, I can set the colour output method for the HDMI port to “YCbCr 4:2:2″, “YCbCr 4:4:4″, “RGB 16-235″ and “RGB 0-255″, I can turn “x.v colour output” on or off, and I can set “frame noise reduction”, “block noise reduction” and “musquito noise reduction” on or off. And then I probably forget to mention some settings as well.

Needless to say, the number of possible combinations of all these settings runs into several dozens. I was unable to get the image results that I was hoping for, and this got me thinking. The player and the TV are connected via HDMI, which is a digital interface. Why didn’t someone at the engineering task force that defined the HDMI specification figure out that a TV could easily communicate its features and capabilities to the player, which then could take appropriate measures and provide the best settings. Why am I, as a consumer, expected to get a degree in “picture management” just to get my equipment to do what I want it to do? Sure, there are some initiatives to offer some form of communcation between various consumer electronics equipment, but these are generally vendor-specific, and even then the results widely vary between the age and version of these communication protocols.

For now, I am just leaving things between my player and my TV as they are, silently hoping that a future firmware update to either the player or the TV will improve things. And yes, I am aware that hoping for a software fix to get my home electronics to work as they are supposed to do has definitly moved us into a new era.