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The proliferation of various ports and interfaces has been disturbing, even in the PC arena where Thunderbolt is rather hypothetical. Displays alone drive me i
by krylon 10y ago
The proliferation of various ports and interfaces has been disturbing, even in the PC arena where Thunderbolt is rather hypothetical.
Displays alone drive me insane these days. Twenty years ago, you had a VGA connector, and that was it. Then came DVI, which allegedly worked better with TFT panels. Then came HDMI, but there is also DisplayPort which appears to be similar, yet different. I have not seen a display or beamer that will accept DisplayPort input. Does such a thing even exist?
And laptops have, of course, the "mini" version of these, so there is mini-DisplayPort (which looks suspiciously like ThunderBolt) and there is mini-HDMI (which looks suspiciously like USB-C).
I am still telling myself this is a transition, and in five years everything will be USB-C. Once we are there, that sounds like a nice future, but I am not certain we'll get there in time. (Plus, a tea leaf got stuck my Galaxy Tab's USB-C port while riding the train - it took me an hour to scrape and shake everything out before that thing could be charged again. Something that never happened to me with good old USB ports for some reason, even though they were much larger.)
- DougBTX 10y ago> so there is mini-DisplayPort (which looks suspiciously like ThunderBolt) You're right here, Thunderbolt 1 and 2 use the mini-DisplayPort connector, now Thunderbolt 3 uses the USB-C connector.
- danieldk 10y agoI have not seen a display or beamer that will accept DisplayPort input. Both my Dell U2412m at home and whatever Fujitsu I have at work have a Displayport connector. The Dell is at least 4 or 5 years old. It's kinda handy, I plug in my MacBook 12" with a hub and HMDI-DVI cable. My wife uses a mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort to connect her Air to the same screen.
- std_throwaway 10y ago> I have not seen a display or beamer that will accept DisplayPort input. Does such a thing even exist? Highend displays with display port definitively exist. I'm not sure about beamers, though.
- douche 10y agoPlus, we have all the old devices that still work just fine using the old ports. I've been using some LCD monitors for five or six years that are VGA-only, and they are still going strong, with no need or reason to replace them. DisplayPort vs HDMI is one of the real bafflers. Graphics cards always seem to have one HDMI out, and two or three DPs, yet I have never encountered a monitor that have DP-in ports, just VGA or HDMI.
- marcins 10y agoI recently got a Dell P2715q and it has DP and HDMI only. As time goes on you're less likely to see DVI connectors on monitors.
- hocuspocus 10y agoWow VGA... even 13-14 years ago my monitors were on DVI. As for DP, you've never seen a 27 or 30" monitor? All high resolution (QHD, UHD, 4K, 5K) or high refresh (120/144 Hz) or G-sync/FreeSync monitors use DP as their main input source.
- krylon 10y agoOkay, for higher resolutions that may be a thing. I have only seen one 27" display, and it was "only" 1920x1080, with one VGA, one DVI and one HDMI input. :-/ (Also, I have seen many PCs with builtin graphics that have no DVI output, only VGA and HDMI (and sometimes DisplayPort).)