Apple, Intel Push for New PC and HD-Display Interface

Apple and Intel have spearheaded work to develop a new standard for the interface that links PCs and high definition digital displays. The two companies are part of an industry consortium that is pushing for the new standard to be adopted. The UDI SIG (Unified Display Interface Special Interest Group) hopes to replace the old VGA (video graphics array) interface with a new connection that can accommodate high-end video content.

A new display standard is also necessary if low-cost PCs with simple graphics technology are to be able to send content to high-definition televisions and displays.

Additional features

Sophisticated modern PCs with discrete graphics chipsets, like nVidia’s, use DVI (digital visual interface) to connect to digital displays. High-definition televisions use a standard called HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) to obtain their images from set-top boxes or receivers. The two standards are compatible, but HDMI offers some additional features, such as universal remote control, and can handle more traffic over a single cable.

While DVI is common these days, many low-cost PCs still rely on the analogue VGA standard to connect to monitors. VGA is good enough for those PC users who are simply browsing the internet but DVI connections are needed to watch videos stored on a home PC on a digital display.

UDI promises to bring the features and functionality to HDMI, not to mention its copy-protection technology, to mainstream computers. It will employ the same HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content protection) technology used by both the HDMI and DVI standard, and will be fully compatible with the two existing standards. Therefore, UDI PCs will work with HDMI televisions or DVI digital displays.