VESA Refreshes DisplayID Standard to Support Higher Resolutions, Tiled Displays

[btarunr]

The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) today announced the publication of VESA's Display Identification Data Standard (DisplayID) version 1.3. Delivering on the Association's promise to create standards that address emerging trends in display technology--including higher resolutions and pixels per inch (PPI)--the latest version of DisplayID now includes support for resolutions at 4K and beyond, tiled display topologies, stereo 3D formats and additional timing standards.

"Every day, increasing transmission rates, video resolutions, PPI and processing capabilities are making new display capabilities available to consumers. Our vision for DisplayID was to define a standard that can easily keep pace with a rapidly expanding universe of display options," said Syed Athar Hussain, display domain architect for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and VESA vice-chairman. "With DisplayID, video sources-like computers, game consoles, cable boxes and video players-can easily discover the capabilities of the monitors they are connected to, enabling an automatic and seamless user experience between devices."

The DisplayID standard was developed by the VESA members to define data structures that a video display uses to describe its physical and performance attributes. Encoded into a display EEPROM, DisplayID enables a video source to discover these display attributes, and to customize its video data stream output for the unique capabilities of an individual display.

DisplayID was developed as the evolutionary advancement for VESA's widely adopted Extended Display Identification Data (EDID) standard. Designed specifically to be 'future-proof,' DisplayID employs flexible header and data structures that can be of varying length and number, in contrast to the fixed header and data structures used by EDID. The flexible, modular data structures defined by DisplayID enable new definitions to identify new display resolutions, refresh rates, audio standards and other formats and capabilities. One of the more exciting new capabilities, tiled displays, supports a single display that uses multiple video processors, with each video processor handling the image on one segment of the display. The latest 4K @60Hz monitors now entering the market offer four times the resolution of conventional high-definition TV. These new 4k monitors frequently employ tiled displays to enable a more optimized system level solution that satisfies the higher resolution trend.

"Display manufacturers are starting to develop advanced technologies, including 8K ultra-HD displays and displays that incorporate multiple video processors. These new display capabilities need to be identified and defined within the DisplayID standard for effective inter-operability and ease of use with other consumer and computer systems," said Bill Lempesis, executive director at VESA. "Keeping standards at the forefront of technology enables manufacturers to deliver the latest capabilities in display technology to the consumer. VESA is proud to be an association that propels advancements within the display interface industry."

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[xanderdyson]

This article should be run on April 1st where it belongs. In my professional view, VESA is a complete joke, and their standards have been a failure for years. And I shouldn't even use the plural form, since they aside from EDID, developed without any regard as to inidustry reality, I'm not even sure what these people have done in the years in between, except collect a paycheck. ...but of course, as with the business world, let's just them 'fail upwards' and let these out of touch fools develop yet another poorly thought out "standard" ...since most people don't even understand what these people do, it's hard to criticize their garbage product.

 

[Prima.Vera]

VESA is a non-profit corporation...

p.s.

If it weren't for VESA you would still have 640x480 resolution for your monitors

 

[xanderdyson]

VESA is a non-profit corporation...

p.s.

If it weren't for VESA you would still have 640x480 resolution for your monitors

I'm going to assume you are you joking, since we would have had 650x600 or some other stupid number arbitrarily made up out thin air based on the size of glass of some factory, but let's get to the real point:


Non-profit does not mean that they don't collect huge paychecks. You understand this right? (It's very similar to ICANN, also a non-proift, which has taken a very simple mission, and done a very slow, poor job as well. I think the CEO makes like 500K, which is actually not so much, so kudos for at least not being over the top, like some other non-profits. Perhaps the two go out to long lunches together?)

This is just from wikipedia, I would add to the article, but have no interest in engaging on this topic further. (on wikipedia that is)

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA
"VESA has been criticized for their policy of charging non-members for some of their published standards. Some people[who?] believe the practice of charging for specifications has undermined the purpose of the VESA organization. According to Kendall Bennett, developer of the VBE/AF standard, the VESA Software Standards Committee was closed down due to a lack of interest resulting from charging high prices for specifications.[2] At that time no VESA standards were available for free. Although VESA now hosts some free standards documents, the free collection does not include newly developed standards. Even for obsolete standards, the free collection is incomplete. As of 2010, current standards documents from VESA cost hundreds, or thousands, of dollars each. Some older standards are not available for free, or for purchase. As of 2010, the free downloads require mandatory registration.[3] While not all standards bodies provide specifications freely available for download, many do, including: ITU, JEDEC, DDWG, and HDMI (through HDMI 1.3a)."

"At the time DisplayPort was announced, VESA was criticized for developing the specification in secret and having a track record of developing unsuccessful digital interface standards, including Plug & Display and Digital Flat Panel.[4]"



​

Beyond their initial mission, to create those first standards, they have been a failure for over a decade.


Oh, and here are some examples of independent companies and/or individuals basically taking the half-baked poorly throught out or updated VESA standard, and doing their job for them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UniVBE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions
http://www.dosdriver.de/graph.php

So because this standards body failed to perform in their mission, other people had to come in and do it instead. So what is the point of even having these people?

So anyway, with that said, this quote is particularly funny to me:

Bill Lempesis, executive director at VESA. "Keeping standards at the forefront of technology enables manufacturers to deliver the latest capabilities in display technology to the consumer. VESA is proud to be an association that propels advancements within the display interface industry."​

Obviously, Bill has never had to look at black lines on a big monitor surrounding his stupid outdated resolution standards.

---

Wow...so at the end of this rant, I find that NVIDIA is on the board of directors of this organization, how is this even possible?

source: http://www.vesa.org/about-vesa/policies/

Board of Directors
Alan Kobayashi, Chairman, MegaChips
Syed Athar Hussain, Vice Chairman, AMD
Richard Hubbard, Secretary/Treasurer, Texas Instruments
Simon Ellis, Intel
Brian Fetz, Agilent Technologies
Pablo Ortega, NVIDIA
Craig Wiley, Parade Technologies​

How does Nvidia push a competing standard while at the same time have someone who sits on their board of directors. sigh.

Anyhow, the point is, it's a corporation, does not matter that it is non-profit, every corporation has a CEO. From what I can tell, they do very little. If they are doing a lot, then please by all means tell me what it is they are doing.



note: i am compulsive edit-nazi, please wait at least 10-15 minutes before replying so that I can compulsively read and edit my own post, yes this really happens.