Digital Home Thoughts: Proposed Interface for Connectivity to PC Monitors and CE Devices

"Leading PC and consumer electronics companies today announced that they are working to develop a specification, referred to as the unified display interface (UDI), that is intended to serve as the next-generation digital display interface standard for PCs and provide compatibility with Consumer Electronics (CE) devices. UDI is targeted to become the new display interface for desktop PCs, workstations, notebook PCs and PC monitors, replacing the aging VGA analog standard and providing guidelines to ensure compatibility with today’s DVI standard. Further, as planned, the UDI specification will be fully compatible with HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface), the standard digital interface for High Definition TVs (HDTVs) and advanced CE displays."



It looks like UDI will be able to use High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) technology which is prevelant in the HDMI interface and will provide a universal video connection from the computer host to the display, including PC and notebook monitors, HDTVs and projectors. While I am usually not a big proponent of constantly creating new standards (aka reinventing the wheel), I do see the merits of UDI. It seems to suggest a complete interoperability among all HDMI devices, among others, with a number of performance and cost improvements over existing display standards.