CPT talks eDP, shows off six screen demo

DisplayPort is coming, but it’s moving slowly

BACK IN MAY we told you about a bridge solution from Chrontel that turns an LVDS signal into a DisplayPort signal and we wondered why DisplayPort was taking such a long time to appear in devices. Apple is the only notebook manufacturer to date to use DisplayPort as well as eDP or Embedded DisplayPort on its entire range of notebooks. Today we got some answers from Chunghwa Picture Tubes.

In all fairness, the eDP standard was only ratified in late 2008, but notebook manufacturers haven’t seemed very keen on adopting the new standard. eDP brings with it overall reductions in cost and that’s an opportunity you’d expect notebook manufacturers to jump at. Oddly enough, we’re still stuck with clunky LVDS interfaces and comparatively bulky cables.

The CPT representative we spoke to at the show after having spotted a six display eDP demo told us that notebook manufacturers haven’t seen a reason to move on to the new standard so far as “there hasn’t been a need for more bandwidth”. However, with 3D displays starting to make an appearance, LVDS doesn’t offer enough bandwidth and as little as we really care about having a 3D display in our notebook, this “advancement” in technology is pushing eDP forward.

The representative also told us that a couple of years ago, CPT set up a six screen 3D display demo and had to invest in hardware – including seven computers – worth in the region of $30,000 to make it all work. Today, this can be done with a single graphics card from AMD. If that can’t be called progress, then we don’t know what can. The demo at the show consisted of six 1366×768 panels, but this wasn’t really the point of the demo, instead it was to show how easy it is to do a multi-display setup using DisplayPort.

The panel manufacturers are finally starting to see the advantages of DisplayPort and although we’ll most likely have to wait another couple of years before the standard really starts to take off, it looks like more and more notebooks will start to feature eDP as standard. Now if we could only get a few more desktop monitors with DisplayPort and abolish the horrible D-sub connector to the history books and we’d be a lot happier.S|A

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