Ending the Tyranny of the VGA Cable
A few days ago I was wondering when there will be wireless monitors, and yes, it’s becoming true! Quartics’ technology would allow monitors to connect to PCs via wired or wireless USB.
The past few years have seen a clear trend toward ridding desktop PCs of wires. But the VGA cable connecting your system to your monitor has been a stubborn holdout. Now a company called Quartics is looking to sever that tie, using technology that will allow monitors to link via wired or wireless USB connections.
The Irvine, California, firm doesn’t make monitors, but it does produce the semiconductors necessary for USB connections. Quartics expects its partners to come out with USB monitors sometime in the next month. And Belkin is already selling a USB hub designed to connect to a PC’s USB port by means of ultrawideband wireless technology.
Making a video connection through USB would simplify the task of setting up multiple monitors: In theory, a single laptop could support more than 25 displays, according to Quartics’ Mahboob Akhter. The technology would also make computing devices such as ultramobile PCs–which generally have USB ports but no VGA port–more useful.
Read the full article.
This is a great concept. I like the idea of having a wireless monitor/TV (not for power mind you but for input). With this you could in theory stream your HDTV to your computer monitor or your computer to your plasma in the living room. Multiple monitors without multiple video cards. The possibilities…
There will always be a power cord tho cause who the hell wants to recharge a monitor every 15minutes. XD Battery technology has a LOONG way to go.
too early for this technology!!!
Now if we can just get that Tesla concept working, we’ll finally be free of wires once and for all!
Yeah great concept, but also for abuse, i.e. for spying the contents of another person’s monitor
I would be a royal pain to do anything else but office work on a video connection over 4 leads + gnd. The effect this has on refresh rates is not very pleasing. DVI has got 24 leads for a reason…
Kickass.
Windows only supports 10 displays tho, but Vista could be different. Vista probably goes to 11. (eh hum spinaltap)
VGA is dead tho peeps, buy a videocard that cost more than 10$ and you won’t see a hint of a vga port, you get DVI or Dual DVI. Then a gay little DVI to VGA converter if you are a sucker like me with a CRT oldass monitor.
worried about spying? Do you know anything about wireless technology? It would be as secure as any wireless connection can be.
Anyways you can spy on other peoples monitors right now, alot of companies use software like vnc and others to actively monitor screens, you’d be amazed.
Great idea but more than likely will suck. Screw usb. Make it a wireless receiver that plugs into your DVI (you can power monitors from DVIa - Macs)
Transmitter on the monitor, new option in the onscreen display for setting up the wireless connection and putting an encryption key on it.
phishybongwaters, your ideas are gay. If your ideas rock so hard why dont you submit em to a company rather than blowing your load of ideas on us?
DVI has 5Gbps transfer rate, and today its not enough. So there is Dual-DVI with 10Gbps. Now how the hell they want to fit it in USB2 with transfer rate way below 480Mbps ?
jea secure as wireless can get .. wep ? wow thats really SO secure lol
beside that there is a law problem, transmitting television data (just for example) would be pirate transmitting and is against the law (at least in austria)
but then i am no lawyer ;p
usb2 has a 480mbps (shared across all devices) data rate.
a single PAL Standard Def signal, will have to be:
800*600(pixels)*24 (bit color) * 25 (fps) = 288mbps
add to that audio, encryption, synch, and overhead, and you’ll be close to 300mbps.
now, considering that only 802.11n, which isn’t yet certified can transmit 200-500mbps,
it must use 802.11g - a 54mbps solution.
so this means massive compression - 6 times at the MINIMUM, for standard def content. so it means lots of color loss and artifacts, and of course LAG.
now, for HD…
even the low end 720p is
1280*720*24*60 = 1327.1 mbps, or 1.33 gbps
and just for kicks
high end HDTV
1920*1080*24*60 = 2985.99 mbps or 2.99 gbps
so you see, for HDTV, it will be YEARS for it to be available.
Home use wireless networks can be secured sufficiently well with just WPA and VPN, but most of the consumers are either too lazy or too inexperienced and stingy to even try that. WEP is Way outta date, I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would try to secure anything with that.
This, however, is only a followup to bluetooth. The monitor idea is just veryvery flawed.