[Gefen]

According to analyst firm In-Stat, the DVI interface will drop from 112 million shipped products in 2007 to just 3 million shipped products by 2011. And that number is really startling when you realize that HDMI will be included in 143 million shipped products this year alone. That number includes 90% of digital TVs on the market.

So for those looking for the easiest compatibility going into the future, go with HDMI products. For those with DVI in their home theater infrastructures, HDMI to DVI converters are a simple solution. [extremetech]

A touted aspect of DisplayPort is its "security," comforting to those who create content but an unwelcome guest for those who can't stand even the thought of DRM (digital rights management). Carrying HDCP along with it, the standard is designed to protect content from those free-copying, eyepatch-wearing pirates. In addition to that, it also carries an additional DRM can of worms, DPCP (DisplayPort Content Protection).

That gives the standard an advantage over DVI in the eyes of content creators, who have sometimes been known to arm-twist various hardware manufacturers. Speaking of which, the standard has gotten rousing support from many of the usual suspects, including Dell, HP, Philips, Samsung, Intel and Lenovo, and also graphics cards manufacturers AMD and NVIDIA.

Those companies might like this standard better than HDMI for another reason, too: Unlike HDMI, DisplayPort's an open standard with no fees required to those who invented it. Other than that, besides the slight bandwidth advantage of DisplayPort, the two are almost the same and will be interchangable in some cases with an adapter. But not all cases. Such as...

What do we like about it? You can daisy chain multiple 2560x1600 monitors together, and the standard also supports fiber optic cable, able to blast tons of serious bandwidth for longer distances. It also has an advantage over DVI with its 15-meter spec length, compared with DVI's measly 5-meter recommended distance. We're also quite fond of that ability to support 16-bit color for each component, and hey, the damn thing is easier to connect than a DVI or VGA cable. With Dell and ATI first out of the gate, expect graphics cards and monitors to jump on board any day now. [DisplayPort Info Guide]

Think about it: you need an HDMI cable for your home theater equipment that carries audio as well as video, but now there's a new cable on the way called DisplayPort specifically made for computer displays. Or maybe you'd like to hook up your TV to your computer via VGA. Then there's the old-timey composite, component, and S-video connections.

Not digital enough for you? Let's use DVI, or if you want higher resolution, you'll need dual-link DVI. Then there's digital audio, connecting via fiber optic that can't even decide whether it's called Toslink or the eloquent S/PDIF. Or maybe choose a coaxial connector for your digital audio, the same as an RCA plug used to connect analog audio, not that cable TV variety of coaxial.

Want to connect hard drives? You could use USB 2.0, or FireWire 400 is just about as fast. Want FireWire 800? Oops, you'll need a different cable for that. What about the new FireWire 3200? Yep, it'll need new cable, too. Connecting faster SATA hard drives isn't simple, either, because if you want to hook them up internally, you'll need an "L" connector, but if you want to use the external SATA drives (eSATA), well, those use in an "I" connector, to keep you from using unshielded wires inside a PC. The confusion goes on and on.

Oh, and by the way, while you're dealing with this Tower of Babel, you'll have to sidestep all the ripoff artists trying to charge you ten times as much for a cable that does exactly the same thing as its cheapest counterpart.

It's a mess. Please, someone round up all the consumer electronics manufacturers, and somehow make them all use the same connectors. But that's like herding cats. We told you we were going into the world of fantasy, but anyway, that's All Giz Wants.

WID101 [TeqGear]

The FP222W has two types of inputs, D-Sub and DVI. DVI would've been noteworthy two or three years ago, the lack of HDMI is somewhat surprising. Not because it's any better, but because it's newer; we need the latest and greatest, regardless of improvements in quality.

Though BenQ's latest monitor is due this month, there's still no word on how much coin it'll cost you. – Nicholas Deleon

BenQ launch new 22-inch wide-Screen LCD Monitor (FP222W) [Crowdedbrain]

BenQ Home Page [BenQ]

Fiber Optic HDMI Cable [DVIGear via Audioholics]

While we can't quite figure out why you'd want to do this—maybe wiring up a campus for video?—we'd love to transmit video to Staten Island from our home here in Brooklyn. – John Biggs

Product Page[Gefen]

Just like its competitors, the M30W has a dual-link DVI-D connector, requiring an industrial-strength graphics card to handle its zillions of pixels. Price will be $1728, undercutting Dell's monitor ($2199) by $471 and Apple's ($2499) by $771. There's no word yet on availability in the US, but even if it's not on sale anytime soon, this announcement is bound to put pricing pressure on Dell and Apple. – Charlie White

Product Page (Japanese) [Quixun, via Akihabara News]

Product Page [SewellDirect]

Although it's great the notebook will have such a huge screen, we're puzzled at that oddball 1680x1050 resolution, frustratingly short of 1080p which will eventually be the lingua franca of HD DVD. And, at that big screen size, anything short of 1920x1200 is not what we would call state-of-the-art. Oh, well. Can't have it all.

Acer unveils world's second HD DVD laptop [Reg Hardware]