Apple licenses new display port

Posted on 2 Dec 2008 at 08:48

Apple has begun licensing its Mini Display Port video technology to developers looking to make displays and other peripherals that connect to the new port.

Mini DisplayPort was introduced last month in the unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros and is Apple’s miniaturised version of the DisplayPort standard.

Licences will be supplied free-of-charge, but at Apple’s discretion. In return for the free licence, developers who make any improvements to the technology are obliged to feed the changes back to Apple.

DisplayPort is the successor to DVI as the alternative to HDMI for transferring digital video signals. Advantages over DVI, which Apple has used previously, include technology that should make for cheaper and slimmer displays, reduced signal interference, a more robust connector and the ability to carry other data over the connection cable to support devices built into displays, such as USB ports, cameras and microphones. Indeed, Apple’s new 24in LED display has all three.

On the downside, DisplayPort has built-in DRM. High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) was not, as many have suggested, voluntarily added by Apple to the Mini port. Rather it is part of the DisplayPort specification, and is designed to prevent device-to-device copying of HD video content (for example, by hooking up an HDD video recorder to a Blu-ray player or indeed a Mac).

Author: Simon Aughton

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