I just read today that DisplayPort graduated version 1.2 in December 2009. It really looks promising, we can now drive up to four full HD screens or even have our very own 3840x2160 screen should the panel manufacturers ever decide to make them. So, barring the now obsolete VGA d-sub, SDTV composite and such, we have the following real life high definition transmission standards:

• composite YPbPr
• DVI (plus derivatives)
• HDMI
• DisplayPort (plus derivatives)
• horde of nameless pretenders nobody cares about

I should be happy, but I am not, and it has nothing to do with confusion over which one is better or shinier. To explain my grief let me first introduce you to a guy called Charles K. Kao, a Chinese scientist, provided of course that you never heard of him before. Those who do know of him refer to him as the “father of fiber optics”, a name which he rightly deserves; hey, the guy even got a Nobel prize for his discoveries in the field so the name stays. This very blog you are reading got transmitted to you over networks utilizing high bandwidth optic cables with ferocious speed, and if you enjoy wasting time playing WoW with a buddy across the world you have this guy to thank for seamless play experience; simply put no Kao no joy, slow internet and no MMORPG. So, almost 40 years since his initial discoveries and after having the entire core of our networking done in fiber we still ”invent” high-bandwidth copper wiring standards with their picky electrical specifications, EM vulnerabilities, signal quality detection, etc, etc. Here comes a grand idea that I think you already saw coming, lets use fiber optic cable!

Take a look at all the HD transmission standards today. They are all electrical methods of transmitting digital content and thanks to our benevolent “friends” from MPAA/RIAA the standards were literally reduced to passive point-to-point communication channels so they can support elaborate authentication and encryption DRM schemes such as HDCP. To make an analogy they are all very similar in nature to cross-over Ethernet cables used to connect two PCs without a switch. If so, then why not use fiber optic cable? It has virtually unlimited bandwidth in this scenario (no contention, no switching, no routing) and can handle any resolution you can throw at it in the next 100 years. Devices supporting HDMI with DRM are all mini-computers as it is, if they can handle recognizing devices, decoding video streams and drm-infecting content then they most certainly can handle a point-to-point communication protocol over fiber; therefore ALL of the features offered by copper cable wires and standards can be implemented by software “emulation” over optic transmission. There really is no reason to keep copper around any more, even if you are afraid that your average illiterate-or-dont-care consumer will stick the new optic cable into SPDIF it’s solvable by different jack shape (yeah we wouldn’t want a dumbass calling tech support over this).

Edit: Grant you, the DisplayPort has support for optic cable, but the intended purpose is just to extend the cable length while at the same time maintaining the compatibility in speed with its slow copper brother. The signal conversion happens in the jack and devices are non the wiser about it.