Difference between HDMI, VGA, DVI, DisplayPort
When connecting a computer to a monitor or TV there are several connections to choose from. Each connection has its pros and cons, so how do you choose? It’s important to note that all of these connections, except for VGA, are digital so while maximum resolutions will vary, the quality does not. This means that 1920×1080 at 60Hz should look the same over HDMI, DVI, and DisplayPort, assuming settings are the same. In the real world, this doesn’t always happen – see the last paragraph about color spaces and screen tearing.
When you’re shopping for a new graphics card, computer, or display, you’ll need to consider how you’re going to connect the display to the computer. HDMI and DisplayPort are different connections that both support 4K resolutions. HDMI is the best choice if you are just connecting a gaming console, Blu-ray player, or streaming device to your TV. DVI is a good choice if you’re looking to get the most out of your high frame rate on a 1080p monitor.
With the latest graphics cards, gaming at 4K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate is possible. All the newest GPUs, like the AMD RX 480 and NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080 support DisplayPort 1.4. However, you’ll need multiple high-end graphics cards to play games at this high resolution and frame rate. For now, we recommend gaming at 1440p or 1080p at high refresh rates like 120 or 144 Hz.
HDMI
It’s important to note that while you shouldn’t go spending big bucks on HDMI cables since most are the same, different cables have different speed ratings. You’ll need a high speed (category 2) cable for resolutions above 1080i. Fortunately for most people, high-speed cables created for HDMI 1.4 will meet the specifications of HDMI 2.0. Some cables have support for HDMI with Ethernet, but very few devices actually make use of this feature. To recap, there are four kinds of HDMI cables: the high speed with Ethernet, high speed without Ethernet, the standard speed with Ethernet, and standard speed without Ethernet. An expensive high-speed cable will not improve the picture over a $2.50 high-speed cable. This leads us to HDMI. Created by a group of electronics manufacturers, the HDMI standard is a set of guidelines for creating high-bandwidth connections between digital devices. With the right setup, HDMI can make a significant difference in a home-theater system. The current standard can carry 1080p high-definition signals, and it supports eight channels of uncompressed audio, enough for a 7.1 surround-sound system. HDMI can cut down on the number of cables required to connect components, and it can even reduce the number of remote controls needed to watch a movie.
But there's a catch. To take advantage of everything HDMI has to offer, all of the components of a home theater have to be compatible with them. Some of the features HDMI touts also don't yet exist in the consumer marketplace. Also, there's a limit to how long an HDMI cable can be, and some users complain that the limit is too short to support convenient setups.
VGA
A Video Graphics Array (VGA) connector is a three-row 15-pin DE-15 connector. The 15-pin VGA connector was provided on many video cards, computer monitors, laptop computers, projectors, and high definition television sets. On laptop computers or other small devices, a mini-VGA port was sometimes used in place of the full-sized VGA connector.
Stands for "Video Graphics Array." It is the standard monitor or display interface used in most PCs. Therefore, if a monitor is VGA-compatible, it should work with most new computers. The VGA standard was originally developed by IBM in 1987 and allowed for a display resolution of 640x480 pixels. Since then, many revisions of the standard have been introduced. The most common is Super VGA (SVGA), which allows for resolutions greater than 640x480, such as 800x600 or 1024x768. A standard VGA connection has 15 pins and is shaped like a trapezoid.
A VGA Extender is an electronic device that increases the signal strength from a VGA port, most often from a computer. They are often used in schools, businesses, and homes when multiple monitors are being run off one VGA port, or if the cable between the monitor and the computer will be excessively long (often pictures appear blurry or have minor artifacts if the cable runs too far without a booster). VGA extenders are sometimes called VGA boosters.
Newer video cards often do not have a VGA output. The DVI-I output, which still contains an analog VGA-compatible signal, is often also omitted. Therefore, if the user intends to connect a monitor or projector that features only a VGA input, the user usually will need to facilitate the use of an active converter that receives the digital signal from a DVI-D or HDMI or DisplayPort connector and changes it into analog suitable for VGA. Only older series of video cards and motherboards (for use with an integrated GPU) may still have a VGA or DVI-I connector available.
DVI
In addition to being used as the standard computer interface, the DVI standard was, for a short while, the digital transfer method of choice for HDTVs and other high-end video displays for TV, movies, and DVDs. Likewise, even a few top-end DVD players have featured DVI outputs in addition to the high-quality analog Component Video. The digital market has now settled on the HDMI interface for high-definition media delivery, with DVI being more exclusive to the computer market.
It was developed to be an industry standard for transmitting digital video content to display devices at resolutions as high as 2560 x 1600. Common devices that utilize the DVI connection are computer monitors and projectors. DVI can even be used with some TVs, although HDMI is more common as only some DVI cables can transmit audio signals. The DVI connector (shown below) may have one of three names depending on the signals it supports: DVI-A (analog only), DVI-D (digital only), or DVI-I (both digital and analog).
A DVI-D connector on a graphics card sends out a digital signal only, while a DVI-I connector can send out a digital signal (for digital displays such as flat-panel LCD monitors) as well as an analog signal (for older displays such as a CRT monitor) using a DVI to VGA adaptor shown below. The graphics card is shown in Figure 1 which shows a DVI-I connector contains more pins than the DVI-D connector shown in Figure 2. The extra pins on a DVI-I connector carry the analog signal which the DVI-D connector does not have.
DisplayPort
There are a lot of examples in the technology history of multiple competing standards that were on the market simultaneously. Just think about the video recorder standards war in the early 1980s between Video 2000, VHS and Betamax. For the youngsters amongst us, VHS finally won mainly because of its lower cost and support by the adult movie industry. More recently, there was the battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD.
So is there also a format war between DisplayPort and HDMI going on? Well, not exactly. While both HDMI and DisplayPort have the same objective (which is sending high-definition digital video and audio from a source device to a display), they were in fact conceived under different constellations
A few years later (2006), another large consortium of PC and chip manufacturers worked to create DisplayPort (DP), a follow-up of the older VGA and DVI standards. The main focus was computer displays and professional IT equipment, so more data-centered markets.
Today’s most common version (for video wall displays), DisplayPort 1.2, supports video resolutions of up to 3840 x 2160 pixels, at a refresh rate of 60 Hz. The official name for this resolution is by the way UHD, but the term 4K is often used as well (although in the movie industry this implies a resolution of 4096 x 2160). It also supports all common 3D video formats. The maximum bandwidth to be sent through a DP 1.2 cable is 17.28 Gbps. DisplayPort 1.4, supporting 5120 x 2800 @60Hz at a bandwidth of 25.92 Gbps, is becoming increasingly popular.
