Unified Display Interface almost ready

As many of you know, there are several digital interface standards coming out to market: DisplayPort, HDMI and UDI. Silicon Image, a cornerstone supporter of UDI, and HDMI, assures DailyTech that UDI has a special place and addresses a key issue affecting a great deal of companies: cost and compatibility -- UDI does not compete with HDMI and is backwards compatible with both HDMI and DVI.

UDI addresses the primary issue of cost by redesigning the current DVI standard. While there is room and margin in the video card market to add DVI, the interface is relatively complicated and costly to add to the value space, which is made up mainly of integrated chipset graphics solutions. According to Silicon Image, motherboards with integrated DVI chipset output for the business and value market do not exist -- although NVIDIA's integrated GeForce 6150, positioned for Media Center PCs, does feature a DVI TMDS. Some manufacturers have created DVI-output add-in boards that contain the necessary transmitter as a purchasable option.