DVI cables are used to connect a video signal from computers to LCD monitors, HDTV displays, projectors, and cable boxes. This was a time when DVD players were the most popular form of home video entertainment, with VHS in terminal decline. Unfortunately, using one with most monitors and televisions at the moment will require yet another adapter. If a laptop had a DVI port (most did from the early 2000s), it was awkward to connect it to a TV to watch DVDs or view digital home movies because the sound would need to be connected separately, usually via the headphone socket – not exactly optimum.

You can easily distinguish them because the VGA connector (and port) is blue, and the DVI connector is white. They would quickly become the standard (and remains standard to this day, albeit in newer versions). The digital DVI-D or DVI-I version is compatible with an HDMI connection – so you can get DVI to HDMI cables or adapters if your AV equipment requires a connection like this. Generalized Timing Formula (GTF) is a VESA standard which can easily be calculated with the Linux gtf utility.The motivation for including analog is to keep compatibility with the previous VGA cables and connectors. Single link DVI employs a single transmitter with a TMDS clock up to 165MHz that supports resolutions up to 1920×1200 at 60Hz. This makes it an extremely versatile video cable, and we expect to see a lot more using it in the coming years. ratio can make clock recovery difficult, as phase-locked loops, if used, need to work over a large frequency range. has long been able to carry 3,840 x 2,160-resolution video at 60fps (or a refresh rate of 60Hz) and is the most common DisplayPort specification on most consumer monitors and devices now.

With the increased bandwidth capabilities, it opens up the floodgates to higher resolutions such as 7,680 x 4,320 (8K). To ensure a basic level of interoperability, DVI compliant devices are required to support one baseline display mode, "low pixel format" (640×480 at 60Hz). This, combined with a wide variety of compatible monitors and televisions, makes HDMI the most convenient external display option for most users. In each TMDS clock period there is a 10-bit symbol per TMDS data pair representing 8-bits of pixel color.You may also have trouble playing copyright-protected material with DVI as the connections may not support HDCP. The digital interface is used to connect a video source, such as a video display controller, to a display device, such as a computer monitor. Like VGA, DVI sockets usually come with two threaded nuts, and the cables have bolts attached to secure them in place.

Unfortunately, support for this feature is quite rare, and it's usually only found on high-end monitors. In December 2010, Intel, AMD, and several computer and display manufacturers announced they would stop supporting DVI-I, VGA and LVDS-technologies from 2013/2015, and instead speed up adoption of DisplayPort and HDMI. When a source and display using the DDC2 revision are connected, the source first queries the display's capabilities by reading the monitor EDID block over an I²C link. DVI is limited to the RGB color model while HDMI also supports YCbCr 4:4:4 and YCbCr 4:2:2 color spaces, which are generally not used for computer graphics. VGA connectors and cables can transmit analog signals, while DVI can transmit analog signals and digital signals.HDMI's biggest advantage over the older DVI standard is that it also carries and audio signal, allowing users to plug into a TV (or a monitor with built-in speakers) with a single cable.