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chimerical

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 22, 2004
117
4
When looking at most PC's, it seems that most (budget and midrange) still generally have VGA. Hasn't DVI been around long enough to have its costs lowered by mass production? Or is there another factor I'm missing for why VGA hasn't been phased out to a niche yet?
 
When looking at most PC's, it seems that most (budget and midrange) still generally have VGA. Hasn't DVI been around long enough to have its costs lowered by mass production? Or is there another factor I'm missing for why VGA hasn't been phased out to a niche yet?
It's called a legacy port. VGA is by no means the only legacy port you will find on most PC's. If you use your computer for anything other than communication and playing media, the you will find that each legacy port is the root of an infrastructure that depends on it.

Apple can introduce the original iMac and say:
  1. Verily I say unto you, there shall be no serial ports and Apple Desktop Bus ports henceforth and forever more.
  2. Get behind me SCSI.
  3. Motorola 680x0 processor, yee are old and feeble and unable to process the needs of my disciples. You are banished from the Kingdom.
Unlike Apple, no PC manufacturer makes the whole widget. No PC manufacturer can dictate that everyone makes the switch to a different technology. Any PC manufacturer that ends legacy support runs the risk of angering a significant fraction of the customer base.
 
The simple answer is it's cheaper to implement and most "regular consumers" can't tell the difference.

Even major manufacturers like Dell ship their LCD monitors with the VGA cord attached as the default configuration. However, Dell does usually include a DVI cord in the box if the LCD monitor supports it.

It's like asking why people hook up their DVD players to their HDTVs with composite cables when component looks much better?
 
The simple answer is it's cheaper to implement and most "regular consumers" can't tell the difference.

Even major manufacturers like Dell ship their LCD monitors with the VGA cord attached as the default configuration. However, Dell does usually include a DVI cord in the box if the LCD monitor supports it.

It's like asking why people hook up their DVD players to their HDTVs with composite cables when component looks much better?

LOL, I flipped out on my school once, had a bunch of extra component cables lol, and ripped out the composite cable and stuck in the component cable, i had switched many of my stuff to hdmi so I had a few extra. I did take it back though. Us audio/video guys are so ocd about Picture Quality lol.

ON a more serious note, most pc's ship with a VGA (most business projectors unfortunately still only come with vga and composite) port and a HDMI port so a simpler adapter gives you dvi compatability.
 
When looking at most PC's, it seems that most (budget and midrange) still generally have VGA. Hasn't DVI been around long enough to have its costs lowered by mass production? Or is there another factor I'm missing for why VGA hasn't been phased out to a niche yet?
There is a huge installed base of monitors, projectors, KVMs and the like that still use VGA.

As was said earlier in this thread, it is a legacy port.
 
And yet, most PC notebooks no longer have parallel ports, serial ports, or floppy drives. But VGA persists. I do see that plenty of LCD projectors continue to be VGA only, but you could argue that projectors are still made this way because of the continued pervasiveness of VGA.

There's a huge userbase of VGA, but has a dilemma like this never been overcome before with another technology in this same situation? I'm trying to pinpoint what's maintaining the status quo.
 
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