In the midst of all the keynotes, celebrity appearances, and attention-grabbing product announcements at CES, one particular press conference deep in the bowels of the Sands Convention center went almost unnoticed.

The Video Electronics Display Association, better known as VESA, held a little get-together to bring the world up to speed on their vision of the digital display interface for the 21st century - DisplayPort.

While Silicon Image has been busy as a bee getting consumer electronics manufacturers on board with their High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), VESA committee members have been toiling away quietly to come up with a replacement for the venerable VGA analog computer display interface and Digital Visual Interface (DVI) jacks.

DisplayPort - which bears a resemblance to HDMI in its smart, plug-and-play architecture and low profile, high-density connector - is VESA’s choice for the job. Like HDMI, it greatly simplifies cable interconnects between computers, monitors, and projectors. It can carry digital audio and video streams and the latest version of DisplayPort (1.3) supports High-definition Digital Copy Protection (HDCP) - just as HDMI does. Unlike HDMI, it has a higher maximum bandwidth specification of 10.8 Gbps (or 2.7 GHz), using all four available DisplayPort "lanes" to pass up to 2730×1536-pixel resolution (WQXGA) with 10-bit color from source to display.

There will even be "simple" adapter cables to go between DisplayPort and HDMI or DVI connections, according to Simon Ellis of Intel, one of the many heavyweight manufacturers sitting on the discussion panel. (Also represented were Samsung, Dell, Lenovo, Genesis, nVidia, Molex, AMD, and HP.)

During the presentation, the speakers took great pains to state that HDMI and DisplayPort can co-exist (shades of Warner Home Media’s TotalHD blue laser disc!) and that there will positively not be any interface format war, no matter how hard those pesky members of the trade press would love to see it.

Samsung Computer’s Brian Berkeley mentioned in his presentation that several IT companies and rebranders had inquired about DisplayPort-enabled notebooks and desktop PCs, specifically listing higher pixel resolutions and deeper color sampling as requirements. It’s a safe bet that licensing and royalty fees, expected to be lower than those for HDMI, also came up during those discussions.

While DisplayPort may be up to the job, it will inevitably cross paths with HDMI as it gains acceptance in the computer marketplace. According to Berkeley, two companies have already started to use HDMI interfaces for PC applications, but that number pales in comparison to those companies who have opted for DisplayPort.

Somewhat lost in all of this discussion was the status of the Universal Display Interface, a PC version of HDMI proposed by Silicon Image about a year ago. When UDI finally was mentioned, VESA presenters seemed confident that it was a lame duck and would vanish from the scene in short order.

That may be news to Silicon Image, who announced their SteelVine SiI7533, a secure media storage processor aimed at set-top box, DVR, HDTV, and PC motherboard manufacturers. It’s a safe bet that SI isn’t going to let someone else’s multimedia interface deliver content from SteelVine disc arrays without a fight.

While format wars do provide plenty of grist for reporters, they are ultimately harmful to end-users and cause no end of aggravation for manufacturers. At present, DisplayPort represents the consensus solution for a next-generation digital media interface, and that will be its ace in the hole, particularly with companies like Intel, nVidia, and Samsung backing it.