14 DAY TRIAL // The universal serial bus technology is abbreviated to USB all the time, which is the main reason many people often overlook the fact that it's a truly universal connectivity technology. DisplayLink decided to remind them all of this.
Ironically enough, graphics card interfaces are incapable of going beyond 4K quality. Indeed, only DisplayPort can show images and video in 3840 x 2160 pixels.
DVI is limited to 1920 x 1080 pixels (Full HD) and HDMI can't go above 2560 x 1440 or 2560 x 1600. It's enough to make people wonder why so many display makers bother with 4K in the first place.
It’s now 2015 and there still aren't graphics cards capable of feeding anything better than 4K resolution to TVs and monitors.
DisplayLink decided to take advantage of this and offer an alternative at the same time: Universal Serial Bus.
DisplayLink demos 5K over USB at CES 2015
Using a Dell UltraSharp 5K monitor, DisplayLink showed that 5K video, resolution of 5120 x 2880 pixels, can stream just fine over Universal Serial Bus.
A standard off-the-shelf Microsoft Surface Pro III, connected over a standard USB 3.0 cable to a DisplayLink-based docking station, made it all possible.
This also means that the HP display with 5K resolution that just came out won't be left as a useless dud, if nothing else.
No doubt the video interfaces found on graphics cards will be updated this year in order to keep up with the times, although even if 5K is caught up with, that still leaves 8K.
Right now, DisplayPort 1.3 technology is the only one that can match DisplayLink's demo (the bandwidth of 32.4 Gbps allows for it), but it is fairly underrepresented, having only been introduced in September 2014.
In the meantime, DisplayLink's technology will render laptops and desktops “future-proof” to some extent, so the wait won't be too painful.
How to get it to work for you
The best part about DisplayLink's demo is that you don't need to buy some new hardware that hasn't been around before. Everything is done with things already up for sale. Well, except a 5K monitor anyway.
"DisplayLink is proud to demonstrate the scalability of its solutions with the highest commercially available monitor again at CES," said John Cummins, Senior Vice President Sales and Marketing.
"5K monitors with 5120 x 2880 resolutions were just released in Q4. DisplayLink is demonstrating dramatically simplified 5K connectivity to any PC, Notebook, or tablet using a single, completely standard, USB 3.0 cable, in comparison to dual DisplayPort cables currently required."