The number of display interfaces has always baffled me. VGA, DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort… aren’t we just passing 1s and 0s over a cable? Admittedly, back in the day, there were analog considerations to be made, but in these times of high-speed interfaces, why can’t we just send the video signal over USB?

Well, there are already some USB-based solutions, but they’re far from popular. And yeah, there are actual considerations like latency and throughput, but with really high-performance stuff like Light Peak and USB 3.0 soon to become commonplace, I get the feeling designated display interfaces will soon be a thing of the past.

3M’s taking a step in the right direction with this monitor, which not only gets its video signal over USB 3.0, but is also powered by it. Admittedly, it takes up two ports, but hell, I just reviewed a hard drive like that. A whole 18.5″ monitor just via USB? Not bad at all.