----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jake Khuon" <kh...@neebu.net>
> I think the form-factour is already there. I have a Motorola Atrix > smartphone. It's available with a laptop-dock unit. This is > essentially a USB hub and display. The display is connected by > outputting from the phone's HDMI port. The rest of the input/output > device (keyboard and trackpad) are seen as USB connected devices and > interfaced via the phone's USB port (Atrix supports USB host mode). > > Essentially, this laptop dock is what people are talking about except > for a generic host instead of for a phone. We would want to expose the > HDMI input generically and probably with an additional VGA input. Of > course there are also VGA-HDMI converters. Anyone wanna ring up > Motorola to see if they're interesting in adapting the Atrix > laptop-dock technology? As someone who's done video for 20 years, I can tell you, Jake: It ain't that easy. The interface on the Atrix is purpose-built, and it's almost certainly just a DVI/HDMI digital interface to a panel that expects that. What's necessary for a standalone KVM of the sort we're talking about is what the video people call a "genlock" circuit -- most machines that need this at all have analog VGA out, and you have to have a chip that can lock up to it, and extract the video from that analog signal cleanly. This is, to quote the Jargon file, decidedly non-trivial to do well. That's the reason why a single port unit, not on sale, is generally around $400. If it was DVI/HDMI *only*, it could be substantially cheaper, but I've never seen one that was. Cheers, - jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink j...@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
