DVI, or Digital Video Interface Technology came about in 1999 as a result of the
formation of the
Digital Display Working
Group (DDWG) a year prior. Their original mission was to create a
standard digital video interface for communication between a Personal Computer and
a
VGA monitor. Recently, however, the consumer
electronics industry began implementing DVD players, set-top boxes, televisions,
and LCD/plasma monitors with DVI technology.
DVI-A (DVI-Analog) is an analog technology that is most commonly used in the PC
world to connect Analog video cards to Analog monitors. Since DVI-A and SVGA are
both analog signal types, both are easily converted from one to the other which
makes it easy to find many inexpensive adapters and cables to convert SVGA to DVI-A
or DVI-A to SVGA.
DVI-A can easily be identified by the 4 pins surrounding
the longest pin on the connector.