The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) today announced the completion of its compliance test specification (CTS) for products incorporating the USB Type-C connector and the DisplayPort Alternate Mode (“Alt Mode”) standard. The new CTS documents allow VESA members to have their products compliance tested through VESA’s Authorized Test Centers (ATCs) worldwide, or by completing self-testing and posting their certified product information to VESA’s database. The CTS is currently undergoing final review and will be released next month.

The DisplayPort Alt Mode standard enables a USB-C connector and single cable to deliver full DisplayPort audio/video performance, with SuperSpeed USB data, and up to 100 watts of power. DisplayPort Alt Mode is natively supported by both standard USB-C connectors and cables. With the new CTS, DisplayPort is also well ahead of other standards organizations’ efforts to develop competitive USB-C Alt Mode specifications.

“The full spec was developed with the assistance of VESA member companies and electronics OEMs via numerous man-hours spent participating in well-attended VESA member compliance test events, called VESA PlugTest events, as well as in VESA hosted platform interoperability and test events,” said Jim Choate, VESA compliance program manager. “The engineering time spent to hone the spec will yield productivity savings going forward, as the ecosystem of CTS-certified products continues to grow.”

Completing full DisplayPort Alt Mode certification offers a number of benefits. It imparts reliability and predictability–so not only can OEMs feel confident designing the DisplayPort Alt Mode into their end products, but also consumers can purchase products touting full certification and be able to trust that they will work properly, with no worries about interoperability or compatibility issues. Lack of certification can create risks with respect to product functionality, as well as safety.

VESA published the DisplayPort Alt Mode in September 2014. Developed jointly between VESA and the USB 3.0 Promoter group, the DisplayPort Alt Mode enables the highest display performance available, combined with the USB Type-C connector’s high-speed data transfer and power delivery functions. Earlier this year, VESA published the latest version of the DisplayPort standard, v1.4, with new capabilities such as video transport compression, which facilitates High Dynamic Range (HDR) and 8K video across the USB Type-C connector.

Other key benefits of DisplayPort Alt Mode include:

• Ability to drive native DisplayPort and DisplayPort Alt Mode displays, as well as HDMI, VGA and DVI displays;
• Ability to drive multiple displays, using the DisplayPort Multi-Stream protocol through a dock or daisy-chained displays, or for virtual reality (VR) display applications;
• Support for Adaptive Sync, which provides smoother, tear-free images for gaming and jitter-free video playback, as well as significantly reduces power consumption for static desktop content and low frame rate video

Products fully certified as DisplayPort USB-C Alt Mode-compatible to date include leading chipsets, notebooks, monitors and laptops. As the ecosystem continues to grow, many more product certifications are expected to be complete during the first half of 2017.

Here are details on VESA.