How long until monitor manufacturer do not include VGA ports? How many years do we still have of production? Times to stock up on LCD monitors 😀

No worries.... VGA will live on, when doing retro computing. 😉
If it somehow are required, there will allways be converterboxes and alike being produced in the next 30+ years from now.

I finally bought a new monitor yesterday after waiting and waiting for one with the perfect feature set. I came to the conclusion that if I waited much longer I would miss out on VGA altogether. I ended up settling for a BenQ XL2430T. Not a perfect feature set (no adaptive sync or g-sync) but has the all important VGA and can do 120hz refresh.

What's a good way of piping VGA output to a TV? I'm temporarily working in the living room and there's a big old 1990s TV in the corner with RCA/S-Video inputs, and I was wondering if I could use it to watch movies. My video card has a spare VGA output.

They seriously think VGA is going to die off like that? Reminds me of how they forced PCI to become obsolete even though years after most major brands stopped shipping with PCI headers you still keep finding it and fancy adapters like USB to PCI or PCI express to PCI. 🤣

That being said, VGA sure lived a much more graceful life than CGA/EGA/PGA/TIGA/XGA.

Errius wrote:

What's a good way of piping VGA output to a TV? I'm temporarily working in the living room and there's a big old 1990s TV in the corner with RCA/S-Video inputs, and I was wondering if I could use it to watch movies. My video card has a spare VGA output.

There's no RGB capable SCART input on the TV? Shouldn't be all that advanced to build a VGA to SCART adapter, if you can't buy a ready-made one. The signals aren't all that different. VGA to composite or S-video is gonna be a lot harder though, the easiest way if you have to use one of those is probably to get a secondary video card with S-video output.

CelGen wrote:

They seriously think VGA is going to die off like that? Reminds me of how they forced PCI to become obsolete even though years after most major brands stopped shipping with PCI headers you still keep finding it and fancy adapters like USB to PCI or PCI express to PCI. 🤣

That being said, VGA sure lived a much more graceful life than CGA/EGA/PGA/TIGA/XGA.

They managed to kill ISA quick enough though. Oh well, guess only time will tell 😀

Errius wrote:

What's a good way of piping VGA output to a TV? I'm temporarily working in the living room and there's a big old 1990s TV in the corner with RCA/S-Video inputs, and I was wondering if I could use it to watch movies. My video card has a spare VGA output.

Something like this would be the easiest way when you only have VGA (e.g. onboard video/laptops). Quality is more than adequate for something like watching movies.

On topic, I believe this is incorrect (in lieu of stronger language):

Hackaday wrote:

VGA is a port that can still be found on the back of millions of TVs and monitors that will be shipped this year.

From what I've seen LCD TVs started dropping the VGA input a while ago, which started pissing me off to no end. I personally don't own any large LCD televisions, since my only use for a TV nowadays is to play low resolution video games which modern TVs can't display correctly, so I don't see the point of getting something that won't cater to my needs, instead opting to keep what does work (in this case, CRT SDTV).

Like many of you here I grew up in a time where television and computer displays were very different beasts - to me, television is synonymous with low resolution and poor readability, while computer displays are sharp and detailed - therefore they fulfill completely different roles and they don't mix well. I've held this (sort of subconscious) view for the longest time, even today I can't seem to shake it off completely, when I catch a glimpse of 1080i OTA HDTV on a small-ish display at an electronics store or whatever I still find myself coming to grips with the fact that that ain't computer video, that's television.

So even though I don't see myself getting an LCD TV any time soon, I started to realize that this present time of everyone having basically giant hi-res computer displays in their living rooms is actually kind of cool and opens up new possibilities, for example socially enjoying old PC/Mac games that were once stuck to a small screen, but of course as soon as I realize this, I also realize that VGA inputs have pretty much disappeared from LCD TVs manufactured in the past few years! And it doesn't seem to be a "we're ditching analog" thing, because they still come with component/composite video inputs, so I don't see the point of exclusively removing VGA from new TVs while keeping other, less convenient, arguably worse analog inputs. If I put my conspiracy hat on I'd say that they don't want us hooking up computers through an "unprotected" video path anymore. 🙄

One of the most common questions I get from non-tech savvy folk is how to convert VGA to HDMI, precisely because new TVs are lacking VGA inputs but people still have perfectly good devices that only do VGA - and unfortunately there's no shortage of unscrupulous retailers selling them completely useless (and possibly dangerous) passive HDMI to VGA/component/composite cables. 😠

vladstamate wrote:

How long until monitor manufacturer do not include VGA ports? How many years do we still have of production? Times to stock up on LCD monitors 😀

My current monitor already lacks VGA. And DVI for that matter. It only has HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort.

Errius wrote:

What's a good way of piping VGA output to a TV? I'm temporarily working in the living room and there's a big old 1990s TV in the corner with RCA/S-Video inputs, and I was wondering if I could use it to watch movies. My video card has a spare VGA output.

You can get 'scanline converters' that convert VGA to s-video.
The Koenig CMP-TELVIEW-1 is one I have used. This is its successor: http://www.konigelectronic.com/en_us/computer/video/55998309
It's basically the same circuit that was integrated on most video cards in the late 90s, to have an onboard s-video/composite output.

I just bought a 40" 4k screen to replace the 26" 1920*1200 screen I have been using the last 7.5 years. The new Philips BDM4065U has VGA input so I guess I do not have to worry about VGA ports the next 7 years or so! 😀

VGA output on new CPUs / GPUs isnt as important, at least not to me.

FWIW, Active DP/miniDP to VGA adapters are small, cheap, abundant and seem to work well. So there does not seem to be any threat to the ability to output VGA any time soon.

As far as inputting VGA - that may be more problematic. Modern high-end LCD monitors/TVs lack analog input, and since analog VGA to digital anything adapters are not cheap, not small and not abundant, this may be an issue for whoever wants to support connecting an ancient desktop (or just an old laptop) to a modern LCD.

Errius wrote:

What's a good way of piping VGA output to a TV? I'm temporarily working in the living room and there's a big old 1990s TV in the corner with RCA/S-Video inputs, and I was wondering if I could use it to watch movies. My video card has a spare VGA output.

you will need some converter, or a graphics card with Svideo out (newest ones are the Radeon 4000 series I think), I was actually using the SVideo out from my 4670 yesterday.

as for VGA, I think I can still buy a VGA only LCD around here, and while higher end cards are dropping VGA out (like the newer Radeons) it's still easy enough to use a DP to VGA adapter (but not ideal, they tend to have more limited resolution support), newly released low end cards like this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9993/nvidias-pa … grated-graphics
still have VGA out, so if Intel drops VGA out from their motherboards it might be good for low end cards and adapters.