Some of the latest on the show floor this week have retained the legacy analog VGA interface, while others have gone digital in one of three familiar flavors . Yet another new digital interface, the Gigabit Video InterFace (GVIF) from Sony Electronics, will launch at the show.

New 15- and 18-inch LCD monitors from ViewSonic Corp. (Walnut, Calif.), as well as an 18-inch entry from Nokia Corp. (Irving, Texas), and the latest 15 and 18 inchers from Compaq (Houston, Texas) all incorporate a conventional analog VGA interface to hook up to a large installed base, plus a digital interface that points to the future.

A dual-input analog/digital solution makes a monitor "future-proof," said Nokia's director of marketing Treg Tyler. He estimated that as many as 35 percent of PCs being sold now support digital output, but providing dual interfaces "helps corporate customers bridge the gap to the digital future while still supporting their current platform."

But the three vendors have selected different digital interfaces for their latest entries. DVI is on the Compaq monitors; the Nokia offering uses Plug and Display (P&D), a pre-DVI scheme codified by VESA and incorporated by IBM into some of its monitors; and the ViewSonic offerings go with Digital Flat Panel (DFP), another pre-DVI scheme fielded by Compaq, some graphics board vendors and a few other monitor makers.

Since P&D, DFP and DVI are all based on the same fundamental transition-minimized differential-signaling (TMDS) interface technology, a computer and monitor with different TMDS interfaces can still interoperate by means of an adapter.Not so GVIF, which hits the streets in a sleek 15-inch monitor dubbed the SDM-N50 and squarely targeted at executives "on Mahogany Row," said product manager Craig Sobolewski. The design relies on GVIF, he said, because Sony's home-grown interface enables the monitor's control and interface to be remoted while multimedia sig-nals are routed to the monitor over a single cable. "Digital interface standard is an oxymoron," Sobolewski said. "The main benefit of GVIF is that it's an all-in-one interface."

Sony's Gigabit Video InterFade debuts in a 15-inch monitor: the SDM-N50. The interface routes multimedia signals to the monitor over a single cable.

If Sony's 15-inch LCD monitor takes an unconventional tack in the interface between monitor and monitor electronics, however, it's all legacy between the electronics and the outside world, handling computer data over good-old analog VGA. Among other things, the monitor's "user sensor" places the unit into power-save mode "20 seconds after you step away and power backup to active mode one second after it senses your return," Sobolewski said.