view the rest of the comments
Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
In theory you can push anything over the wires, be it analogue or digital. The issue is with communication standards. VGA defines which wires should be used, which frequencies should be used, etc. Thus VGA specifically has limitations. Otherwise monitors, cables and video cards would have compatibility issues. I don't think you were pushing 4000x3000 resolution through VGA. Just like today no one is pushing video streams to giant building sized screens over consumer HDMI or DVI.
Another example is XLR VS 3.5mm jack. In theory you can push audio signal of any quality over both, but XLR by spec is balanced and shielded, while 3.5mm is not. This means that XLR is capable of pushing much better audio.
You're right, and this was absolutely a thing. Video cards could produce whatever they were capable of, and monitors could display whatever they were also capable of. You could also push resolutions and refresh rates to monitors that was beyond the monitors' specs, and you would also risk damaging the monitor by doing this.
You don't need to believe me. That's your choice. I had friends that could do the same. This was with a Matrox card and a 21" Acer CRT. The display was nearly impossible to read, and the color mask broke up the individual pixels too much, anyway.
Digital video has upper limits in its specs. This is the whole point of this conversation.
A bit of incorrect information here. There is no "unshielded 3.5mm spec." Good cables have shields, but not all. XLR doesn't have the ability to transport higher frequencies because it's balanced, or "much better audio." On paper, unbalanced audio is better for short runs because there is more opportunity for XLR signals to have extremely minute signal quality issues due to the hot and cold signal mirroring, but it's so small that it doesn't matter.
Oh I see, you don't even understand what VGA is...