On 23/09/14 11:35, Thierry Reding wrote:

> Well, a display controller is never going to attach to a panel directly.

With parallel RGB, that (almost) happens. There's voltage level shifting
probably in the middle, but I don't see anything else there.

> But I agree that it would be nice to unify bridges and encoders more. It
> should be possible to make encoder always a bridge (or perhaps even
> replace encoders with bridges altogether). Then once you're out of the
> DRM device everything would be a bridge until you get to a panel.

What exactly is a bridge and what is an encoder? Those are DRM
constructs, aren't they?

As I see it, a video pipeline consist of a video source (display
controller usually), a chain of encoders (all of which may not be
strictly "encoders", they could be level shifters, muxes, ESD protection
devices or such), and either a display device like a panel or a
connector to outside world.

Am I right that in DRM world the encoder is the first device in the
display chain after the display controller, and the next is a bridge?
That sounds totally artificial, and I hope we don't reflect that in the
DT side in any way.

 Tomi