Abbreviation for Digital Visual Interface. DVI is a specification created by the Digital Display Working Group (DDWG) to convert analog video signals into digital signals and to accommodate both analog and digital monitors on a single connector where appropriate. There are three different DVI configurations. DVI-A, designed for analog signals, DVI-D, designed for digital signals, and DVI-I the mutually integrated specification, designed for both analog and digital signals. This connection is not compatible with the old VGA style connectors. It is an entirely different connector that is beginning to show up on display cards and monitors as of 2001. The original signal is pure digital but when transmitted to a DVI interface through the appropriate port, the digital signal is converted to analog if asked to do so by the program or by the monitor.
DVI Also stands for Digital Video Interactive, a now rarely used compression/decompression technique developed by RCA, Intel, and GTE that made it possible to store digital graphics, audio, and full-motion video on a CD-ROM, and to decompress and display these forms of data singly or in combination. Due to the vast amount of data throughput required it was difficult for early systems to handle full motion video on the fly. DVI overcame these problems with a hardware CODEC using specialized processors to compress and decompress the data. A competing hardware and software CODEC, known as MPEG, has become much more widely used in recent years. Intel has developed a software version of the DVI algorithms, which it markets under the name Indeo.
