Mitsubishi announced that it has begun shipping its RDT201WDL, a widescreen LCD monitor, and the company's first using DisplayLink video-over-USB technology. The 1680 x 1050 monitor features adjustable energy-efficiency with a choice of three savings modes, supports Ethernet connectivity, and is USB-enabled for its DisplayLink function. DisplayLink technology allows multiple displays to be added to a system without requiring extra video cards by rendering all screen information locally, splitting it up for each monitor, heavily compressing it, and streaming it out over USB. Performance varies wildly depending on the video card being used, available CPU power, and type and resolution of video being shown; while simple window-based applications can be easily compressed and displayed over the USB connection, full-screen video can demand too much bandwidth and CPU time, resulting in jerky playback. Mitsubishi is focusing its implementation of DisplayLink at laptop users, who cannot easily add additional display outputs to their machines.

[Via Engadget]