We’ve talked about DisplayLink quite a bit recently at PC Pro, whether as a boxout in a recent TFTs Labs or in product reviews like the Village Tronic ViBook. Late 2008 saw a few tentative moves by major manufacturers like Samsung, LG and InFocus to incorporate DisplayLink natively into monitors and projectors, but 2009 looks set to be the year when the technology really explodes into life.

Early reports from CES in Las Vegas have most of the major monitor brands launching DisplayLink versions of products, and mainly on previously successful, high-quality monitor lines. Several companies are also launching adapters that will convert any exisiting monitor to DisplayLink, which takes care of backwards compatibility.

DisplayLink – sending the video signal via USB rather than standard graphics outputs, for those who haven’t been keeping up – won’t revolutionise your use of your main monitor, let’s be honest. But I’m pretty certain it’ll grow in popularity among those with multi-monitor setups, those who regularly hook up TFTs to a laptop with limited outputs, and those who simply don’t want or need graphics cards cluttering up their compact PCs.

The bandwidth is enough for pretty much everything but video and gaming, and as reviews editor Jon Bray will tell you, adding extra monitors past the usual two makes a huge difference to productivity. He’s had the ViBook attached to a third monitor for a few weeks now, and thanks to the software he can view complex Excel sheets uninterrupted across all three (he likes that sort of thing).

The one issue with DisplayLink is that it may take a little while to take off with the public. After all, unless you’re specifically buying your new TFT to be a second or third display, you probably won’t progress to using the DisplayLink connection until you run out of actual video outputs. But the important point is that we’ll soon be reaching the point where the port is just there on most new TFTs, ready to be used when needed.

If – and that’s a huge IF – we see official USB 3.0 products arriving at any point in 2009, the extra bandwidth available to DisplayLink will open up exciting possibilities. Want to run video across six monitors at once with no graphics card in your PC? Put your money on DisplayLink in 2009.