Definition: VESA Media Channel

A VESA standard bus for transferring video signals between the graphics card and multimedia boards (TV board, audio/video capture, videoconferencing, etc.). The Media Channel (also VM Channel or VMC) was designed as a high-speed multimedia bus to accommodate real-time audio and video traffic. Up to 16 devices can be connected.

Unlike the VESA Advanced Feature Connector, which is a point-to-point channel, the VMC is a sophisticated packet-oriented, timeshared bus, which can guarantee bandwidth for real-time transmission, even more suited for audio and video than PCI. The VMC can handle up to 16 simultaneous streams of data (audio, video, etc.) and can arbitrate between 8, 16 and 32-bit connections.