It has been developed by CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) as ANSI/CEA-2017-A standard Common Interconnection for Portable Media Players in February 2010.

Chaired by David McLauchlan from Microsoft, the standard was developed with the input or support of over fifty consumer electronics companies worldwide.

[1] CEA-2017-A is the new revision of the earlier ANSI/CEA-2017 standard adopted in July 2007, which used a proprietary serial protocol based on Media Oriented Systems Transport (MOST) in-vehicle network;[2][3][4] the 2007 revision has seen only marginal use in actual devices.

Intended host devices include docking stations for home A/V equipment, in-car entertainment systems, digital media kiosks, and hotel/in-flight entertainment systems, where PDMI aims to replace the ubiquitous iPod cradle connector.

The PDMI connector includes the following electrical interfaces: DisplayPort component provides data rate of 4.32 Gbit/s and supports up to 1080p60 video and 8-channel audio playback on an attached display device, as well as EDID and display control commands.