Displayport -> HDMI adapter VS cable, for audio + vid on a E6500

I have a Latitide E6500 with the Nividia Quadro NVS160M graphics card. I'm running Vista Business 32bit. My E6500 vid outs are s-vga and displayport. I use my laptop mainly in my home office and I would like some more real estate, when in the office 1440x900 is just not enough. When looking at monitors displayport does not seem a common input but most have HDMI.

I then looked at monoprice and saw two possible options for displayport -> HDMI, an adapter or a cable. What is the difference between the two and which should I use if I want both audio and video signals transmitted? Or am I stuck using a monitor that has a displayport input?


thanks in advance

 

the adapter is what you want to be able to use audio as well.

 

are you sure? i thought i remembered people reporting the cable worked for transmitting sound

 

well dell sells and ships their systems with an adapter which is what came with my M15x.

 

Both the adapter and the cable you linked to are functionally equivalent, just in different formats. I'd strongly recommend the cable, otherwise you're probably going to be putting more physical stress on the DisplayPort port on your laptop than it was designed for. Even the one that you can get shipped with a system from Dell for $15 is more of the adapter type in that it has the same connections as the adapter you linked to, but is in the form of a ~9" cable.

Using either adapter / cable has the capability to transmit sound. See the other threads on this forum for details. Basically, it shows up as a separate audio output on the computer. Within Windows, it appears as a "Digital Audio (S/PDIF)" device. You may need to switch your default audio device to this (Control Panel / Sound), and restart any active media players, etc. for this to take effect.

What I'd really like to see is some sort of adapter that provides a S/PDIF output from either the DisplayPort or HDMI output. For example, some TVs don't have a digital audio output - and I'd like to be able to still use the HDMI input, while being able to have a digital audio connection to a separate receiver, and still only having to make one connection to my laptop. However, this would have to require active circuitry, as neither DisplayPort nor HDMI have dedicated pins for audio.

 

thank you. I have ordered the cable.

 

When I plugged in my laptop to my HDTV w/HDMI+DisplayPort converter the resolution wasn't native to the screen. I'm not sure what resolution it was displaying at but the sides were cut off. Do you guys know the fix for this problem.