mini-displayport to dvi adapter cable

so, i bought one of the above cables that said it was for macs. i was thinking it was like 'made for mac' ram that was supposed to only work on macs but actually worked everywhere.

is this mini displayport cable ACTUALLY only for macs?

trying to connect to a LG ips monitor from a zotac z68 mini itx mobo.

 

No, it isn't just for Macs. Mini Display Port and DVI are both industry-standard display connectors. In most cases, it doesn't matter if you're connecting to/from a Mac or not. The only exception to this rule is if you are actually buying the Apple-branded and Apple-manufactured converter cable. Some users report that these only work properly with Apple-branded hardware.


** Do not buy this Apple-branded converter **


If you have not already purchased an adapter, buy this one from Monoprice for about $7.

 

// inserts joke about macs being really fussy about hardware, but then recalls the day of crappy displayport->DVI adapters for ATI cards

basically there are two types of adapters possible

1) active (displayport signal actually being converted to dvi signals, think something digital->analog where you have to actively convert the signal, though both dvi and displayport are both digital)
2) passive (aka like a plain pinhead adapter, displayport detects dvi pins, outputs dvi signals to pins)

[waits for someone else to chime in which type is in the "mac" adapters, since i'm not that familiar with macs]

 

Displayport is not like HDMI, which is electronically the same as DVI, so if you don't have a device that is capable of sending a displayport signal over the DVI port then you would need an active adapter to convert it for you.

In all honesty, what are the advantages of displayport? I don't see anything wrong with HDMI, so why did they make a new standard? It seems kind of redundant to me.

 

1. HDMI is not the same like DVI. DVI supports neither audio nor DRM. On the other hand DVI-A and I support analog signals which HDMI does not. The only thing they have in common is the digital, non DRMed video signal.
2. Displayport is basically a wrapper for DVI and HDMI. So if your sender and receiver are both capable of processing a DVI signal (no matter of which sort) there is no problem if a Displayport connector is involved since it simply tunnels the DVI protocol. The same goes for HDMI signals via Displayport.

HDMI is a proprietary standard. Displayport is the only way to transfer digital video and audio via the same free (as in freedom) interface.

 

Could you explain this more? What are the advantages of a "free interface" as far as hooking up a monitor to your computer is concerned? I still fail to see the advantages offered by displayport in this regard.

 

DVI, along with displayport, includes HDCP, a type of drm

High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

you could see it as a wrapper, but i think of DVI/HDMI through Displayport as a "fallback" lower version of DP for universal compatibility. Full Displayport has more benefits and features than this "fallback" version

HDMI also has a limitation of 1920x1200(for version <1.2a), more for later version(at a balance of depth sizes, read wikipedia).

Displayport is more "futureproof" for PC use. daisy chaining, ethernet/usb inclusion etc. however, everything's still stuck with the plain, basic, universal vga cable for now

also, if you drive 3 or more monitors from one GPU, you probably need to use at least one displayport (or active displayport->dvi/vga/hdmi)... limitation from 2 clock generators on GPU(dvi/hdmi/vga requires separate clock generators, while DP doesn't).... for desktop, some ATI GPUs have an active adapter "built-in", so you can do 3 w/o another active adapter

displayport is royalty free, meaning manufacturers don't have to pay $ per unit of displayport devices(they have to pay $ per HDMI devices the produce)... aka more influence for them to switch over to a cheaper implementation..... but penetration of Displayport is still low so far

 

This pretty much nails it from a practical point of view:

But as with free software or anything else that has to do with freedom there is also a great deal of idealism/ideology involved.

Thanks for the info! That's new to me and frankly I'm pretty disappointed to hear that. Do you know if that is already in use? Up to now everytime I encountered DRM in connection with Displayport it was not Displayport itself but the tunneled HDMI protocol that was DRMed.

I know. But I wanted to keep that last post simple.

Actually the different HDMI substandards have bandwidth limitations. So the number of pixels x color depth is only limited implicitly. If you're willing to sacrifice framerates you can increase the number of pixels.

 

For end users, there is no functional performance difference. Both HDMI and DisplayPort allow a regular user like you and me to just plug a single cable in for audio & video. HDMI has a slight advantage for end users, because it is more widely adopted, and is easier to buy supplies for (e.g. cables, home theatre receivers, televisions and monitors, etc).

The "free as in freedom" interface part comes in to play for manufacturers (monitor and video card) that use HDMI. They need to pay licensing fees to use the HDMI interface.

 

dvi hdcp problems - Google Search

as most DRM, consumers are worse off

think (actual)Displayport+hdcp problems aren't that common, but then DP isn't that widespread yet

 

Good thread with great answers. Thanks for the indepth responses.

Anyone have an opinion/experience with the:

Accell B087B-006B UltraAV Mini DisplayPort to DVI-D Single-Link Active Adapter ATI Certified by Accell.

I'm thinking about buying this adapter cable since my Alienware M14x has a mini DisplayPort but my monitor (Dell 2007FPb) has a DVI-D port and no HDMI port.

 

I have an Accell Active Displayport->DVI-D single link... works fine