Tuesday, November 6th 2012
Now, A Dongle That Converts D-Sub to HDMI and Vice Versa
If you're feeling the pinch of lack of HDMI inputs on their monitors, you'll find this little dongle from the bi-lanes of Tokyo's Akihabara shopping district handy. The TEC HDCOM-001, as it's called, has a male D-Sub connector on one end, which plugs into the D-Sub connector of your monitor, and an HDMI input. The HDMI connection can carry both video to the monitor and up to 6 channels of audio, which are given out by the dongle as analog audio outputs. The gadget could come handy when pairing Ultrabooks (which lack D-Sub, and provide HDMI) with analog monitors, or those which lack HDMI inputs. It can also be used the other way, to convert D-Sub to HDMI, using an included male to female cable. Its DAC supports display resolutions as high as 1920 x 1080, with 60 Hz refresh rate. Measuring 41 x 72 x 18 mm, it weighs about 120 g. It is priced at 5,480 JPY (US $68).
Source:
Hermitage Akihabara
19 Comments on Now, A Dongle That Converts D-Sub to HDMI and Vice Versa
DVI-D: Digital signal only.
DVI-A: Analog signal only.
DVI-I: Digital and analog signal.
And then the digital signal can be single or dual link.
The digital signal is compatible with HDMI and the analog is compatible with VGA/D-sub15.
HDMI doesn't have any provisions for analog in any form, so for that to happen, a DAC or ADC is need to convert from one to the other.
DVI-D <-> HDMI
DVI-A <-> VGA
Note the digital/analog thing... you can't go VGA <-> DVI <-> HDMI without some sort of active adapter somewhere. That's what this thing pretty much is.
EDIT: Passive is simply a re-wiring... just a connector with no need for power. Active takes the signal and does some processing on it. Note the need for a power supply.
thats why there are variants like DVI-I and DVI-D, some of them are digital only, and dont carry those signals.
This is a true conversion - HDMI w/ 5.1 to analogue audio/VGA, or the other way around.
DVI-I includes pinouts for both analog and digital, thus making the conversion straight-through.
DVI-D is not actually compatible with a DVI-VGA adapter. DVI-A (rarely seen) is analog only.
Off topic: Why the hell are they putting on motherboards combinations like: VGA + DVI + HDMI or VGA + HDMI or HDMI + DVI?! Jut put a single DVI-I connector and give us USB 3 in the remaining space or another LAN jack!
Looks like it does component video and optical audio too.
I was too broad in my statement, i was thinking about desktop computers not HTPCs. On a "workstation", that has a dedicated video card with all the video connectors, you would use the motherboard's video connectors only for backup or some sort of dual display. In this situation a greater number of USB ports or an extra NIC is more desirable than three video connectors you wouldn't use frequently.
On a HTPC you definitely need HDMI.
As for VGA on any type of motherboard instead of a DVI-I... I'm baffled and annoyed by such occurrence.