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Yesterday I saw a 3 by 3 video wall display, in which the only connection between the LED TVs are by HDMI cable from one i7 notebook.

I asked the operator how he did it, and his answer sounded to me kind of tricky and misleading. He connects the notebook to the #1 LED TV in the 'input' HDMI (or something like that). Then, from the 'output' HDMI in that TV, he connects to the #2 input HDMI, and from it to the 3rd and so on... all in series and with HDMI cables.

All of them work with the i7 notebook with one and only HDMI cable plugged in it (connected to the 1st TV) and with some software I can't recognize at first view. He says there's no need to use anything else.

I saw it working. Is it really possible, or has he somehow tricked me?

And if it is possible, why is something like the 'iVu4 stand alone video wall controller' and others like it needed anymore?

Anyone knows anything about this?

4 Answers 4

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I'm not sure about HDMI, but you can do that with DisplayPort if your monitors support daisychaining. You can connect up to 6 1366x768 screens or 4 FullHD screens with only one cable plugged into graphics card. To use more screens you'd need another card and one more cable.

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  • Sadly, the only way to know it is by trying. That means buying stuff to run tests. Of course is a lot of money in a gamble.
    – Luisppk
    Sep 10, 2013 at 1:54
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pretty sure it was DisplayPort MST read more here

https://www.displayport.org/cables/driving-multiple-displays-from-a-single-displayport-output/

DPMST

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Assuming that specialized hardware was in use, then yes, that would be possible. Normal HDMI displays have no output port.

You did not say what resolutions were in use. HDMI cannot drive very high resolution from one cable. Maybe the video wall was not using too many pixels to make it possible.

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Probably a displayport daisychain, since with displayport the signal processing chips are on the monitor side which lets you get around the usual "two display limit" imposed by even high-end GPUs (even a GTX 980 has only two RAMDACs). There is no way I'm aware of that would allow him to do this with HDMI.

ED: And those adapters / splitters are used for people who are repurposing displays without displayport chaining, displayport input, etc. A lot of them expose the grouped monitors as a single "monitor" to Windows, necessitating Display Fusion or similar software to split them back up again. A lot cheaper than buying 3-6 new screens though.

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