I just bought a 23inch Monitor which have HDMI. My VGA also support HDMI. But I found that we have to enable drivers and set things up before using HDMI. The monitor comes with a normal analogue VGA cable and no HDMI cable. Does this mean we are not supposed to use HDMI in a PC? Is it pointless? How about DVI to HDMI?
1 Answer
HDMI is worth it as your monitor gets a pure digital signal, rather than VGA, which is analogue, and thus more susceptible to issues like interference or poor quality cables. Using a DVI to HDMI adapter is fine, HDMI is basically a superset of DVI — the video protocol is the same, so there's no conversion loss or anything. Having a VGA cable but not an HDMI one is partly the company being cheap (although HDMI cables can be had for a dollar or two), and partly addressing the the lowest common denominator (although slowly VGA seems to be fading from even the cheapest components).
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DVI is also a digital signal. I wouldn't consider HDMI a superset of DVI.– RamhoundNov 22, 2012 at 3:42
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1It is, per the HDMI wikipedia article, "HDMI is electrically compatible with the CEA-861 signals used by digital visual interface (DVI)". HDMI tacks on audio and some other data signals. And of course different connector standards, etc. "Superset" is perhaps a bit crude, but in a general sense I'd say it's accurate. Nov 22, 2012 at 3:51