HDMI out -> dual-link DVI in. Success stories?

September 12, 2006 4:09 PM

HDMI out -> dual-link DVI in. Success stories? Horror stories?

The death of my old ReplayTV and the announcement of the Series 3 HD TiVo - with dual CableCards! - has inspired me to update all my video gear. I'm thinking of running the TiVo's HDMI output to a 30" Apple Cinema Display, which I can swap onto my MacBook Pro for gaming. The TiVo has only HDMI out, and the Apple display requires a dual-link DVI input. I know HDMI->DVI-D cables exist, but how well do they work? Is anyone here using the 30" Apple display as a TV? How's that working out for you?

posted by nicwolff to technology (4 comments total)

well, i suspect its not going to work too well. when you run a single-link DVI into the 30" cinema display, you get a very crappy low resolution. i cant remember what it is. but it was scaled and it looks... bad.

that may be a limitation of the EDID that the cinema display reports... you may be able to come up with a timing that will give you at least letter/pillarboxed 1080p. but good luck trying to convince the tivo to use an alternate timing...

it might make more sense to stick with a display that only requires single-link DVI. my understanding is that the video portion of HDMI is exactly identical to DVI, and my experience with my sharp 45" LCD is that DVI->HDMI works, though the TV gets confused because there's no audio on the HDMI connection. you are trying the opposite, so it just might work.

i suppose you need to make sure the hdtivo doesnt disable its HDMI output because the monitor doesnt do HDCP, and also make sure the tivo can give you audio on another output when its using HDMI.

actually, the HDCP thing might be the death of this idea...
posted by joeblough at 4:17 PM on September 12, 2006

To use every pixel of a 30" display, you need more bandwidth than a single DVI-D connection can carry -- hence the requirement for dual-link. So there's no way around it, the Cinema Display is going to have to scale. Probably it is going to suck, as joeblough says.
posted by kindall at 4:43 PM on September 12, 2006

This is an insanely bad idea. The Cinema Display doesn't have a scaler. It does not support any resolutions other than 2560x1600, which I seriously doubt the TiVO can output. Plus, the MacBook Pro's GPU cannot drive that many pixels at a decent gaming frame rate.

Buy an actual HDTV, not something that's neither designed for nor capable of either of your intended uses.

the Apple display requires a dual-link DVI input. I know HDMI->DVI-D cables exist

DVI-D = DVD-Digital, not DVI Dual-Link
posted by cillit bang at 6:51 PM on September 12, 2006

Thanks for clearing all that up, guys.
posted by nicwolff at 9:35 PM on September 12, 2006