Hello

Has anyone worked with the new lcd connector dvi? I'm looking to set up an lcd tv or lcd monitor that has an dvi connector instead of vga. I like to hook it up to a dvr vga port and use a vga to dvi converter adapter. If i'm using a dvi lcd and cable to the dvr i should get and improved digital picture right?

DVI technology is hardly new, as it was developed in 1999, and I've been using it for the past 5-6 years on my computer monitors.

DVI is digital, and VGA is analog. If you are using a VGA output on your DVR and just using a cable adapter to DVI, then I'm not sure if your picture quality will improve much, if any, since the output on your DVR is still VGA, although I haven't tried it.

Actually, DVI can be either analog or digital. It can also be very confusing with DVI-I (analog), DV-D (digital), single link and dual link connectors, all of which may or may not be compatible with the equipment at either end.

Actually, thats not exactly accurate either...

What I was referring to was a DVI output on a computer, not the cable itself. A video card with a DVI output is always digital. However, a DVI cable has the ABILITY to carry an analog signal in order to be compatible with the older VGA outputs.

so really the only time it would be carrying analog is when the cable is being used to transmit the video from a VGA output where a dvi/vga converter was used (which is what the original poster wants to do). otherwise the video signal would be digital. Thats why i said i didnt think he would notice any difference in quality.


for what its worth (just to avoid any confusion), the DVI-I isn't an analog plug, its dual link that includes both analog and digital capabilities.

Maybe so, but that doesn't mean DVI is simple. I'll give you an example. At work, we have two computers KVM'd to a single monitor using Startech SV221DVI KVM's at each station. When we originally hooked up the systems, we used hp L-1925 monitors and everything worked well.

After a couple of years, the monitors started to die so we bought hp L-1940's to replace them. Everything else stayed the same: computers, video cards, cables, KVM's etc. The monitor would only display for one of the computers. The other computer would not display through the KVM but would display when connected directly to the monitor.

We tried changing the cables, KVM's, video card and drivers on the computer that wouldn't display. We contacted hp Support, who could not resolve the problem. We eventually bought some different monitors and relegated the problematic ones to single-computer stations. That solved the problem.

There are plenty of horror stories about DVI incompatability problems.