DVI to HDMI cable

Due to my eyesight getting a little worse, 3 days ago I decided to buy a
new 27 inch monitor to replace my LG IPS monitor which was still working
great.

After much browsing and checking makes and models on the internet and
checking loca suppliers I decided on the Asus MX279-H which was
available at Staples for $299.95.

So went to their brick and mortar store to have a good look at a demo
model,I would not buy a monitor without physically seeing it in operation.

It looked beautiful so I bought it and took it home and installed it.
I used it for a while but was not satisfied with the colour so I spent a
couple days on and off trying to tweak the colour settings, but it still
looked terrible, the reds were pinkish magenta and the greens were sorta
lime green, blues were overpowering, it looked 10 times worse than my 9
year old LG.

Finally went googling to see if I could find others with this kind of
problem, in reading dozens of articles I still hadn't found anything
solid but did read where one article suggested a new cable.
Well I had it hooked up with a DVI to HDMI cable that came in the box.
So as a last resort before taking it back as defective I grabbed an HDMI
to HDMI cable from my blue-ray/TV setup and plugged it in HDMI to HDMI.
Well you could imagine my elation as it came up picture and colour perfect.

Now here is the question, the DVI to HDMI cable was hooked up to my
video card DVI out to one of the monitor HDMI inputs.

the new cable was HDMI out of video card to HDMI in of monitor.
The DVI out of the video card is proven good.

Is this DVI to HDMI cable able to be used as a HDMI to DVI cable or are
the different cables? Or is it truly a defective cable?

Thanks for your thoughts and input.

Rene

On 07/29/2017 07:22 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Due to my eyesight getting a little worse, 3 days ago I decided to buy a
new 27 inch monitor to replace my LG IPS monitor which was still working
great.

After much browsing and checking makes and models on the internet and
checking loca suppliers I decided on the Asus MX279-H which was
available at Staples for $299.95.

So went to their brick and mortar store to have a good look at a demo
model,I would not buy a monitor without physically seeing it in operation.

It looked beautiful so I bought it and took it home and installed it.
I used it for a while but was not satisfied with the colour so I spent a
couple days on and off trying to tweak the colour settings, but it still
looked terrible, the reds were pinkish magenta and the greens were sorta
lime green, blues were overpowering, it looked 10 times worse than my 9
year old LG.

Finally went googling to see if I could find others with this kind of
problem, in reading dozens of articles I still hadn't found anything
solid but did read where one article suggested a new cable.
Well I had it hooked up with a DVI to HDMI cable that came in the box.
So as a last resort before taking it back as defective I grabbed an HDMI
to HDMI cable from my blue-ray/TV setup and plugged it in HDMI to HDMI.
Well you could imagine my elation as it came up picture and colour perfect.

Now here is the question, the DVI to HDMI cable was hooked up to my
video card DVI out to one of the monitor HDMI inputs.

the new cable was HDMI out of video card to HDMI in of monitor.
The DVI out of the video card is proven good.

Is this DVI to HDMI cable able to be used as a HDMI to DVI cable or are
the different cables? Or is it truly a defective cable?

Thanks for your thoughts and input.

Rene





Hi Rene,

Sometimes if the cables are not properly inserted
this will happen. Pull them out and push them back
in and make sure they are fully inserted.

It is probably not the cable, but if you want to try a replacement:

https://www.tripplite.com/hdmi-dvi-c...-6-ft~P566006/

I have sold several of these and they work beautifully. They
are available on Amazon and lot of other places too.

-T

On 7/29/2017 9:45 PM, T wrote:
On 07/29/2017 07:22 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Due to my eyesight getting a little worse, 3 days ago I decided to buy
a new 27 inch monitor to replace my LG IPS monitor which was still
working great.

After much browsing and checking makes and models on the internet and
checking loca suppliers I decided on the Asus MX279-H which was
available at Staples for $299.95.

So went to their brick and mortar store to have a good look at a demo
model,I would not buy a monitor without physically seeing it in
operation.

It looked beautiful so I bought it and took it home and installed it.
I used it for a while but was not satisfied with the colour so I spent
a couple days on and off trying to tweak the colour settings, but it
still looked terrible, the reds were pinkish magenta and the greens
were sorta lime green, blues were overpowering, it looked 10 times
worse than my 9 year old LG.

Finally went googling to see if I could find others with this kind of
problem, in reading dozens of articles I still hadn't found anything
solid but did read where one article suggested a new cable.
Well I had it hooked up with a DVI to HDMI cable that came in the box.
So as a last resort before taking it back as defective I grabbed an
HDMI to HDMI cable from my blue-ray/TV setup and plugged it in HDMI to
HDMI.
Well you could imagine my elation as it came up picture and colour
perfect.

Now here is the question, the DVI to HDMI cable was hooked up to my
video card DVI out to one of the monitor HDMI inputs.

the new cable was HDMI out of video card to HDMI in of monitor.
The DVI out of the video card is proven good.

Is this DVI to HDMI cable able to be used as a HDMI to DVI cable or
are the different cables? Or is it truly a defective cable?

Thanks for your thoughts and input.

Rene





Hi Rene,

Sometimes if the cables are not properly inserted
this will happen. Pull them out and push them back
in and make sure they are fully inserted.

It is probably not the cable, but if you want to try a replacement:

https://www.tripplite.com/hdmi-dvi-c...-6-ft~P566006/


I have sold several of these and they work beautifully. They
are available on Amazon and lot of other places too.

-T


Thanks T, yes they were in fully and the DVI end was bolted down.
The HDMI to HDMI cable works good so I will leave it as is.

Thanks, Rene

On 07/29/2017 08:07 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 7/29/2017 9:45 PM, T wrote:
On 07/29/2017 07:22 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Due to my eyesight getting a little worse, 3 days ago I decided to
buy a new 27 inch monitor to replace my LG IPS monitor which was
still working great.

After much browsing and checking makes and models on the internet and
checking loca suppliers I decided on the Asus MX279-H which was
available at Staples for $299.95.

So went to their brick and mortar store to have a good look at a demo
model,I would not buy a monitor without physically seeing it in
operation.

It looked beautiful so I bought it and took it home and installed it.
I used it for a while but was not satisfied with the colour so I
spent a couple days on and off trying to tweak the colour settings,
but it still looked terrible, the reds were pinkish magenta and the
greens were sorta lime green, blues were overpowering, it looked 10
times worse than my 9 year old LG.

Finally went googling to see if I could find others with this kind of
problem, in reading dozens of articles I still hadn't found anything
solid but did read where one article suggested a new cable.
Well I had it hooked up with a DVI to HDMI cable that came in the box.
So as a last resort before taking it back as defective I grabbed an
HDMI to HDMI cable from my blue-ray/TV setup and plugged it in HDMI
to HDMI.
Well you could imagine my elation as it came up picture and colour
perfect.

Now here is the question, the DVI to HDMI cable was hooked up to my
video card DVI out to one of the monitor HDMI inputs.

the new cable was HDMI out of video card to HDMI in of monitor.
The DVI out of the video card is proven good.

Is this DVI to HDMI cable able to be used as a HDMI to DVI cable or
are the different cables? Or is it truly a defective cable?

Thanks for your thoughts and input.

Rene





Hi Rene,

Sometimes if the cables are not properly inserted
this will happen. Pull them out and push them back
in and make sure they are fully inserted.

It is probably not the cable, but if you want to try a replacement:

https://www.tripplite.com/hdmi-dvi-c...-6-ft~P566006/


I have sold several of these and they work beautifully. They
are available on Amazon and lot of other places too.

-T


Thanks T, yes they were in fully and the DVI end was bolted down.
The HDMI to HDMI cable works good so I will leave it as is.

Thanks, Rene



You are most welcome!

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 7/29/2017 9:45 PM, T wrote:
On 07/29/2017 07:22 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Due to my eyesight getting a little worse, 3 days ago I decided to
buy a new 27 inch monitor to replace my LG IPS monitor which was
still working great.

After much browsing and checking makes and models on the internet and
checking loca suppliers I decided on the Asus MX279-H which was
available at Staples for $299.95.

So went to their brick and mortar store to have a good look at a demo
model,I would not buy a monitor without physically seeing it in
operation.

It looked beautiful so I bought it and took it home and installed it.
I used it for a while but was not satisfied with the colour so I
spent a couple days on and off trying to tweak the colour settings,
but it still looked terrible, the reds were pinkish magenta and the
greens were sorta lime green, blues were overpowering, it looked 10
times worse than my 9 year old LG.

Finally went googling to see if I could find others with this kind of
problem, in reading dozens of articles I still hadn't found anything
solid but did read where one article suggested a new cable.
Well I had it hooked up with a DVI to HDMI cable that came in the box.
So as a last resort before taking it back as defective I grabbed an
HDMI to HDMI cable from my blue-ray/TV setup and plugged it in HDMI
to HDMI.
Well you could imagine my elation as it came up picture and colour
perfect.

Now here is the question, the DVI to HDMI cable was hooked up to my
video card DVI out to one of the monitor HDMI inputs.

the new cable was HDMI out of video card to HDMI in of monitor.
The DVI out of the video card is proven good.

Is this DVI to HDMI cable able to be used as a HDMI to DVI cable or
are the different cables? Or is it truly a defective cable?

Thanks for your thoughts and input.

Rene





Hi Rene,

Sometimes if the cables are not properly inserted
this will happen. Pull them out and push them back
in and make sure they are fully inserted.

It is probably not the cable, but if you want to try a replacement:

https://www.tripplite.com/hdmi-dvi-c...-6-ft~P566006/


I have sold several of these and they work beautifully. They
are available on Amazon and lot of other places too.

-T


Thanks T, yes they were in fully and the DVI end was bolted down.
The HDMI to HDMI cable works good so I will leave it as is.

Thanks, Rene


The transmission properties of the cables matter.

If the cable clock is 165MHz, the data moves at 1650Mbit/sec
(approx same rate as SATA I). HDMI can run at 330MHz clock, so I guess
that means the data would be 3300Mbit/sec. (The clock used, varies
according to the resolution being sent. Higher WxH means higher clock.)

(There is one clock cycle per pixel. A pixel consists of at least
8 bits of data for R,G,B. Each color gets its own diff pair.
The data is encoded in 8B10B, and thus the baud rate for
8 bit color is 10x the clock rate. Ten bits are sent on the
cable, to represent eight bits of color.)

SATA cables are limited to 1 meter or 2 meters or so (depending
on whether SATA or ESATA with increased launch amplitude. SAS
on the other hand, can go a longer distance (active equalization,
two EQ states). Those are examples of comparable cables.

A video cable doesn't have time for "retransmission" of image
data. It's just a one-way cable. While they could protect the
data with a powerful error correction code, that just drives up
the data rate on the cable and makes things worse.

So the solution is to use a quality cable. You would think
quality control would be as good as SATA cabling is, but maybe
not.

The cable construction is shown here. What that appears to
consist of, is four shielded pairs. Each shielded pair seems to
have a drain wire in the middle. The signals consist of differential
CLK, R, G, B. The CLK is the signal at 165MHz, while the three
data pairs are at 10x in terms of baud rate. There are an
assortment of other "bit player" signals on the cable as well
(low frequency stuff).

http://www.carlisleit.com/sites/defa...0Drawing_0.png

For comparison, SATA puts drain wires on the outside of the
shielded pairs.

http://www.electro-tech-online.com/a...ion-png.31540/

(A chewed-through SATA cable...)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinax...winAxCable.jpg

*******

This article shows the existence of at least two cable types (they don't
provide details).

https://turbofuture.com/computers/do...-hdmi-20-guide

This article gives some idea on what rates the various standards support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI

CLK RES

HDMI 1.0 165 MHz 1920x1200 60p
HDMI 1.1 165 MHz 1920x1200 60p
HDMI 1.2 165 MHz 1920x1200 60p
HDMI 1.3 340 MHz 2560x1600 60p
HDMI 1.4 340 MHz etcetra
HDMI 2.0 600 MHz 4096×2160 60p
HDMI 2.1 t.b.a 10K100 120p

The Asus MX279H monitor is 27" and 1920x1080. So really, just
about anything should have worked. Even a quality regular cable...

The spec page says the panel is IPS (for wide viewing angle
without color shift). There's no other extraordinary property
listed on this page. That means the panel is better than a TN panel.

https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Monitors/...pecifications/

The article here, in the practical testing section (actually
using HDMI cables), shows the average cable passes just fine.
Even putting two cables together in a row still worked. Out
to about 65ft for 1920x1080. There are of course, many assumptions
in statements like that (nothing has gone wrong etc).

http://www.audioholics.com/audio-vid...ion-conclusion

You should compare the "noise pattern" in the picture on that
page, to what you were seeing. Ghosting would happen if you
were using VGA for interconnect. DVI/HDMI should start to show
"sparkles" when individual bits in a pixel get flipped by
data errors. If the interface has switched on HDCP, that
should make things worse (since HDCP encrypts the data on
the cable, to prevent "Pirate snooping"). I don't know
what the error multiplication effects look like, when
the cable has errors and HDCP is used. If a receiving device doesn't
actually decode an HDCP signal, the result is "colored snow",
and that's what happens when an HDCP computer signal, you
attempt to capture it with an HDMI capture card (which is
not allowed to decode HDCP). Monitors on the other hand,
are allowed to decode HDCP, because they hide the
signal and "keep it private to the inside of the monitor".

Paul

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Due to my eyesight getting a little worse, 3 days ago I decided to buy a
new 27 inch monitor to replace my LG IPS monitor which was still working
great.

After much browsing and checking makes and models on the internet and
checking loca suppliers I decided on the Asus MX279-H which was
available at Staples for $299.95.

So went to their brick and mortar store to have a good look at a demo
model,I would not buy a monitor without physically seeing it in operation.

It looked beautiful so I bought it and took it home and installed it.
I used it for a while but was not satisfied with the colour so I spent a
couple days on and off trying to tweak the colour settings, but it still
looked terrible, the reds were pinkish magenta and the greens were sorta
lime green, blues were overpowering, it looked 10 times worse than my 9
year old LG.

Finally went googling to see if I could find others with this kind of
problem, in reading dozens of articles I still hadn't found anything
solid but did read where one article suggested a new cable.
Well I had it hooked up with a DVI to HDMI cable that came in the box.
So as a last resort before taking it back as defective I grabbed an HDMI
to HDMI cable from my blue-ray/TV setup and plugged it in HDMI to HDMI.
Well you could imagine my elation as it came up picture and colour perfect.

Now here is the question, the DVI to HDMI cable was hooked up to my
video card DVI out to one of the monitor HDMI inputs.

the new cable was HDMI out of video card to HDMI in of monitor.
The DVI out of the video card is proven good.

Is this DVI to HDMI cable able to be used as a HDMI to DVI cable or are
the different cables? Or is it truly a defective cable?

Thanks for your thoughts and input.

Rene


Sounds like it's not a cable issue, but your video card is sending
different color information over DVI and HDMI. There are different
ways to deal with this depnding on your video card. My wife's laptop
produces terrible color output over HDMI to the television, extremely
oversaturated unless you mess with the settings.

https://pcmonitors.info/articles/correcting-hdmi-colour-on-nvidia-and-amd-gpus

On 7/30/2017 12:21 AM, lifewoutmilk wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Due to my eyesight getting a little worse, 3 days ago I decided to buy a
new 27 inch monitor to replace my LG IPS monitor which was still working
great.

After much browsing and checking makes and models on the internet and
checking loca suppliers I decided on the Asus MX279-H which was
available at Staples for $299.95.

So went to their brick and mortar store to have a good look at a demo
model,I would not buy a monitor without physically seeing it in operation.

It looked beautiful so I bought it and took it home and installed it.
I used it for a while but was not satisfied with the colour so I spent a
couple days on and off trying to tweak the colour settings, but it still
looked terrible, the reds were pinkish magenta and the greens were sorta
lime green, blues were overpowering, it looked 10 times worse than my 9
year old LG.

Finally went googling to see if I could find others with this kind of
problem, in reading dozens of articles I still hadn't found anything
solid but did read where one article suggested a new cable.
Well I had it hooked up with a DVI to HDMI cable that came in the box.
So as a last resort before taking it back as defective I grabbed an HDMI
to HDMI cable from my blue-ray/TV setup and plugged it in HDMI to HDMI.
Well you could imagine my elation as it came up picture and colour perfect.

Now here is the question, the DVI to HDMI cable was hooked up to my
video card DVI out to one of the monitor HDMI inputs.

the new cable was HDMI out of video card to HDMI in of monitor.
The DVI out of the video card is proven good.

Is this DVI to HDMI cable able to be used as a HDMI to DVI cable or are
the different cables? Or is it truly a defective cable?

Thanks for your thoughts and input.

Rene


Sounds like it's not a cable issue, but your video card is sending
different color information over DVI and HDMI. There are different
ways to deal with this depnding on your video card. My wife's laptop
produces terrible color output over HDMI to the television, extremely
oversaturated unless you mess with the settings.

https://pcmonitors.info/articles/correcting-hdmi-colour-on-nvidia-and-amd-gpus


Thanks to both Paul and Lifewoutmilk for two extremely informative
articles,I enjoyed reading them and learning a whole lot more about
computer video.
I switched cables this AM and still get same results, My Video card is
an Asus EA5850 full CU so is about 7 years old, I suspect you may be
right on the card sending out different video on the DVI or HDMI ports.
Anyway I am now connected with a new 3 foot HDMI to HDMI cable and
everything is great, perfect color and contrast, so I will leave
everything alone before I break it.
:-)

Thanks, Rene

On 30/07/2017 03:45, T wrote:
Sometimes if the cables are not properly inserted
this will happen. Pull them out and push them back
in and make sure they are fully inserted.

It used to happen with VGA.
Never heard of it happening with a digital cable though.

--

Brian Gregory (in the UK).
To email me please remove all the letter vee from my email address.

On 07/30/2017 05:07 PM, Wolf K wrote:
On 2017-07-30 19:32, Brian Gregory wrote:
On 30/07/2017 03:45, T wrote:
Sometimes if the cables are not properly inserted
this will happen. Pull them out and push them back
in and make sure they are fully inserted.

It used to happen with VGA.
Never heard of it happening with a digital cable though.

I suspect it's contact oxidation. Cheap plugs have brass pins, the
oxides on brass are insulators. Reseating the plug will rub off some of
that oxide. FWIW, I've used Aerocar's contact/track cleaner (made for
model planes and trains) with better success than the contact cleaners
labelled for electronics.



dport now has a snap to keep it from falling out.

Wolf K wrote:
On 2017-07-30 19:32, Brian Gregory wrote:
On 30/07/2017 03:45, T wrote:
Sometimes if the cables are not properly inserted
this will happen. Pull them out and push them back
in and make sure they are fully inserted.

It used to happen with VGA.
Never heard of it happening with a digital cable though.

I suspect it's contact oxidation. Cheap plugs have brass pins, the
oxides on brass are insulators. Reseating the plug will rub off some of
that oxide. FWIW, I've used Aerocar's contact/track cleaner (made for
model planes and trains) with better success than the contact cleaners
labelled for electronics.

Typical contact systems are tin-on-tin or gold-on-gold.
The systems should not be mixed. (At one time, you could
buy items where the contact systems were mixed, and then
you'd be in trouble. For example, gold slides over tin,
without biting the oxide off the outside. Which is why
the combination of the two leads to failures.)

Tin works by "biting". It scrapes the thin oxide layer
off the top, and where bare tin touches bare tin, you
get a good connection. Any remaining tin which is not
mated, builds up the oxide layer again.

Gold is different. Being a precious metal, there is less
concern with any "oxide" forming. Gold slides over gold,
with no appreciable bite as such. But the gold plating is
also extremely thin. In telecom, it is 50u. In computing,
it is 10u. The gold on DIMMs is thin enough, sometimes you
can see "pinholes" in the finish.

Both systems use appropriate metallurgy, from the bare pin
to the outside plating. Each plating combo is selected
for compatibility. X over Y over Z, in a specific order.
This is intended to prevent plating failure. For example,
maybe there's a small amount of nickel underneath the tin.

If brass was used in anything, hopefully it has a finish
over top of it. They use brass to make spoke nipples for
bicycles, and that's a horrible idea (you can't even get
the thing tightened to the correct tension before it deforms).
Based on the strength of brass, it's not going to be a
candidate for just any purpose.

Paul

On 7/31/2017 3:50 AM, Paul wrote:
Wolf K wrote:
On 2017-07-30 19:32, Brian Gregory wrote:
On 30/07/2017 03:45, T wrote:
Sometimes if the cables are not properly inserted
this will happen. Pull them out and push them back
in and make sure they are fully inserted.

It used to happen with VGA.
Never heard of it happening with a digital cable though.

I suspect it's contact oxidation. Cheap plugs have brass pins, the
oxides on brass are insulators. Reseating the plug will rub off some
of that oxide. FWIW, I've used Aerocar's contact/track cleaner (made
for model planes and trains) with better success than the contact
cleaners labelled for electronics.

Typical contact systems are tin-on-tin or gold-on-gold.
The systems should not be mixed. (At one time, you could
buy items where the contact systems were mixed, and then
you'd be in trouble. For example, gold slides over tin,
without biting the oxide off the outside. Which is why
the combination of the two leads to failures.)

Tin works by "biting". It scrapes the thin oxide layer
off the top, and where bare tin touches bare tin, you
get a good connection. Any remaining tin which is not
mated, builds up the oxide layer again.

Gold is different. Being a precious metal, there is less
concern with any "oxide" forming. Gold slides over gold,
with no appreciable bite as such. But the gold plating is
also extremely thin. In telecom, it is 50u. In computing,
it is 10u. The gold on DIMMs is thin enough, sometimes you
can see "pinholes" in the finish.

Both systems use appropriate metallurgy, from the bare pin
to the outside plating. Each plating combo is selected
for compatibility. X over Y over Z, in a specific order.
This is intended to prevent plating failure. For example,
maybe there's a small amount of nickel underneath the tin.

If brass was used in anything, hopefully it has a finish
over top of it. They use brass to make spoke nipples for
bicycles, and that's a horrible idea (you can't even get
the thing tightened to the correct tension before it deforms).
Based on the strength of brass, it's not going to be a
candidate for just any purpose.

Paul

Just to clarify, The monitor is new, The DVI to HDMI cable is new, The
DVI socket on the video card worked fine since the original LG ISP236
install.
I plugged and unplugged the new cable 3 or 4 times just to clear any
possible corrosion. I don't have another DVI to HDMI cable to try among
a drawer full of various cables.
But to me it still looks like a bad cable, someday I may get another
cable to try, But for now I will leave it as is with the HDMI to HDMI cable.
Again thanks for all your help and suggestions.

Rene

On 7/31/2017 8:39 AM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 7/31/2017 3:50 AM, Paul wrote:
Wolf K wrote:
On 2017-07-30 19:32, Brian Gregory wrote:
On 30/07/2017 03:45, T wrote:
Sometimes if the cables are not properly inserted
this will happen. Pull them out and push them back
in and make sure they are fully inserted.

It used to happen with VGA.
Never heard of it happening with a digital cable though.

I suspect it's contact oxidation. Cheap plugs have brass pins, the
oxides on brass are insulators. Reseating the plug will rub off some
of that oxide. FWIW, I've used Aerocar's contact/track cleaner (made
for model planes and trains) with better success than the contact
cleaners labelled for electronics.

Typical contact systems are tin-on-tin or gold-on-gold.
The systems should not be mixed. (At one time, you could
buy items where the contact systems were mixed, and then
you'd be in trouble. For example, gold slides over tin,
without biting the oxide off the outside. Which is why
the combination of the two leads to failures.)

Tin works by "biting". It scrapes the thin oxide layer
off the top, and where bare tin touches bare tin, you
get a good connection. Any remaining tin which is not
mated, builds up the oxide layer again.

Gold is different. Being a precious metal, there is less
concern with any "oxide" forming. Gold slides over gold,
with no appreciable bite as such. But the gold plating is
also extremely thin. In telecom, it is 50u. In computing,
it is 10u. The gold on DIMMs is thin enough, sometimes you
can see "pinholes" in the finish.

Both systems use appropriate metallurgy, from the bare pin
to the outside plating. Each plating combo is selected
for compatibility. X over Y over Z, in a specific order.
This is intended to prevent plating failure. For example,
maybe there's a small amount of nickel underneath the tin.

If brass was used in anything, hopefully it has a finish
over top of it. They use brass to make spoke nipples for
bicycles, and that's a horrible idea (you can't even get
the thing tightened to the correct tension before it deforms).
Based on the strength of brass, it's not going to be a
candidate for just any purpose.

Paul

Just to clarify, The monitor is new, The DVI to HDMI cable is new, The
DVI socket on the video card worked fine since the original LG ISP236
install.
I plugged and unplugged the new cable 3 or 4 times just to clear any
possible corrosion. I don't have another DVI to HDMI cable to try among
a drawer full of various cables.
But to me it still looks like a bad cable, someday I may get another
cable to try, But for now I will leave it as is with the HDMI to HDMI
cable.
Again thanks for all your help and suggestions.

Rene


Just like a dog that has a hold of a bone I just can't let this go yet.
Browsing Amazon.ca HDMI to DVI and DVI to HDMI cables I find some are
listed as *bidirectional*
does this mean some are not? which really was my original question.

Rene

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 7/31/2017 8:39 AM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 7/31/2017 3:50 AM, Paul wrote:
Wolf K wrote:
On 2017-07-30 19:32, Brian Gregory wrote:
On 30/07/2017 03:45, T wrote:
Sometimes if the cables are not properly inserted
this will happen. Pull them out and push them back
in and make sure they are fully inserted.

It used to happen with VGA.
Never heard of it happening with a digital cable though.

I suspect it's contact oxidation. Cheap plugs have brass pins, the
oxides on brass are insulators. Reseating the plug will rub off some
of that oxide. FWIW, I've used Aerocar's contact/track cleaner (made
for model planes and trains) with better success than the contact
cleaners labelled for electronics.

Typical contact systems are tin-on-tin or gold-on-gold.
The systems should not be mixed. (At one time, you could
buy items where the contact systems were mixed, and then
you'd be in trouble. For example, gold slides over tin,
without biting the oxide off the outside. Which is why
the combination of the two leads to failures.)

Tin works by "biting". It scrapes the thin oxide layer
off the top, and where bare tin touches bare tin, you
get a good connection. Any remaining tin which is not
mated, builds up the oxide layer again.

Gold is different. Being a precious metal, there is less
concern with any "oxide" forming. Gold slides over gold,
with no appreciable bite as such. But the gold plating is
also extremely thin. In telecom, it is 50u. In computing,
it is 10u. The gold on DIMMs is thin enough, sometimes you
can see "pinholes" in the finish.

Both systems use appropriate metallurgy, from the bare pin
to the outside plating. Each plating combo is selected
for compatibility. X over Y over Z, in a specific order.
This is intended to prevent plating failure. For example,
maybe there's a small amount of nickel underneath the tin.

If brass was used in anything, hopefully it has a finish
over top of it. They use brass to make spoke nipples for
bicycles, and that's a horrible idea (you can't even get
the thing tightened to the correct tension before it deforms).
Based on the strength of brass, it's not going to be a
candidate for just any purpose.

Paul

Just to clarify, The monitor is new, The DVI to HDMI cable is new, The
DVI socket on the video card worked fine since the original LG ISP236
install.
I plugged and unplugged the new cable 3 or 4 times just to clear any
possible corrosion. I don't have another DVI to HDMI cable to try
among a drawer full of various cables.
But to me it still looks like a bad cable, someday I may get another
cable to try, But for now I will leave it as is with the HDMI to HDMI
cable.
Again thanks for all your help and suggestions.

Rene


Just like a dog that has a hold of a bone I just can't let this go yet.
Browsing Amazon.ca HDMI to DVI and DVI to HDMI cables I find some are
listed as *bidirectional*
does this mean some are not? which really was my original question.

Rene

It's a passive conversion. It's just wire. There's a
section here, which discusses HDMI source with DVI display
and DVI source with HDMI display. The latter is probably
easier to get right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvi#DVI and HDMI compatibility

"because HDMI and DVI-D both define an overlapping
minimum set of supported resolutions and frame buffer formats."

I would think there is some wiggle room there, in that sufficiently
extremely separated versions of standards might happen to drop
something in the implementation. So when I refer to passive
conversion, that's about all we can be certain of, that a
single-lane of DVI, has CLK/R/G/B just like an HDMI (which
only has a single lane). DVI also supports dual lane, which
covers slightly higher resolutions than a single DVI lane would.
In your case of 1920x1080, they only need a single lane in
either case anyway. Even if your DVI had dual lane, there's
really no reason to enable the second lane at 1920x1080.

*******

The only "color degrading" technology I know of, is "sync on green"
on VGA. The basic VGA is RGBHV, with various sync signal standards
(upside down or right side up). Well, one of the variants, is instead
of putting the sync on its own wire, they "modulate" the G)reen gun
and put blacker-than-black sync pulses on it. If the monitor had good
DC restoration properties, the user might not notice. On my gear here,
when one computer used sync on green, it made things greenish. If
I entered the control panel and turned it off, the color was
correct again. And at the time, the stupid thing wouldn't
remember the setting, so I was all the time correcting it.

You can definitely mess with color, by using things like gamma setting
(a means to make your photos viewed on a Mac look the same as on a PC),
or even the usage of custom color calibration .icm files intended to
make your monitor color traceable to standards of a sort. But you'd probably
remember messing with stuff like that.

For the longest while, I've had a Photoshop Gamma plugin loaded
on one of the PCs, and I'll be damned if I can remember why I
put it there :-) So if my screen were to look weird, that's one curve
ball I'd have no recollection of. As it is, I notice that my computer
with an AMD video card in it, Win7 comes up with an "initial color",
then when the desktop is fully loaded, the AMD driver seems to load something
that changes the color ever so slightly. It's a good thing I
don't worry about stuff like that :-)

Paul

On 31/07/2017 01:07, Wolf K wrote:
On 2017-07-30 19:32, Brian Gregory wrote:
On 30/07/2017 03:45, T wrote:
Sometimes if the cables are not properly inserted
this will happen. Pull them out and push them back
in and make sure they are fully inserted.

It used to happen with VGA.
Never heard of it happening with a digital cable though.

I suspect it's contact oxidation. Cheap plugs have brass pins, the
oxides on brass are insulators. Reseating the plug will rub off some of
that oxide. FWIW, I've used Aerocar's contact/track cleaner (made for
model planes and trains) with better success than the contact cleaners
labelled for electronics.



That's with analogue cables.
But surely the effect on digital cables like DVI-D and HDMI would not be
simple distortion of the colours. It'd be much worse, probably random
flashing and flickering or pixels.

--

Brian Gregory (in the UK).
To email me please remove all the letter vee from my email address.

Brian Gregory wrote:
On 31/07/2017 01:07, Wolf K wrote:
On 2017-07-30 19:32, Brian Gregory wrote:
On 30/07/2017 03:45, T wrote:
Sometimes if the cables are not properly inserted
this will happen. Pull them out and push them back
in and make sure they are fully inserted.

It used to happen with VGA.
Never heard of it happening with a digital cable though.

I suspect it's contact oxidation. Cheap plugs have brass pins, the
oxides on brass are insulators. Reseating the plug will rub off some
of that oxide. FWIW, I've used Aerocar's contact/track cleaner (made
for model planes and trains) with better success than the contact
cleaners labelled for electronics.



That's with analogue cables.
But surely the effect on digital cables like DVI-D and HDMI would not be
simple distortion of the colours. It'd be much worse, probably random
flashing and flickering or pixels.

The effects could be "uneven", to say the least.

The high speed signals are CLK,R,G,B. Corruption of clock, would
throw off the PLL or DLL that generates a 10x clock to sample
the R,G,B diff pairs. Maybe the image could even shift on the screen
or something. You don't want your hardware to have a flaky
clock.
___________________
CLK ______| |___________________| 165MHz --- sent
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
(10x) ________| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |__ --- internally generated

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
R X___X___X___X___X___X___X___X___X___X___X 1650 Mbit/sec
- decode 8 bit color from 10 bits sent-
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
G X___X___X___X___X___X___X___X___X___X___X 1650 Mbit/sec
- decode 8 bit color from 10 bits sent-
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
R X___X___X___X___X___X___X___X___X___X___X 1650 Mbit/sec
- decode 8 bit color from 10 bits sent-

|-------- a single 24-bit pixel --------| 165 Megapixel per sec

The clock sent, actually varies with resolution used. And it
gets pretty close to 165MHz, when sending 1920x1200 @ 60p
with reduced blanking. (There would still be some pixel_times
that are wasted.)

The display also needs to derive "Display Enable DE" signal,
which is asserted for every pixel which is to appear on the
screen. (That's roughly the logical equivalent of HSYNC and
VSYNC on VGA.) So DE "draws a square" on the screen as a kind of
pixel mask. DE could be derived from JK out-of-band signaling.
I don't know how the spec does it. 8B10B has 1024 symbols,
some of which carry data (and DE=1), whereas some special
symbols are sent as "status" or "out-of-band" info. Perhaps
DE=0 when those codes are sent. That's the nice thing about
8B10B, it supports DC balance as part of the basic coding scheme,
but it also saves enough special codes, for out-of-band
(non data byte) purposes too.

If an individual color gun started to wobble, then you'd
get transmission errors in that color only. So rather than
random snow, you'd get maybe some reddish modulation of pixel
values when the R gun is making a bad connection.

The video card also has load sensing, but I cannot tell you
whether that uses the logical OR of all pairs or the logical AND
of all pairs. If one pair goes open circuit, does the video card
turn off that output ? Dunno. So that's another insignificant
factor.

This cannot be happening all that often, because the spectrum
of symptoms on displays is pretty limited. People may complain
of the screen being black for certain problem states. Or,
we get the colored snow if HDCP decoding is not supported,
or if the cable is way too long for the job. But there really
aren't a lot of other descriptions, that I can remember.

As for the contact finish on DVI, it's "Phosphor Bronze".

http://www.globalsources.com/gsol/I/...htm#1120904331

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphor_bronze

"Phosphor bronze is an alloy of copper with 0.5–11% of tin
and 0.01–0.35% phosphorus. The tin increases the
corrosion resistance and strength of the alloy.
The phosphorus increases the wear resistance and stiffness
of the alloy.

These alloys are notable for their toughness, strength,
low coefficient of friction, and fine grain."

And when you connect a DVI, you can "feel that fine Corinthian
Leather finish". The pins are pretty smooth. If they'd used tin
for those, we'd be ramming those on with a hammer.

HTH,
Paul