Cables Unlimited Premium 12-inch DVI-D Cable Splitter (PCM-2265) by Cables Unlimited
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Digital camera reviews of Cables Unlimited Premium 12-inch DVI-D Cable Splitter (PCM-2265)
Digital camera Review: Probably not the right product for you...
Summary: 1 Stars
This is a well-assembled and high-quality product as far as cables go, but it was useless to me. I have a two-monitor setup on my PC and wanted to duplicate the output of one my monitors to an LCD HDTV. The product comes with no real instructions, no support whatsoever, and the manufacturer hasn't bothered to tell people about the many limitations of this product. The result for me was many frustrating hours trying to get it to work. I have decided to return this product.
If you are even considering this product, here are some things you should know:
1) The product will only work for splitting a DVI signal from a "Dual-Link" DVI port. What that means is that if you're using it to split the output of a DVI port on your PC, for example, your PC's video card must output Dual-Link DVI through that port. Now Dual-Link doesn't mean that your card has two DVI ports. It is a special output mode for DVI digital signals where the video signal is sent through two sets of pins on your DVI cable. A discussion of single vs. dual link is available at <[..]. This passive (non-powered) splitter essentially relies on the redundant signal transmitted through the second set of pins to be able to output the same signal to two displays.
Many video cards only output Single-Link DVI, not Dual-Link, and it is not always easy to find out if your video card supports Dual-Link DVI. Some cards claim "Dual-Link DVI," but they're mistakenly referring to the fact that the card has two DVI ports. Finding out whether your video card supports true "Dual-Link" DVI is a challenging task, trust me, especially if your video card is a couple of years old. I ended up replacing my nVidia video card with an ATI card to gain Dual-Link DVI support, but it still didn't work for the reasons explained in (3) below.
2) This supports only DVI-D, meaning it works only with digital devices. The DVI standard can support analog outputs (to a VGA-type device), but that doesn't work for this device.
3) Even if you get a true Dual-Link DVI-D output through your video card, it still may not work. This is because your PC may not be able to deal with the fact that you have two devices connected through one DVI port. When you plug something into your PC's video card, the computer tries to figure out what type of device it is talking to so it can determine the available resolutions, refresh rate, etc., for that device. On my system, this identification step fails when I have the splitter plugged in, presumably because the computer can't figure out what the device actually is, so it determines that nothing is there. (The only way to get it to work on my computer is to plug in just the monitor without the splitter and then hot-swap the splitter, which fools the video card into skipping the identification step so it thinks it's still talking to just the monitor.)
The bottom line is that splitting a DVI video signal across two displays is far more complex than you would think. For most people, a powered DVI switcher or powered DVI splitter will work better for most applications.
Digital camera Review: Worked great when needed
Summary: 3 Stars
Worked great when using both displays. However, if one of the displays is turned off it would create feedback artifacts on the other display. This may have been a result of cable lengths, but I did not take the time to debug the issue.Digital camera Review: Works for low bandwith signals
Summary: 2 Stars
I had used this DVI splitter for an LCD Monitor and a Plasma TV. The Monitor was a straight DVI while the Plasma was a DVI-HDMI cable. Both cables were dual-link. In 1920x1080 mode, both screens looked fine so long as I wasn't doing anything too complicated or I was playing simple low-def videos.
The moment I tried to play something in 720p or 1080p, the video would flicker horribly on the TV. It would often lose and reconnect signal; very annoying. Also, even with low-res video, there would often been green lines appearing.
On top of all that, the LCD monitor always had to be on. If I turned it off, the TV would lose signal, no matter which device I plugged into the top connector or which device I turned on first! Also while the computer was booting, all the console text looked really garbed and unreadable on the Plasma screen.
Overall, this is pretty worthless unless you're doing something really simple at a low resolution (1024x768 maybe?) But it's really not more than what I'd expect out of a non-powered splitter.
Digital camera Review: not too good
Summary: 1 Stars
it didnt work as i expected tried to connect a bluray dvd and a digital tv box to my mitsubishi tv and i couldnt watch both, can only work for one at a time
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