How well does a VGA-to-HDMI conversion work on DC?

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MethodGit
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How well does a VGA-to-HDMI conversion work on DC?

Post by MethodGit »

I just learnt that you can apparently get yourself a converter cable to output VGA through an HDMI port in case you have a TV with no VGA port included.

I'm beginning to think they'd be easier to connect and deal with than a direct VGA to VGA connection as it means not having to deal with the difficult task of screwing the plug securely into my TV's VGA port (and taking it out again afterwards), due to how my HDTV is shaped and how the ports are positioned.

Does anyone here have any experience of using VGA-to-HDMI converters and able to confirm whether the quality is affected or untouched by them?

Of course, the next task seems to be to find a place that does 'em cheap....
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Re: How well does a VGA-to-HDMI conversion work on DC?

Post by MethodGit »

No-one have any suggestions?
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Re: How well does a VGA-to-HDMI conversion work on DC?

Post by not just souLLy now »

I think your biggest problem might be audio, the video conversion would probably be fine (not sure if these boxes cause any lag), but it's unlikely you'll find a vga to hdmi converter that would also take the line-in audio as well. You'd probably have to play sound through something like external pc speakers, which isn't a perfect solution.
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Re: How well does a VGA-to-HDMI conversion work on DC?

Post by BlueCrab »

VGA and HDMI are different enough that a converter will likely impact the picture (especially if you get one that's actually a decent/low price). Now, if its noticeable or not is another story all together. HDMI is a digital interface (basically the same as DVI-D, but with audio too), whereas VGA is an analog interface.

Simply put, if you have a VGA port to work with, use it if at all possible, would be my suggestion.
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Re: How well does a VGA-to-HDMI conversion work on DC?

Post by Christuserloeser »

MethodGit wrote:I just learnt that you can apparently get yourself a converter cable to output VGA through an HDMI port in case you have a TV with no VGA port included.
Yeah, and I think that's a rather elegant solution in case your TV does not have a VGA port.

If your TV does have a VGA port however, I'd agree with BlueCrab in that it would be recommended to use that instead of costly external converters.
MethodGit wrote:I'm beginning to think they'd be easier to connect and deal with than a direct VGA to VGA connection as it means not having to deal with the difficult task of screwing the plug securely into my TV's VGA port (and taking it out again afterwards), due to how my HDTV is shaped and how the ports are positioned.

Does anyone here have any experience of using VGA-to-HDMI converters and able to confirm whether the quality is affected or untouched by them?
No, I don't, but honestly I doubt they're causing much trouble. The conversion should be pretty straight forward and rather similar to what your TV does with its incoming VGA signal (which is next to nothing and which is what you want). It then feeds a digital signal to your TV via HDMI and which again won't be messed around with much.

Still, it would be preferable to simply skip this last step and just have your TV do the VGA conversion internally. VGA is not comparable to any other analog format as most TVs do treat VGA very carefully by not applying any kind of filters. The only thing that happens is the analog -> digital conversion and scaling. There's no deinterlacing, filtering, or other such nonsense taking place which is perhaps the most important reason VGA provides such an amazing picture in comparison to component (or other analog signals).

I think that if you desperately want to find out you probably should go ahead and give it a try.
MethodGit wrote:Of course, the next task seems to be to find a place that does 'em cheap....
ebay is a good place: http://shop.ebay.com/vga+hdmi+converter
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