I need to find a DVI Cable Splitter similar to this one, but it needs to have about 8 to 10 feet of cable.
Is there even anything out there like this?
The splitter never needs to be longer than 6 inches. You just need some DVI extension cables to plug into it.
Also…what exactly are you going to do with this? Are you sure it’s going to work? I’ve never heard of this kind of cable before.
Hooking up two monitors to one computer. The monitors are at opposite ends of the room, one for each workstation. They only need to transmit information, the same information, to each station. The position of the monitors is about 8 feet apart from each other.
Yeah, I was looking at some DVI extension cables. My question now is, is there a difference between DVI-I and DVI-D cables?
Well DVI-I is a pin format that supports both analog and digital output. It’s basically a way for video card manufacturers to have a single output port on their card (DVI-I) and then provide an adapter that adapts the DVI-I analog pinout to a VGA pinout for analog monitors.
As for whether this is going to work, I’m frankly a bit skeptical. Usually in a case like this you really need a special box that actually splits the signal…I’d be worried that if you just use a splitter cable that you will get a very poor signal quality or something bad. I could be wrong.
For instance, my worry is that you have to fork over a lot of money for a box like this to do it right:
http://www.datapro.net/products/MDV-202B.html
Hopefully a stusser or a Loyd Case can tackle this one.
Splitter cables work just fine, getting a splitter box is overkill if you don’t ever need to do any switching.
Yes, there is a difference between DVI-D and DVI-I. In simple terms, DVI-I is a superset of DVI-D, it carries both analog (DVI-A) and digital (DVI-D) signals. DVI-D is digital only. In real world physical port terms this means a true “DVI-D” port will be missing input space for the 4 little pins that surround the blade pin on the left side of the connector on a DVI-I cable, so it will not physically fit into the DVI-D port (though it would work if you were using a digital signal and went in and hacked off those pins). Most videocards and monitors use DVI-I to keep your options open for using either a DVI-D or DVI-A connection. My Westinghouse TV only supports DVI-D, so I had to get a new DVI-D specific cable to connect my HTPC to it because I didn’t feel like hacking away any of the DVI-I cables I already had.
Thanks for the input guys. Ordered a splitter cable with an extension cord. I’ll see how well this low-cost (~$30) path will work and report back.