HDMI must die.
So yeah, in the "real world", DisplayPort doesn't exist outside of last-gen Macbooks.
Beyond your DisplayPort incident, Best Buy in general is a provincial consumer electronics store, with ignorant sales personel and quite narrow selection. It might have been good enough for 1995, but not in 2014.
It's like visiting a Walmart for delicatessen items.
There's a reason your local deli has one store with three clerks and is only open until 9pm, while Wal Mart is bigger than Jesus and open 24/7. We don't live in the real world. The real world doesn't demand 4K with cables that can carry the signal at full color because they have different priorities than we do.
I was using the term "delicatessen" as a quality indentifier, not merely as a product category. Any old cheese and lunch meat won't do.
>Likewise, Best Buy is indeed the real world. Mom is going to go to Best Buy to pick up a new laptop. Dad's getting his new TV there (with Monster cables so he doesn't get an HDMI virus) (...) Because, if Best Buy doesn't have it, there's no one to sell it to me.
Sure, but it's not like it's 1995 and the local Best Buy at Boise, ID is the only option. Tens of millions have an account and order from Amazon and lots of even more dedicated electronics sites.
What's difficult about "going on Amazon and shopping around"? We're not talking about our cousin or dad here, you were relating your story of visiting Best Buy for that cable for your Lenovo. Why even go there?
It makes people have to think, and in a lot of cases people don't want to have to think. I posted something longer on this subject recently:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7105674
>Why even go there?
Because I needed a cable today, not tomorrow or the day after. Amazon can't match that in my location. That's where I ran into the issues that DisplayPort is not mainstream, and Best Buy only carries things that Uncle Joe is going to need for the TV and laptop he bought at Best Buy.
I understand you used the word deli to mean quality, but there's a reason Apple still has less than 10% marketshare of desktops/laptops. People are more often than not satisfied with "good enough".
My Sager NP8255S has mini, fullsize, and HDMI ports.
It's unfortunate as well, because DP lets you daisy chain monitors together; it's the perfect form factor for notebooks all around. You only have to plug in a mouse, keyboard, and single DP dongle for full power to drive 4x monitors, and only using up 2 USB ports (assuming powered equipment). No messing around with USB hubs running multi monitor stuff with AC adapters crowding the power strip. This gets rid of the need for a dedicated docking unit as well.
Apparently Amazon can now claim cheaper, better selection, and more convenient.
The problem with Displayport is that the chips to render it are more expensive unless you built your monitor for direct drive. That would be great if every display was designed with the same subpixel specs, but no 2 manufacturers have the same specs for their displays so this doesn't work.
What happens is most DisplayPort displays convert the image and then render it which is also how you allow for brightness, contrast and sharpness adjustments on the display rather than on the device connected to the display.
If you used direct drive you'd control brightness and contrast on your Xbox, bluray, or computer rather than on the display.
I suspect this has something to do with HDCP DRM, but I'm not sure if that's the case.
So attempting to send 1080p over a category 1 cable isn't uncommon, and it often "works" with occasional dropouts.
Just adding a ferrite tube at the end of the cable is not effective choke. and a cable without choke, is a interference antenna.
I don't know which of their cables the previous poster had trouble with, but I'm pretty sure he could have returned it for a refund.
(Disclosure: I have no relationship with BJC other than being quite happy with the speaker cables I've bought from them. Which I'm sure the Monoprice fans would tell me I overpaid for anyway, but, well.)
I read that people having an identical issue had better results with shorter cables. I don't know any of the details but the shorter cable had a huge effect.
(That said I use DP whenever possible)
I'd definitely appreciate that like 8 years ago, but if a device is old enough to worry about that, it still might not even support HDCP, in which case a large chunk of modern media wouldn't play on it anyway.
I don't have an everlasting flame of hatred for it in my heart, but yes, I do find it inane and a bit annoying to have marketing labels for the thing I already bought on the thing itself.