Splitternoia and the Gefen EXT-HDMI-142

May 8th, 2008 by g.vandagriff

Aside from the late-night Tokyo drift race scene, few things are both as exciting and intimidating as the kill-or-be-killed world of HDMI splitters. Neophytes to the dangerous discipline of digital displays are often completely paralyzed with fear when confronted with the inescapable choice between passive HDMI splitters and active HDMI splitters. In fact, the confusion surrounding this subject, often referred to as “splitternoia” has been cited by credible sources* as one of the leading causes of bruised technical egos, gang violence and [possibly] cancer. The only known cure to this debilitating condition is a bitter dose of technical education, one that will answer the legendary question of “what is the difference between active HDMI Splitters and passive HDMI splitters?”

To answer this question we consulted technical mastermind and minor celebrity Mark Wainwright and cross-referenced his words with obscure passages from the Apocrypha. Now we will share our findings with the rest of the world.

First, a thought to keep in mind: Passive HDMI splitters are incredibly cheap compared to active splitters. Anyone with a shred of training in economics will be able to draw some fairly obvious conclusions from this fact alone, but I digress.

Passive HDMI splitters are just that: splitters. They literally split the HDMI signal into two halves and send each half to a different display. The result is an abominable image on two separate displays. Think of passive HDMI splitters as being the poor man’s way to accomplish absolutely nothing worthwhile.

Active HDMI splitters, like Gefen’s EXT-HDMI-142, are similar to cloning machines. Like a piece of historically dislocated sci fi technology, these miracles of modern imaging hardware will take an existing HDMI signal, create a clone signal, then send the original signal and the cloned signal to separate displays. Result? You’ve got two quality HDMI signals showing on two quality displays.

An analogy will help solidify your understanding: Passive HDMI splitters are like attorneys; they take a perfectly good thing (an HDMI signal) and turn it into incomprehensible garbage (two worthless half-signals). Active HDMI splitters are like vikings in that they are totally awesome in every possible way.

So now you know the truth. Go forth and cure the plague of splitternoia by preaching the truth to everyone you know.

*My cousin Bernard

Posted in HDMI, Video | Comments Off

Mobile Broadband

May 5th, 2008 by Administrator

Broadband is great, right? I use Comcast cable at home and for as much flack as Comcast gets (I have had my own set of customer service issues with them), the cable internet is fast and reliable (in two months we haven’t had any downtime).

So that’s great when I’m at home, but things are different when you’re on the road. I’m noticing a frightening trend - every WiFi hotspot I try to connect to wants me to pay money or join some sort of a service. Not cool…

I finally just sucked it up and got a Sprint EVDO card for my Dell. The card worked pretty well, but dropped out at times. I don’t know if this was Sprint or Dell’s fault (the wireless management tools didn’t seem to like each other).

Recently, though, I “upgraded” (depending on your point of view) to a Macbook Air. I love the laptop for traveling, but getting 3G on it from Verizon or Sprint requires a USB card, meaning I would have to get a new broadband card. I wouldn’t really have minded doing this, but with the speed of innovation it seems like within a year or two I’m going to have to upgrade again to get a 4G card (this may be wishful thinking).

Instead I just got a mobile broadband router (another type is the Kyocera KR2). The cool thing about these routers is that you can just plug your PCMCIA or USB 3G adapter and the router will auto-detect your settings and just give you a WiFi signal. You can also have several people share your connection (or lock them out if your selfish).

The one thing to keep in mind when you travel is that in order to use the router you will need to find an available power outlet for the router. I have had some challenges in the airport, but in general it’s not too hard.

Posted in Networking, PCMCIA | Comments Off

Mac Driver For USB DVI External Video Card Out, and Tested In-House

March 31st, 2008 by cameronp

SW-8769

At long last, Display Link has officially come out with their Mac driver for the Usb External Video Card.

One of the very few drawbacks of owning certain Macs is that it is nearly impossible to add extra monitors. For machines that you can’t open or install new cards in, like the Mac Mini or the iMac, you were pretty much doomed to the prison cell of a few inches. With the advent of the USB to DVI, thousands of users of these machines will be turned loose to be able to use more than one monitor. And since the DVI signal is a DVI-I, you can put a DVI-VGA adapter on it (which comes included) for use with a VGA monitor. If you look at the Mac demographic, it is accepted that many of them are designers, video editors, music producers, etc. These are all fields where having more real estate is key. What if you spent that extra bit of money and got a MacBook Pro for the extra DVI port, but still wanted more monitors? Now you can with the new release of the USB to DVI mac driver.

Display Link had a working version of the Mac driver back in January that they showed us at CES. In the last couple months they’ve worked out the kinks and bugs and have officially released their product which is now fit for mass use. We tested it today in-house on a Macbook Air and it worked beautifully. When you open the system preferences menu to change resolution, a resolution menu conveniently pops up on both screens simultaneously clearing up any confusion of which monitor’s resolution you’re changing. One thing we noticed is that dragging windows around on the extra monitor with the mac driver is slightly choppier than its PC counter-part. Display Link says they are working on it and hope to have updated drivers in the future that will fix it. I’m all for the release of this current version for Mac use now as opposed to waiting longer for them to tweak and improve it.

Another thing we noticed about this driver is that it wouldn’t work with the older USB to DVI version with the old chip set. The easiest way to know if your USB to DVI works with the new Mac driver is by looking at the logo on the unit. If the logo says ‘Sewell’, you can rest assured that it is the newer chip set and so will work with the Mac version. If you bought your unit from us and it is more generic, it’s the older chip set and probably won’t work with this driver (although trying it out won’t cost you anything if you’ve already got the adapter).

Mac OSX BETA drivers (These drivers are still in a beta form and are not guaranteed to work in all cases)

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment �

RIP Phoebus, Welcome KR2

March 21st, 2008 by cameronp

SW-4562 lg We’ve posted several times here on the Sewell Tech Blog about the Top Global Phoebus. This mobile router has been with us for years, allowing hundreds of our customers to access the internet from anywhere and create a mobile internet hotspot. The mobile router allowed you to plug in a PCMCIA card from your cellular provider that received a 3G signal from cell towers. It then translated that signal into an 802.11g signal that you and your posse could use while only paying one data plan fee.

Many people complained about the form factor. It is in the form of a pyramid. According to leading geometrists, the only shape less portable and convenient to carry around would be a cubic rhombus.

SW-8940 The latest in mobile routers comes from Kyrocera. The Kyocera KR2 makes all other mobile routers pale in comparison with some necessary modernized features. Note however that you can only use this router if you are using the EV-DO network.

Kyocera’s KR2 now features the long-awaited ability to use all three common interfaces that receive EV-DO signals: PCMCIA, ExpressCard, and USB. The new router also features the newer 802.11n standard, which uses MIMO technology, allowing for bi-directional up and down streams of data. This essentially makes data transfer max out at twice the speed. 802.11n also allows a much wider distance and increases transfer speeds for areas that are further away from the router.

With a price point lower than the Phoebus, the KR2 is a no brainer (as long as you’re on an EV-DO network).

Posted in Networking | Comments Off

USB Extension Cable

March 18th, 2008 by g.vandagriff

I am a strong advocate of cheap, affordable USB extension cables for a number of reasons, all of which I like to believe are well-grounded. Reason number one: the device cables that accompany my purchase of any given piece of technology are rarely, if ever, long enough. Given that USB is my data interface of choice for all my device components, this makes the necessity for USB extension cables painfully apparent. Any poor soul who has been forced to make do with a shorter cable than he would prefer can feel my pain when I say that for a long time, I lacked a mouse cable long enough to reach from my designated mouse ”zone” to the USB port on the back of my computer.

Fortunately I was able to remedy this particular problem by applying one of these handy extension cables. So often I think that we put off purchasing these because we say “well, I don’t need one that badly.” The funny thing is that purchasing a USB extension cable becomes one of those “why didn’t I do this earlier” stories the instant you finally shell out and buy one.

The second reason I like USB extension cables is perhaps a little odd: I couldn’t find my belt one day and I needed a way to keep my pants from falling down. Rather than resign myself to the unenviable fate of manually holding my pants up for the entire day I made do with what I had on hand… So I tied a USB cable around my pants and voila! A cable belt! Geek, yet chic. It’s worth noting that many people complimented me on my resourcefulness and bleeding edge fashion sense!

So there you have it, whether you’re endeavoring to end the frustration from short cables or striving to make a statement with your apparel, the USB cable can, and will, reliably meet your varied and many needs.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments �

Touch Screen Monitor

March 18th, 2008 by g.vandagriff

touch screen monitor

Featuring 17 full inches of raw, unadulterated, interactive display surface, the Synaps Touch Screen Monitor kicks the world of touch screen displays to a whole new level. Kiss convention goodbye as you deploy this bad boy into environments typically restricted from consumer electronics. Increase your company’s mindshare by implementing this “gee-whiz!” innovation into retail locations, kiosks, convention booths, and beyond.

So why wait? Enjoy this heavyweight technology without the heavyweight price at Sewell Direct.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments �

Changes Included in the New HDMI 1.3 Specification

March 12th, 2008 by cameronp

SW-8834 Perhaps you’ve heard of the new HDMI 1.3 specification. If not, don’t feel too down on yourself. Even though the standard was released June 22, 2006 there haven’t been a whole lot of devices released that uses the new signal until the last 6 months.

Some of the changes include an increase of single-link bandwidth (10.2 Gbit/s), optional support of up to 48-bit deep color (for over a billion colors), automatic audio-video syncing, optional Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio (lossless audio codec) which are used in Blu-ray Discs and HD DVDs (you poor saps), and the availability of the super cool mini connector which will come in handy with HDMI-out camcorders.

With the new signal come new devices, and with new devices come new connectivity solutions. The need of a switch comes when you have a lot of sources and one display. Unfortunately older HDMI switches won’t carry the new HDMI 1.3 signal, but we recommend the EXT-GEFENTV1.3-441 from Gefen. Or, if you are looking for something more for commercial purposes, you might like to take a look at their EXT-HDMI1.3-441.

Posted in HDMI | No Comments �

USB to DVI External Video Card, High Resolution, 1600 x 1200

March 11th, 2008 by techie

This USB to DVI external video card is amazing! This lets you use two monitors at once (at least!) which is very convenient. On one monitor you can have internet explorer to help you find all the information you’ll need to know to write your paper in a Word document which would be up on the other monitor. This makes it so you won’t have to switch between tabs constantly. This is just an example. There are many other things you can use multiple monitors at once for. Get one today!

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments �

Cat5e Bulk cable

March 11th, 2008 by techie

Why would you want to use more than one color of the Cat5e bulk cable?

We don’t have them yet, but shortly we will have multiple colors of the bulk cable to offer. Different colors can especially come in handy when wanting to provide internet to multiple computers in different locations at the office at once. It helps you to distinguish which cables are going where instead of having just a huge mass of grey cables going to many different places. Soon we will have red, blue and grey available!

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments �

GPIB (General Purpose Interface Bus)

March 11th, 2008 by cameronp

Before there was today’s IEEE 1284 or RS-232 and all of those super fancy high-tech data transfer protocols, there was GPIB, or IEEE 488. GPIB has been used for almost 40 years and it is a marvel that for certain applications, GPIB is still alive and well.

Remember those old Commodore computers you grew up with, spilling milk in between the keys and getting in big trouble with dad? Well, many models of those old computers used to use GPIB interfaces to connect peripherals like disk drives. It was developed originally by HP in the late 60s to use with multimeters and logic analyzers and the interface lives on today in industrial and commercial settings to control automated machinery.

Often times it is much cheaper to somehow get today’s modern computers to comunicate with older machines rather than building or buying new manufacturing equipment or automated systems. That’s where the USB to GPIB comes in. With the universal serial bus (USB), it gives a new fighting chance for old modules with legacy to continue living.

GPIB works on the parallel data transfer specification and the maximum transfer rate is generally 8 megabytes per second.

Posted in Parallel, USB | No Comments �

Splitternoia and the Gefen EXT-HDMI-142

Mobile Broadband

Mac Driver For USB DVI External Video Card Out, and Tested In-House

RIP Phoebus, Welcome KR2

USB Extension Cable

Touch Screen Monitor

Changes Included in the New HDMI 1.3 Specification

USB to DVI External Video Card, High Resolution, 1600 x 1200

Cat5e Bulk cable

GPIB (General Purpose Interface Bus)

Categories

Archives

Blogroll

Search

Meta