OWC rolls out USB 2.0 display adapter for Macs and PCs
By Donald Melanson 
posted April 29th 2009 5:16AM
posted April 29th 2009 5:16AM
It's hardly the first product of its kind, but we're guessing there's still plenty of folks out there ready to jump on OWC's new USB 2.0 display adapter, which will let you add up to six monitors to your Mac or PC. As with similar products, however, you will be slightly limited in terms of resolution, with the adapter topping out at 1600x1200 for standard monitors and 1680x1050 for widescreen displays, although you will get full 32-bit color and, of course, your choice of mirrored or extended display settings. What's more, in addition to the main USB to DVI adapter, you'll also get a DVI to VGA and a DVI to HDMI swivel adapter right in the package, plus a regular USB cable -- all for $99.
These thing will be really great when USB 3.0 comes out.
I use something similar at the moment - it's brilliant. These things are surprisingly good.
ian9outof10 - is it good for watching videos on that screen or is it jittery. which adapter did you use?
Video performance is bad, to be honest. I'm not sure if that's because of my graphics card or not. The solution is to use your main output for video, and the secondary one for everything else.
Still, as I say, if your graphics card is good, you might get much better performance than my PoS built-in Intel junk.
Guys,
Are these worth buying? Can you use them for gaming and streaming videos? I ask only because my VGA Port has gone bad on my laptop. Whatever it is connected to sends has a green-tint over the display (Yes, I've checked the cable, my friend's laptop connected to the displays all work fine). I have no idea how this happened, the green-tint just came one fine day and it never went away. =(
Therefore, I'm considering getting one of these things if they're really on par with internal video cards.
Cheers!
@PoisonWolf: It sounds like the vga connector on your laptop is bad; most likely a solder-join has failed. A tech should be able to fix it for you fairly easily.
Steve,
Thank you for pointing me in that direction! How much will it cost roughly to have it fixed?
Cheers.
Tough to say. It all depends on the tech's hourly rate (should be less than an hour to do the job), any minimum bench fee the tech might have, and if the connector needs to be replaced or just re-seated.
That said, I would expect it to be less than the price of this adapter in most cases, but as I do all my own repairs I'm not really sure what the competitive rates are the days. Even if it's more than this adapter, the cost of getting the native port repaired will probably offset the performance hit you're likely to see from using this adapter. While your mileage may vary, I've yet to see a USB display adapter match the responsiveness of a native vga port.
Will it use the existing graphics chipset for accel.?
if they are as good as an integrated chip (like not struggle with OS animations or video) then they seem good. if they cant handle that then i dont know why you would bother because you would just be disappointed and frustrated with the performance.
We use something similar at work. The ones we use are not able to be used to display moving video or gaming. There's also a noteable refresh speed difference. Or rather that would be to say when you move your mouse around on the display it's jerky. I cant comment on these specificly, but that has been my experience with USB to VGA(SVGA) adapters.
Bit of a rant also, what jerks decided DVI-D was a good thing to stick on a port replicator.
If you have a PC, you are far better off getting a second video card.
If you have a laptop, keep in mind when your screen is open you can usually use the external monitor interface for a secondary screen.
And why would you buy this product when the UVPlus from EVGA does the same and is cheaper?
If you think about the bus bandwidth of USB compared to even the lowest of low video cards (PCI)...seriously....i would love to see how well 6 moniters ran off these things.
"1600x1200 for standard monitors"--Does anybody still MAKE standard monitors?
Too bad USB 2.0 is too slow to support three, or even two, 1920x1200 monitors. I run three 1920x1200s: One from my ThinkPad's NVidia 140M graphics, two from a Matrox M9120 card in the ThinkPad dock. ATI's FirePro 2450 (another card) can drive four DVIs at 1920x1200. For those of us who can never have too many pixels, USB 3.0 will change the game.
So my laptop only has vga. I want to watch movies on my tv that has hdmi but no vga. Would I be better suited using this, a displaylink product, or something like the WD HD TV Player? They're all about the same price. Thanks.
What these don't tell you is that if you're running Windows Vista in all is visual niceness, the whole aero effect is disabled if you use one of these devices. I'm currently running the Startech version of this adapter and while its given me an extra monitor, all the eye candy of vista is gone and I'm back to also XP style graphics.
The specs state that it fully supports Aero, so I think this one is better than the one(s) you've tried.
Pretty cool for us laptop users who wish to triple their screen real estate!
The UV Plus+ (http://www.evga.com/uvplus/) which Gr1zz mentioned claims to have Windows Vista Aero Support.
Looks the same but the Tiger Direct offering only provides Windows drivers. Since this is sold by OWC, I'm assuming it comes with Mac Drivers (which accounts for the increased price). Also, the firmware in the unit might be different even if the hardware is the same. I have an ElGato Turbo 264 and and AverMedia Instant-Video-to-Go (hardware video rippers) which are basically the same hardware yet their respective software would not recognize each other's hardware probably because of firmware.
Sucks that Mac users again have to pay a premium for essentially the same hardware.........
The manufacturer's website states that it is not 6 monitors for either Mac or PC as stated above. It is up to 6 displays for PC or up to 4 displays for Mac.
Can you use this with a Mac and output to a LCD or Plasma TV with DVI input? Would be great for my office to drag a video from my MackBook Pro over to the TV to watch.
there really seem to be similar product available already, this one supports Mac as well: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=4431380&sku=H231-3888
I dont get it. My MBP has DVI out. New ones have Display Port to DVI for $20. Why are you asking this?
So would this puppy help with iMacs that don't support second monitors? Or would it just give me a mirror screen and not increase the reall estate?
OWC replied "That's set in the Display Preferences. It can do either." anyone actually try it?