Hello. Jarrett here with Alliance IT. I just wanted to go over some monitor connections.

Often we find when we have to swap out a PC or somebody is getting a new one and they’re using their old monitors, we have to try to figure out exactly what sort of connections the new PC has versus the old monitors, if we need a new sort of new cable or adaptors, some sort of conversion that needs to be made and a lot of times clients and users, they just know that it works. They don’t know what kind of cable it is.

So it can be difficult to try to identify which cable exactly is in use. So I want to kind of start here with the – these are the four. The oldest is this one here. This is called VGA. This is the only one that’s non like HD for example. This is your standard definition, your oldest.

If you think about the old school monitors that are more of a 4-3 format versus the widescreen 16-9 like all of you who need flat screen TVs. This is the old school 4-3. Although it can be used on a – a lot of your older flat screen TVs came with the VGA also. So you could technically hook it up to a computer this way.

But usually if I’m trying to reference this to a customer, I will say the blue one because it’s almost always blue. They could be black if you bought an aftermarket one. But if one like this that came from the manufacturer, that came with your monitor is basically always blue at the tip and you can see inside there the design, how it’s kind of – got the flat surfaces but then the edges are tapered with a bunch of pins on the inside there.

So the next one is DVI, which is almost always white. This is HD quality. I’m not going to get into the actual aspect ratios and stuff like this, but this will do high definition displays. This is a pretty common one.

It’s actually getting to the point where it’s kind of going away as well. But you can see it’s the same kind of thing with the VGA where it has got some pins in there and then it also has this cross-section here. DVI is very much like an HDMI. HDMI is a term that most of you are probably familiar with because that’s probably what all of you have in your houses nowadays, connected to the cable boxes or computer or Roku or something like that. You’re using HDMI to get you HD signal.

If you look at the tip there, it’s flat on both sides and then both the left and the right side there are tapered kind of like in a 45. That’s kind of what sets you apart from the next one we’re going to talk about, which is a DisplayPort.

So anyways, HDMI, DVI are basically the same in quality. They give you the same signal, but they are a different connector. I also am doing this in the order of like lowest to highest quality.

The next is your DisplayPort. The DisplayPort looks very much like an HDMI. This cable happens to be white. There is no color coordinating when it comes to the HDMI and the DisplayPort. They’re just whatever the manufacturer does that you bought it from. This one happens to be white.

There’s also a locking mechanism here that when it does go and it actually locks in a place and you do have to depress this to release it, the HDMI doesn’t have that. An HDMI will pull right out. The DisplayPort does lock.

But the difference between the two is only one side is slightly tapered. The other side is actually square and that’s kind of an easy way to tell the difference between a DisplayPort and HDMI.
The other end of this cable that’s actually in my hand is a mini DisplayPort. As you can see, it looks kind of like the old FireWire I think that it was called, that Apple use in – back in the day. But this is called mini DisplayPort.

This particular cable is mini display to display. They’re the same quality. You will not find a monitor that I know of that has this connection in the monitor. This connection here would be PC side only and this side would be the monitor. It is also possible to have DisplayPort to DisplayPort, meaning that the PC has this and the monitor has this. One important thing to know also, you cannot go down in quality. You can only go up.

The conversions of the stuff, because a lot of times you don’t have a DisplayPort on your PC but you will on your monitor and maybe you will have HDMI in your PC but you don’t have it on the monitor. So you got to figure out which direction you can go with the signal also.

The video card on the PC, whatever the output is there, has to either match what is on the monitor or it has to be lesser in quality.

For example if I have a DisplayPort on my PC, I can take DisplayPort to any one of these on a monitor, meaning there’s a converter for it. So DisplayPort to HDMI, DisplayPort to DVI for example or even DisplayPort to VGA. But I doubt you will ever do that.

What that means is, is if have HDMI on my PC, I cannot up-convert it to a DVI on a monitor. I can only go HDMI to HDMI or technically HDMI to DVI. Because these are the same, remember? I can technically interchange which direction these go because they’re basically the same thing. I can do DVI to HDMI or HDMI to DVI.

If your monitor has a DisplayPort and you’re going to use a DisplayPort, then it has to come from a DisplayPort. Other than that, usually your monitor, if it comes with a DisplayPort, will also have a VGA or maybe an HDMI. Monitors will almost always – all new monitors anyways will have at least two connection types. Usually it’s the old school VGA and then one of the higher quality ones, whether it be any one of these three.

If you have a professional series monitor, that’s one of the easiest ways to tell. If you have like all of these on a monitor and you can connect to any of them, then you’re most likely dealing with a professional monitor that costs you double the amount of money that a normal office one would cost. So anyways, hopefully, some of those tips helped, so you can identify what you’re using. VGA, DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort. Have a great day.