News Panasonic is ending support for the humble VGA port on its Let's Note laptops

[fireaza]

Japan truly is a "mix of the future and the 1980s". I work in Japan, and I've seen some of the older workers plug in a VGA cable and 3.5mm headphone jack in order to connect a laptop to a TV, despite both the TV and laptop having a HDMI port. When I bust out a HDMI cable and plug it all in with one cable, they look at me like I'm some sort of sorcerer.

 

[bit_user]

I work in Japan, and I've seen some of the older workers plug in a VGA cable and 3.5mm headphone jack in order to connect a laptop to a TV, despite both the TV and laptop having a HDMI port. When I bust out a HDMI cable and plug it all in with one cable, they look at me like I'm some sort of sorcerer.

In fairness, average people, everywhere, often have no clue. For instance, I cannot tell you how many times I've seen something like a DVD player hooked up to a TV via both its composite video output and S-Video port.

For non-techies, they tend to learn one way to do something and then that's often what they keep doing, as long as they have an option.

 

[Moonstick2]

HDMI to VGA adapter cables are totally a thing.
They are passive and I don't think they require a driver.

Just to expand on what @bit_user said, passive electronic components don't require a power source, active ones do.

You can't do HDMI-VGA passively. Those cables have active electronics inside, but will be drawing their power through the +5 V that is part of the HDMI connector spec.

(Normally the +5 V can supply up to 50 mA, but some devices fail to supply this. The newer Cable Power spec allows up to 300 mA. I don't know what different convertor cables require. Basically, results vary.)

 

[bit_user]

Just to expand on what @bit_user said, passive electronic components don't require a power source, active ones do.

Errr... not exactly. I said that just because it doesn't require an external power source, that doesn't mean it's passive!

I think there's probably some grey area, where you could even have a simple, active converter that just uses parasitic power, but this is outside the realm of my expertise.

I basically define an active converter as one that's anything more than wires and maybe voltage-reduction or impedance-matching.

You can't do HDMI-VGA passively. Those cables have active electronics inside, but will be drawing their power through the +5 V that is part of the HDMI connector spec.

(Normally the +5 V can supply up to 50 mA, but some devices fail to supply this. The newer Cable Power spec allows up to 300 mA. I don't know what different convertor cables require. Basically, results vary.)

As you say, HDMI can supply a certain amount of power which can be used to power an active converter. In fact, there have even been "compute stick" devices that could run an entire computer on the power provided by a HDMI port! These are usually simple media streamers, but even those probably run a full-blown Linux-based OS (i.e. Android) and contain the equivalent of a low-end phone SoC.

 

[Moonstick2]

Errr... not exactly. I said that just because it doesn't require an external power source, that doesn't mean it's passive!

I know. I didn't say I was correcting, I said I was expanding.

Somebody who didn't understand how these cables work could misunderstand your previous post. Like the above: I know you're using "external" to mean something like a DC adapter that plugs into the cable through a separate cord, but the cable does require an external power source, i.e. external to the cable. That the external power source is supplied through the HDMI connector from the device the cable is plugged into isn't apparent to everybody.