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Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

Possibly doesn't like ground lifts? Whatever, it's a TERRIBLE product.

Written by JC from Londonderry

Nov 17, 2009

I used this product to connect my 17" MacBook Pro to my 50" plasma. Shouldn't have been much of a stretch for it as the resolution of a plasma is only 1920x1080. The results quite literally looked like my MBP was on a bad acid trip with cyclical pulsating anywhere in the image with a brighter luminance. I did not have anything plugged into the adapter's USB extender and the MBP was getting DC power from its adapter (not running off of the battery).

I have a sneaking suspicion that this product doesn't like ground lifts (although after just reading a bunch of other reviews (wish I had done that before visiting the Apple store) it's possible that perhaps it just globally bites and maybe someone in Apple's quality assurance department ought to be fired (or at the very least attend a class on black box and white box testing)). Like most apartments in the Boston area, the one I'm in has no discrete 3rd prong for ground so you must use a ground lift. If that's a requirement of this product it's pretty unrealistic, at least for those of us who live in older cities. FWIW I know it's not the display as my 13" MacBook from 2006 is able to drive my plasma just fine with a mini DVI to a DVI adapter (and from there I use a DVI to HDMI cable).

4 of 6 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

On 3rd one in 4 months

Written by EW from Peninsula

Nov 11, 2009

Running a 2009 MacBook Pro connected to a Dell UltraSharp 3007WFP-HC 30-inch WideScreen Flat Panel Monitor. The monitor works perfectly when I use it with my older MacBook pros and older connectors.

Using the 2009 MBP with Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter, my external monitor does the following:

* Flashes garbled white horizontal lines randomly.
* When the computer wakes up after a long sleep, the external display shows 'double vision' with some vibration.
* While the computer is awake the external display sometimes just goes black (while still powered up).
* When the image being displayed is full black, there are random flickering white pixels distributed over the black.

For each of the above issues, my remedy is to unplug the DVI Adabpter cable from the MacBook Pro and then plug it in again. It resets the external display to 'normal'.

I've had Apple send me two new cables and the problem persists.

15 of 16 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

Horrible adapter.

Written by JL from Yarmouth

Nov 5, 2009

I bought this in good faith, hoping that I wouldn't experience problems with the new 1.02 adapter firmware. I'm experiencing coloured static in pure black areas and it makes the display awful to work on. This setup was just way too expensive to not work properly.

15 of 16 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

Super flaky

Written by AH from Beverly Hills

Nov 5, 2009

Like many others I get "snow" on the screen and 4-8 times a day (every hour or two, basically) I have to unplug it and plug it in again (sometimes several times) to reset it to get the screen readable at all.

I use a Dell 30" monitor - it works great on a regular DVI output; but I can barely use it at all with my MacBook Pro (late 2008 version).

6 of 6 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

Does. Not. Work.

Written by MT from Joensuu

Nov 4, 2009

My Samsung Syncmaster 305T+ 30" monitor worked wonderfully with my old MacBook Pro (2008 model), but after I bought a new MacBook Pro (late 2009), it no longer works. I get extremely poor picture quality, and the picture disappears in about 15 seconds. One star is too much for a product that does not work.

5 of 6 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

Product needs work

Written by LM from Peoria

Oct 29, 2009

Interesting product. Using my 30"Cinema HD with the adapter I was getting "snow" in the dark areas of the screen.

I moved the Dual link adapter to my Wacom Cintiq 21" and it worked without a hitch. The adapter was harder to insert initially for the Cintiq but after attachment there were no problems.

I am using another adapter to connect to my Apple monitor but it only drives to the 1280x800 resolution. There is not another product that will allow me to get the high resolution on the 30" Cinema Display. I now have to decide if I should buy another $99 Dual-Link DVI and try it out or wait for a product to come out that will drive my monitor.

9 of 10 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

This product is defective?

Written by CP from Vancouver

Oct 21, 2009

I'm seem to have all the problems that others reported here with the Adapter creating "snow" signals and "interference" after using it for random intervals. The only way to resolve it is to unplug and plug in the DVI cable connected to my 30" Dell screen, so I often find myself unplugging and plugging in the DVI cables about a dozen times a day, which is seriously annoying me. This seems like a defective product, and I'm surprised that Apple is allowed to keep selling it.

15 of 17 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

UNSTABLE BIS!!!!!

Written by MG from Goettingen

Oct 20, 2009

I am using a 30'' screen SAMSUNG SyncMaster 305T plus plugged with this Famous cable to a iMac 24'' and I am having all the problems described in this post:
-Snow sometimes
-Some kind of blurriness
And I need to unplug/replug the cable several times a day!!!!
This is extremely annoying and also my first deception from apple!!!

I really wonder if they take those problems in consideration and try to solve it!!!????

If any one get news about that (like a firmware update coming or in preparation), please let me know...

Now if you want to know if I recommend it... I am obliged to say that I do since we are obliged (as far as I know... If I wrong let me know!) to use this cable to plug a 30'' screen...

Good luck with it!
Best regards

15 of 15 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

Unstable!!!

Written by TS from Jelling

Oct 18, 2009

I use it with my 17'' 3,06 Ghz MAc Book Pro with my Apple CD 30'' display...
It flickers now and then, and if I connect anything (be it a ketboard fx...) to the hubs on the back of my 30 '' dsiplay - the display goes crazy in couples of minutes or after waking up from sleep. The display and the hubs work just fine on my other Mac Book Pro 2,6 Ghz without the crazy dual adapter... I'ts not OK Apple! You dropped the traditional DVI port, now I pay the price... I want this fixed.

13 of 14 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

not reliable, and bulky

Written by FB from New Ipswich

Oct 2, 2009

First of all, this thing is huge for a display cable adapter, and the fact that it needs external power from the USB shows a fundamental failure in the Mini DisplayPort design. It's obviously needing to do far too much processing just to drive a display, and the $100 cost proves that.

If the problems stopped there, it might even be acceptable, though far from ideal.
However, this thing doesn't even keep working properly. Sometimes it goes for most of a day without flaking out, and other times it happens multiple times per hour. From time to time it flickers and threatens to stop functioning, and then when it finally happens the screen ends up all scrambled. (if you search the web you'll find pictures of this from others). When this happens, you have to unplug it and plug it back in again, or suspend and resume your machine, or do some other trick to re-initialize the display.

I would get my original unit replaced with a newer one, except that from what I've heard even the new ones have problems, and sometimes worse than the original ones. So until I hear that the problems are fixed, I'm stuck with what I've got.

18 of 18 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

Mostly not usable

Written by KB from Atlanta

Sep 25, 2009

I've had this adapter since I bought my new MacBook in May. It was always flaky but it's getting worse. It loosing sync with the Mac and bounces back and forth between just the Mac's screen and the Cinema Display screen. And sometimes it just doesn't work at all.

I need something that WORKS.

9 of 10 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

Embarrassment to the company

Written by DK from Belmont

Sep 21, 2009

My 30" Dell monitor worked great with my original MBP, but I've been suffering with apparently many others since upgrading to a 2009 MBP. Upgraded to SL and exchanged my adapter to v1.02 and now I have to deal with a frequent "blinking" of the screen (though now I only infrequently have the distortion issue I had with v1.01). Seems to become less frequent as the work session goes on (is it a 'warming up' issue?), and unplugging/replugging and ctrl-shft-cmd don't always do the trick like they used to.

The worst part is the apparent lack of acknowledgement by Apple that there is any problem. I understand this may work just fine for some or even many, but it certainly seems like there are enough folks with problems to justify some response.

20 of 21 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

New MBP and adapter, still poor quality over dark screen areas

Written by KG from Salt Lake City

Sep 21, 2009

We have three older 30" Cinema Displays in our office, three new unibody MBPs (Sept 2009, latest 10.6 updates), and two new Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapters (firmware 1.02).

With bright or strongly textured backgrounds, no problems at all, everything looks good, monitor stays perfectly in sync. When large black areas are on the screen and the adapters are warmed up, you start to see random red streaks appearing across the dark areas, reminiscent of the kinds of problems seen with bad analog VGA cables and older LCD displays. The easiest way to see it is to set your background to the "Lightning" image in the stock "Black & White" backgrounds. Let everything warm up for an hour or two and look closely at the dark areas at the bottom of the screen.

With different combinations of hardware, we see the exact same problem, so it really seems to be a design issue. None of our older G4 and Intel macs with DVI ports have any problems with these monitors. Under guidance from the phone support folks, we've reset the PROM on the MBPs, cleared plist files, switched between performance and power-save graphics modes, etc, with no improvement except for brief periods between reboots when the adapters cool down.

It gets quite annoying after a while if you are using applications with dark backgrounds. The apple staff try to be helpful, but more people need to call them and complain so that more engineering reports are filed; this is the only way to get this remedied. If you're one of the people that think that the adapters work great, please do the above background test and call in if you see noise.

Apple has a great opportunity to show their high-end users some love here.

18 of 20 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

TERRIBLE!

Written by CS from Atlanta

Sep 20, 2009

Purchased a brand new macbook pro - 30" cinema display this adapter and it just plain stinks!

I had the cinema display for the past 2 years running but using this adapter and the latest macbook pro 2.8ghz laptop I notice tons of feedback in the display.

So bad that after 2 days I went back to my older 2.2ghz macbook pro.

Apple please fix!

17 of 19 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

Do Not Buy

Written by SH from Duncanville

Sep 15, 2009

I own the Macbook Pro 17" unibody and a Cinema 30 display. I am running the latest firmware and Snow Leopard. I still get some distortion (e.g. sparklies) using this product. My only advice is to not buy this product. Honestly, this is the worst Apple product I have ever bought. I am happy with the rest.

28 of 30 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

Complete garbage

Written by CG from Osgoode

Sep 12, 2009

Too bad there is no option for zero stars.
I read the reviews but this cable is the only option for large displays and the current generation of DisplayPort equipped Apple products.
I have now tried two of these cables. One with the 1.01 firmware and with the 1.02 firmware. Both flicker, scramble the screen periodically, and cause rectangles to randomly flicker on and off (usually on the lower half of the screen). These problems exist on all the 30" displays that worked fine with my last 17" MBP, I want my built-in DualLink DVI back. Apple has made some of the finest desktop and laptop hardware I've ever used. They should be absolutely ashamed that this cable ever made it into production.

24 of 26 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

Junk

Written by KB from Smögen

Sep 10, 2009

Got this today and hoped I could drive my 30 inch samsung but the monitor goes black every 15 seconds for a second. Impossible to work on. Really disappointed.

11 of 13 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter

Truly offensively bad

Written by FD from New York

Sep 2, 2009

I never, ever take the time to write reviews because I just don't have the time. I'll make my very first exception in the case of this adapter for two reasons:

1/ This is the absolute worst product I ever bought from Apple (I currently own 7 macs, no less). It DOES NOT WORK. Or it works when it feels like it and only when it feels like it.

2/ I have to restart my MacPro at least four times a day for it to see the second screen attached to this $99 non functioning device, so now I actually have time to come here via my laptop to help prevent other people from making the same mistake I did by buying it.

It was bad enough to be forced into buying extra hardware because Apple felt like pushing their new standard onto us (What was wrong with two DVI ports?), but at least, at the very very least, if Apple is going to pull this kinds of forced sales tactics, please try and force-sell something that works.

Preposterous.
Stay away.
It will complicate your life.

Ciao

Fab

PS: for the technically orientated people:
-the screen attached to the adapter comes up garbled and unreadable about 60% of the time at start-up, no matter what I do.
-100% of the time garbled if the screen is turned on after the computer is started.
-60% of the time garbled if the computer puts the screen to sleep after a long period of inaction.

So for example, if the screen goes to sleep, I most likely have to restart the machine for it to work, but then there is a strong chance that the screen will still come up garbled anyway, unless I get lucky that the adapter sees the screen fine that time.

$99? Really? Wow.

28 of 33 people found this useful