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Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter

Worthless? Or not?

Written by SO from Ashburn

Oct 17, 2009

I connect my new MacBook Pro to an LG 22" display. It's resolution is 1680x1050. For some reason, It'll let me output 1680 to the monitor, but the display won't show anything but a black screen. VERY annoying, since my old MacBook with the miniDVI port or whatever worked PERFECTLY! Although one absolute upside to this port is that the connection is a TON stronger (the adapter won't just simply fall out like the miniDVI one) and that it actually supports the PowerSave mode for my display.

7 of 11 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter

Works, Overpriced

Written by SM from Cambridge

Sep 16, 2009

Does the job. Too expensive (but it's not like I had a choice).

20 of 26 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter

Cable "works" but has issues

Written by AL

Sep 14, 2009

This cable does the job but the connector screws to the VGA don't fit properly and I needed to use electrical tape to keep them together.

Also, I work at a College and we provide these adapters for student loan. It is VERY frustrating to purchase a new $34.00 adapter every 4 months because Apple keeps changing the "standard".

10 of 13 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter

Picky Adapter

Written by BD from Kremmling

Mar 17, 2009

If you are having trouble with this adapter, try a different VGA cable. I tried four cables before I found one that worked. All of the cables I tried worked with both my old MacBook Pro's DVI to VGA adapter and my MacBook mini-DVI to VGA adapter, but only one of them worked with the Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter. This is one picky adapter.

6 of 8 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter

TO ALL SAMSUNG LCD OWNERS

Written by GI

Mar 13, 2009

This adapter works just fine, just change the VGA cable that you got with Samsung LCD. It misses some wires in it, and this is why this displayport adapter wont work with it.

P.S.
Apple should test this issue and write a notice somewhere, cause many users waste a lot of time experimenting this.

25 of 32 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter

samsung and vga

Written by AM

Feb 11, 2009

Appears lots of people are upset with the adapter not working with their samsung. I don't have the adapter but the reason for the "non-working" condition is based on the samsung vga implementation. It appears that samsung needs or wants to see all grounds connected in the vga connection coming into their monitor / tv. In vga land, there are 5 grounds (one for each color, sync signals and a shield / connector ground). IF these grounds are not connected together "in some form", then in my findings, your samsung display will not "highlight" the "pcmode" and as result, nothing will be displayable on the monitor (usually you will get "check cable" message). The reason for the "differences" that people are experiencing in results is that some vga cables are built with the grounds connected, some computers (eg. some PC's) are implemented to switch (connect) their grounds at the output port, and some different adapters (versions) have the grounds "hard-wired" together, some don't (this one?). Not sure why samsung choose their implementation, but these are my recent findings from my efforts to connect two pc and mac to a newly purchased samsung 61 HD TV. The "easiest" way around things (in my opinion) is to get a vga cable with all ground pins and sheath ground connected... if you already have a vga ("non-working") cable, then try buy a short "extension" cable with the described characteristic and use it as an intermediate cable (ie. between the samsung monitor and the "non-working" vga cable). Hope this is understandable and helps.

75 of 76 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter

Advice

Written by RB from College Station

Feb 7, 2009

I am not an owner of this product, however I am writing to share some experience I've had with connecting HDTV's to macbooks. In my experience the resolutions detected by the macbook for some HDTV's were incorrect, to make it work I've had to enable mirror mode.

After setting mirror mode up, I then choose a resolution that I know the tv should support(to get it to show up on the list of available resolutions for the HDTV once I turned off mirror mode)

Hope this helps at least someone.

My friend had thought that their new HDTV would not connect to their macbook, but are much happier after I fiddled with it and got it to work. Once I made the proper resolution show up as an available option, future re-connections have not needed to go through the entire process of setting up mirror mode etc....

my 2cents.

21 of 24 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter

Does what it's supposed to, almost…

Written by RE from Kitchener

Jan 31, 2009

I bought the VGA adapter to avoid getting multiple adapters (monitor is DVI and VGA in, but need VGA for projectors). I figured an adapter should just work, why would there be issues?

Every few minutes my screen goes black for a few seconds (I am running an external 22" at 1680x1050, I don't know if that would be the reason). The old ADC -> VGA adapter on my 800 MHz iBook worked just dandy. This should do the same.

I have yet to hook it up to a projector, I'll see what happens then.

8 of 8 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter

CRT Monitor @ 1600x1200 Refresh stuck at 60hz

Written by SP from Boca Raton

Jan 22, 2009

Works great, but if will not allow to change refresh rate when using a CRT monitor at 1600x1200, your only option is 60HZ so much for the 512MB of Video Ram. I am guessing the issue is the NVidia drivers, wish Apple would have used ATI for Video Card, they have better Drivers.

2 of 3 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter

How to make it work...

Written by AD from Tychy

Jan 20, 2009

If you having signal detection problems with your Mini Displayport to VGA adapter theres simple fix. The problem is that there's no ground on pin 10 (DDC Ground - to check which one is it search for VGA connector on wikipedia) of the vga connector. To fix this you can just wrap thin wire around this pin and attach it to the outside ring of the plug before connecting the adapter.

10 of 10 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter

Works with Samsung Series 5 40' LCD TV

Written by AB from Causeway Bay

Dec 29, 2008

The VGA adapter works perfectly with my Samsung Series 5 40 inch LCD TV, I can get up to 1900 x 1080 resolution output and it looks beautiful. The only complain I have is the price of this little converter.

4 of 4 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter

O.K.

Written by NR

Dec 28, 2008

On my MacBook, when connected to my Vizio, T.V cuts in and out while hooked up. Other than the occasional blank screen, that fixes it self within seconds of going off, it does what it is supposed to. It's an O.K. product.

9 of 13 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter

Has Issues in Mac OS X and Windows XP at Higher Resolutions

Written by BL from Greenville

Dec 11, 2008

I purchased the Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter to connect my unibody MBP to an external monitor, NEC LCD2490WUXi. For the most part the adapter works as advertised, but I cannot get it to display 1920 x 1600 in both OS X and Windows XP. If anyone has had similar issues or success at this resolution it would be a great help if you commented on it.

5 of 8 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter

Its rough being on the leading edge of technology...

Written by CM from Calgary

Dec 2, 2008

I bought this adapter with my new aluminum unibody macbook a couple of weeks ago. I immediately rushed home to try it out with my samsung LN46A550 TV... To my dismay the TV nor the macbook recognized that they were connected to eachother...

After some hard research and digging i found out that this particular adapter only supports up to a 30" display. For whatever reason, apple made it this way. So i returned my adapter and asked employees at the apple store what was up with only supporting 30" or smaller displays. To my surprise i was told good news and bad news... The good news, theres another adapter coming out for my macbook with mini display port... The bad news is that it is not shipping yet and they dont know when it will start shipping. My guess is it has something to do with signal strength for the display size....

Either way, I have an awesome new computer and im just gonna have to wait to hook it up to my 46" TV.

76 of 83 people found this useful

Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter

Works as I expected

Written by TF from Lexington

Dec 1, 2008

With the exception of the price ($30 is about twice what I would expect to pay for this) - it has worked great for me on an inexpensive SOYO 23" LCD.

The only problem I found is that the VGA cable screws aren't long enough to reach into the adapter... so I had to leave it loose....

Apple should have made the cable a lot longer also.... its only about 3 inches of wire between the 2 connectors - a 1 foot wire would have been a nice help in keeping clutter away from the side of my macbook pro.... not very good 'ergonomics' for something this expensive.

Despite these problems... it does work as expected.... so I give it a 3....

As of now, this was the ONLY option - eventually an OEM vendor will offer something similar and Apple will find out how inadequate this was for the price.

10 of 13 people found this useful