Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Can you recommend an “instant-switch” Monitor? Does one exist?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 185 posts

Re: Ask HN: Can you recommend an “instant-switch” Monitor? Does one exist?

#131

Post by hateful »

pontifier wrote: post #44

This is one thing I really miss about analog tv. You could switch channels as fast as you could press the button. Everything now is so slow.

This was the reason I stopped watching TV with my cable box back in the day. I used to love channel surfing, but that became impossible because I would have scrolled through 2-3 channels by the time the next one loaded.

Sure, soon after I would give up TV for other reasons, but I probably would have kept regular TV for way longer if this delay was never introduced.

Re: Ask HN: Can you recommend an “instant-switch” Monitor? Does one exist?

#132

Post by bombcar »

atoav wrote: post #45

HDMI Switching like that takes long because there is a EDID negotiation going on between the minitor and the input devices. If you want to switch fast and often your best bet is getting an HDMI switcher that is basically always connected to the monitor and both sources and then toggles between the two. Beware of the supported resolutions and framerates. A cheap hack would also be to connect your second source to the…

Note that an expensive HDMI switcher is different from a cheap dongle goblin from Amazon. Try the cheap one first but if you really need instant switching you’re looking at a professional AV device.

http://decimator.com/ Has some really good shit including (accidental) hdmi copy protection removal.

Re: Ask HN: Can you recommend an “instant-switch” Monitor? Does one exist?

#133

Post by bombcar »

kalleboo wrote: post #102
abhinavk wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because Macs (almost) always output the native resolution of the display. What you are changing is the draw resolution or scaled resolution.

That may technically true, but on the Intel MacBooks, switching resolutions was still a major ordeal with multiple black screens flickering past.

Iirc max’s also always do encrypted hdmi stuff or whatever it is whereas other OS may only turn that on when a movie is playing.

Re: Ask HN: Can you recommend an “instant-switch” Monitor? Does one exist?

#134

Post by jacquesm »

VLM wrote: post #118
Moru wrote: post #9

This has been annoying me since I first tried a PC after using Atari computers since they were a thing. No matter what monitor I use, it will take for ever to switch input port or just a simple change of resolution. I was used to be able to switch resolution several times per frame, you could make a game with low resolution and color on the upper 3/4 of the screen and have the stats in higher resolution 4 color mode…

Good news is thruput always increases with computers over time, bad news is latency only increases over time. See, for example, boot up times. Also see how recovering from sleep/hibernation is now slower than 80s computer boot times, so expect a second layer of abstraction to form soon in the market, a faster recovering sleep mode than actual sleep mode.

Hypersleep...

Re: Ask HN: Can you recommend an “instant-switch” Monitor? Does one exist?

#135

Post by bitwize »

reaperducer wrote: post #128
bitwize wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons why you could switch modes mid-frame is because the concept of a "video mode" is fundamentally different on a PC than on an Atari or Amiga. On a PC, ever since the EGA, the adapter can output at different horizontal and vertical scan rates and the monitor can adapt to the requested mode from the video card. That's why switching video modes takes a couple seconds and may involve a "click" or two. Up…

On the Atari and Amiga, the horizontal/vertical scan rates are constant I can't speak to the Atari, but my memory is that this is not true of the Amiga. The Amiga could do this amazing thing where it would display multiple resolutions on a monitor at the same time, divided horizontally. Analog was flexible that way. An Amiga could even display two different resolutions from two different sources on the same monitor a…

Yes, because the scan frequency didn't change -- that's what I'm trying to say (my terminology may have been a bit off). The timings of the horizontal and vertical sweep of the beam were constant; upon mode change the CRTC changed how scanout occurred, doubling the width or height of pixels in lower resolution mode but it didn't change the scan frequency, allowing the mode change to occur while the beam kept moving along.

PC monitors were analog too, but with PC monitors from EGA onwards, changing modes meant potentially changing scan frequency, which required the monitor to sync with the signal at the new frequency. Apparently a high-quality Sony monitor could do this instantly but many of us were slumming it with monitors that took a while to sync.

Re: Ask HN: Can you recommend an “instant-switch” Monitor? Does one exist?

#136

Post by alanbernstein »

I appreciate this question, I would also appreciate a solution, and the explanation of why it happens is interesting.

However, what I really want is just to be able to switch the input via command line. I know that there is a protocol that supposedly allows this (ddc?), But it seems that support for it is not standardized. This means the feature I want can't be found in the product specs.

So my question: what's a monitor I can buy that will allow me to switch inputs by command line? (Ideally 4k)

Re: Ask HN: Can you recommend an “instant-switch” Monitor? Does one exist?

#137

Post by balefrost »

alanbernstein wrote: post #136

I appreciate this question, I would also appreciate a solution, and the explanation of why it happens is interesting. However, what I really want is just to be able to switch the input via command line. I know that there is a protocol that supposedly allows this (ddc?), But it seems that support for it is not standardized. This means the feature I want can't be found in the product specs. So my question: what's a mon…

If you just need "switch using keyboard", not necessarily "switch using shell", some KVM switches allow input switching using keypresses. For mine, it's , though I think that can be customized.

Re: Ask HN: Can you recommend an “instant-switch” Monitor? Does one exist?

#139

Post by mhb »

atoav wrote: post #45

HDMI Switching like that takes long because there is a EDID negotiation going on between the minitor and the input devices. If you want to switch fast and often your best bet is getting an HDMI switcher that is basically always connected to the monitor and both sources and then toggles between the two. Beware of the supported resolutions and framerates. A cheap hack would also be to connect your second source to the…

Interesting tangent: I wanted to know what ATEM stood for - nothing: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=11160...

Re: Ask HN: Can you recommend an “instant-switch” Monitor? Does one exist?

#140

Post by Davertron »

alanbernstein wrote: post #136

I appreciate this question, I would also appreciate a solution, and the explanation of why it happens is interesting. However, what I really want is just to be able to switch the input via command line. I know that there is a protocol that supposedly allows this (ddc?), But it seems that support for it is not standardized. This means the feature I want can't be found in the product specs. So my question: what's a mon…

I think Dell has pretty good support for this, I had a pretty old Dell model before my current monitor and ddc worked fine with it. I now have an AORUS FO48U and it also supports it. I'm not sure it's always listed as a feature though when you're buying a monitor so it might be tricky.

FYI, I originally learned about this stuff via https://haim.dev/posts/2020-07-28-dual-monitor-kvm/.

Post reply on HN