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

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

#71

Post by snthd »

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…

What if you modify the cables to remove the DDC wire?

Can no EDID negotiation be faster?

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

#73

Post by Raglov »

Aeolun wrote: post #61
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…

Even with one of the fancy KVM switches that were recommended here my switching isn’t instant. It did go down from 10-20 seconds of flickering to +/- 2 seconds though. May not be worth it if you are already at 4s though.

What model do you use that gave you 2 seconds switching time? One of the mentioned Rextron or something else?

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

#74

Post by jemmyw »

Handprint4469 wrote: post #64
jemmyw wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a U3223QE which is the same just larger. The screen itself looks really nice, its bright, no complaints there. The stand is pretty good, reasonably tidy. My only complaint is that when it said USB-C hub I expected it to have USB-C ports for peripherals and it doesn't, only USB-A ports. My older LG has USB-C ports, so I know its possible. It's annoying because as more and more stuff switches to USB-C the only…

Just in case you missed it, the U3223QE does have one USB-C port for peripherals. See [0], bottom right of the image. [0] https://i.dell.com/is/image/DellContent/content/dam/ss2/prod...

That's the USB-C upstream port for if you connect PC-2 via HDMI and PC-1 is connected to the USB-C display port.

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

#75

Post by texasbigdata »

spants wrote: post #66

I was annoyed by this too. My solution was to buy a 49" samsung monitor and have either 50:50 or 1/3:2/3 split on the screen so I can see both at once. If I only want one active I can change the source but this has the flicker/delay as noted. I run Barrier software on both to move one keyboard and mouse between the screens.

Can you link to the software? It’s a pretty common term but sounds interesting

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

#77

Post by fragmede »

texasbigdata wrote: post #75
spants wrote: post #66

I was annoyed by this too. My solution was to buy a 49" samsung monitor and have either 50:50 or 1/3:2/3 split on the screen so I can see both at once. If I only want one active I can change the source but this has the flicker/delay as noted. I run Barrier software on both to move one keyboard and mouse between the screens.

Can you link to the software? It’s a pretty common term but sounds interesting

It's the same as Synergy which is at https://symless.com/synergy

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

#79

Post by alin23 »

snthd wrote: post #71
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…

What if you modify the cables to remove the DDC wire? Can no EDID negotiation be faster?

EDID is important because it is the only way for the host to know which resolution, color depth, frame rate the monitor supports.

Even if you remove the DDC wires, the OS will still try to communicate, and it might delay this even more because of the retries and delays in code.

You might get a headstart if you hardcode the EDID in the OS itself. There are ways to do this on Linux [1], Intel macOS [2] and Windows [3].

[1] http://billauer.co.il/blog/2020/08/linux-override-fake-edid/

[2] https://github.com/mbruggmann/osx-edid-overrides

[3] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/d...

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

#80

Post by goosedragons »

nicexe wrote: post #65
lofaszvanitt wrote: post #26

There are multiple input (5xHDMI) same output (1x HDMI) switches on the net, which feeds one input of the monitor and you can change the source on the adapter with a round robin button. It's almost instant. Another cool feature is whenever a new input source is detected it automatically feeds that to your monitor. I haven't seen the configuration you need, but if you can use adapters to convert each source to HDMI, i…

switching between 2 inputs would take between 1x and 4x (x being the time to switch to the next input) depending if it is from A to B or B to A.

Even the cheap HDMI switches all come with a remote so you can jump from input 2 back to 1.
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