Driving two monitors from single HDMI ?

[anonymous-user]

My daughter's Windows laptop has a single HDMI output, several USB and what I think is a displayport connection. How can she drive two external monitors separately (as well as the laptop's own screen)?

She is wfh, when at work she plugs the laptop into a dock and her laptop (vis display settings) shows here 3 screens that she can order as she wishes. So her laptop seems to be able to support 3 screens individually.

Starting with the displayport, I think it should look like this (note rectangle with corner angled off) -



But hers looks more rounded like this -



Even though the shape looks different to me, the symbol looks like displayport. Do you agree? I am 150miles away from the laptop!

To have two independent monitors what is best to use as their connections? HDMI + displayport or use the USB instead?

Any suggestions appreciated. She is only using them for office applications.

Many thanks.

[Pieman68]

Looks like a USB-C port to me rather than a displayport

My wife's machine only has a USB-C port and we just bought a HDMI to USB-C adaptor from Amazon for about £10

[TTmonkey]

All these are ‘DisplayPort’ connections. The connector has been reduced in size on new laptops.

[bigandclever]

Getting the laptop model would help pin down the options.

[TTmonkey]

If you buy a docking station for the laptop, it will probably come with multiple display ports, which will allow multiple monitors. Probably the only way.

[illmonkey]

Pieman68 said:

Looks like a USB-C port to me rather than a displayport

My wife's machine only has a USB-C port and we just bought a HDMI to USB-C adaptor from Amazon for about £10

The D on the port indicates that it will output video. Not all USB-C port do that, you were lucky I guess.

[G7orge]

TTmonkey said:

If you buy a docking station for the laptop, it will probably come with multiple display ports, which will allow multiple monitors. Probably the only way.

+1

[anxious_ant]

Docking station would be ideal, but expensive option.
The dock for my Lenovo is about £120.

I went for a USB-C adaptor. It came with extra USB3 ports, SD card reader, and most importantly another HDMI port.

It’s decent enough to use and works out of the box.

Something like this : https://www.amazon.co.uk/USB-Hub-Multiport-Adapter...

[mikef]

Just get a USB-C to DisplayPort cable for the 2nd monitor, plenty of inexpensive options at Amazon

[nickd01]

Look at the monitors; if they have a display port connection they might also have a display port "out" connection. This will allow the monitors to be daisy chained off just one cable from the laptop.

[BlackTails]

MikeStroud said:

My daughter's Windows laptop has a single HDMI output, several USB and what I think is a displayport connection. How can she drive two external monitors separately (as well as the laptop's own screen)?

She is wfh, when at work she plugs the laptop into a dock and her laptop (vis display settings) shows here 3 screens that she can order as she wishes. So her laptop seems to be able to support 3 screens individually.

I'm sitting in front of a laptop and two 30" 2560x1600 displays. The answer to your question ("How?") is, I suspect, it depends.

I used to have two smaller external monitors running at lower resolutions (1920 x 1080). Then I was able to run each of them from the laptop, one from an HDMI output and one from another port, and still get the max resolution from each monitor.

When I moved up to larger external monitors, using the same connections as previously left me unable to access the max resolution of the monitors.
I found (via a post on a Dell user forum) that the only way I could improve on this was to use a dock for the laptop which had two displayport outlets, and plus each external monitor into one of those outlets. Bingo - that worked a treat.

So I expect it depends on the resolution you are trying to get from the external monitors and possibly the laptop's video card. All I can tell you is that a dock with two displayport outlets solved all my problems; if your external monitors are not running resolutions as high as 2560 x 1600 you may not need to go quite that far though.

[anonymous-user]

Thanks all. I don't want to buy a dock due to the cost.

I aim to buy two monitos and cables at the lowest cost I can find that will use one of the options below:

1 - USB to HDMI converter
2 - DisplayPort daisy chaining (I like this idea the best for minimal cable clutter)
3 - Monitor1 on HDMI and monitor2 on DisplayPort

Thanks for your help. What threw me was not knowing that the displayport connector came in multiple shapes.

[xeny]

MikeStroud said:

Thanks all. I don't want to buy a dock due to the cost.

I aim to buy two monitos and cables at the lowest cost I can find that will use one of the options below:

1 - USB to HDMI converter
2 - DisplayPort daisy chaining (I like this idea the best for minimal cable clutter)
3 - Monitor1 on HDMI and monitor2 on DisplayPort

Thanks for your help. What threw me was not knowing that the displayport connector came in multiple shapes.

Technically what you're looking at with the USB C connector is what's called USB C alt mode:

https://www.cablechick.com.au/blog/definitive-guid...

Personally I'd go for option 3 if at all possible - the drivers that encode a display over a standard USB connection strike me as a bit of a bodge.

Option 2 is attractive and elegant, but the monitors that support it tend to be expensive.

[anonymous-user]

xeny said:

Technically what you're looking at with the USB C connector is what's called USB C alt mode:

https://www.cablechick.com.au/blog/definitive-guid...

Personally I'd go for option 3 if at all possible - the drivers that encode a display over a standard USB connection strike me as a bit of a bodge.

Option 2 is attractive and elegant, but the monitors that support it tend to be expensive.

Yes I've found that cheaper monitors don't have displayport out.

Annoyingly the specs of the monitors (even in the display manufacturers sites) don't specify whay type of displayport connector they use, so to play safe (as I don't want to get a cable with the wrong displayport connector) I just got a usb c to hdmi cable and two hdmi in monitors. I take your point about usb c to hdmi being a bodge but for the resolution she needs for office work it should all work. Many thanks.

[xeny]

MikeStroud said:

I take your point about usb c to hdmi being a bodge but for the resolution she needs for office work it should all work..

It depends how it is done - if the port supports Displayport alt mode and the cable is really a funny shaped DP ->HDMI cable then it's to my mind perfectly elegant, the display is rendered on the integrated GPU and performance is great.

The ones I dislike are plain USB ->HDMI that use a technology called displaylink, which essentially renders stuff on the CPU rather than GPU, then it is a bit of a fiddle.

Anyway, hopefully it all works out for her.

[paulrockliffe]

You can get a DisplayPort splitter, I use one rather than a dock. Needs a usb port alongside the DP, but it drives two monitors no bother.

[frisbee]

illmonkey said:

Pieman68 said:

Looks like a USB-C port to me rather than a displayport

My wife's machine only has a USB-C port and we just bought a HDMI to USB-C adaptor from Amazon for about £10

The D on the port indicates that it will output video. Not all USB-C port do that, you were lucky I guess.

I did the same.

I even took a punt on a USB-C to VGA adapter which was about £10 and that worked fine as well.

[TTmonkey]

paulrockliffe said:

You can get a DisplayPort splitter, I use one rather than a dock. Needs a usb port alongside the DP, but it drives two monitors no bother.

I didn’t know a display port splitter could drive two different desktop images onto separate monitors. Thanks for the info.

[xeny]

TTmonkey said:

I didn’t know a display port splitter could drive two different desktop images onto separate monitors. Thanks for the info.

Be slightly careful - not all DisplayPort ports support it - look for "multistream" support, sometimes written "MST"

[TTmonkey]

xeny said:

TTmonkey said:

I didn’t know a display port splitter could drive two different desktop images onto separate monitors. Thanks for the info.

Be slightly careful - not all DisplayPort ports support it - look for "multistream" support, sometimes written "MST"

Cheers!