Vga to hdmi cable broke my tv

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pharoh00

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Hello, I recently bought a vga to hdmi cable and ran it from my pc to my tv and got a blank screen but not only did that happen my tv's hdmi port does not work with other hdmi to hdmi devices anymore. Is my tv's hdmi port broken now or is there something i am not doing. please help me...
 

Houndsteeth

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so, let me get this straight...you connected from the VGA port on your computer's video card to the HDMI port on your TV?

You do realize that VGA is an analog signal and HDMI is digital?

Unless you spent a lot of money on a DSP converting cable (you would know this because the cable has an inline "box" that connects to an external power source) that actively converts the VGA analog signal to digital, then you most likely blew out the HDMI port, and quite possibly the digital signal converter on your TV, hence the reason why your TV will no longer work with other HDMI devices when connected to the HDMI port.

If your TV is under warranty, you MIGHT be able to talk the manufacturer into repairing or replacing it as long as you don't mention how you broke it. It's not exactly ethical or honest, so if you are either of these, just chalk the whole thing up to experience and buy a new TV.
 

Houndsteeth

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Yes, they do. But it does not change the fact that if the port he was connecting from on his computer was a VGA port, and the port he was connecting to on his TV was the HDMI port, then he was pushing an analog signal on lines that were expecting digital.

The cable he purchased was most likely intended to connect from an HDMI video source (graphics card) to a VGA analog port on a TV or monitor. If this was the case, then the video card would push analog signal over the HDMI port to the TV (this is supported in the DVI standard that HDMI is compliant with). It doesn't work the other way around, though.

This means voltages, frequencies and polarities were quite different than what was expected. At the very least, the port is burned out and the digital signal converter is fine and should work fine if there are other HDMI ports. At the worst, the digital signal converter is toast, which means he's stuck with the analog ports only.
 

pharoh00

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Thanks for the information in hind sight i guess i should have evaluated the situation a little more closely before i made the decision to buy the cord. I did talk to the manufacturer and my warranty is now up. I had a TV repair shop look at it and he told me i need a new mother board and i would be better off buying a new TV because of the cost. So i guess i really took a loss this time.
 

Houndsteeth

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Many condolences, pharoh00. Don't beat yourself up too much...just use your head next time.

We've all of us, every single one, learned an expensive lesson. Mine was my fist water cooling build that fried my brand new NVidia GeForce4 Ti4800 (back when this card cost about $600). Mine was a mechanical failure. The watercooling block came with sparse instructions, so I had put the waterblock on with the springs facing the PCB rather than the thread nuts. Needless to say, the block was not making full contact with the GPU, so I burned up the card in under five minutes.
 
^ no, the TV wouldn't.

If the video card was outputting an analog signal it would be all kinds of wrong to the HDMI port on the TV. I assume that cable was meant to basically exploit HDMIs DVI capabilities and then convert that to VGA which is something most modern GPUs can do. To convert back into HDMI you would need some kind of funky active converter which this one would not do if it was simply passive.
 

Houndsteeth

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Dadiggle...he connected the cable to the HDMI port on the TV. There is no "auto detect" circuitry that is a part of the HDMI spec...it is expecting a digital signal and a digital signal only. It does not automagically convert analog to digital from an HDMI port. It will only do this on a port where it is expecting an analog signal, such as a VGA or component port.

He connected the cable to the VGA port on the card. All the video card knows is to pump analog signal out on this port. It does not sense that there is an HDMI port on the other end of the cable and automagically start pushing out digital signal. That's not a part of the VGA spec.
 

Heehee

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you don't get what I'm trying to say. A vga cable has two ends both vga. So they don't fit. Am I correct? Now how did he convert the vga output that plug into the other end converted so that it can fit into the Hdmi port? How did he do it? That's what I'm asking
His cable had VGA at one end, HDMI at the other. He plugged the VGA end into his PC, and the HDMI into the TV. However, as was mentioned, the cable is passive. It requires a receiver with converter, or converter to change the signal - both much more expensive than a cable only.
 
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