What is the difference between DL-DVI-I and DL-DVI-D?

[Noob333]

Is one cable better than the other? Any thoughts as to which one you guys would prefer using? What is the difference between how they work?

 

[rhysiam]

Wow, you're really not getting much luck receiving answers to your posts.

This one is fairly straightforward though, so I'm happy to chip in. The only difference between "I" and "D" is that the "I" ports contain 4 additional pins for carrying an analogue signal. The diagrams under the "connector" section on wikipedia are helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface
You can see the four additional pins which straddle the horizontal bar on the left of the connector (as shown in the diagrams).

Those 4 pins carry an analogue signal. The beauty of this solution is that those 4 pins can simply be connected to the relevant pins on a VGA connector and everything just works. There's no need for any signal conversion. That allows you to use a simple, passive (which means cheap) adapter to convert a DVI-I port to VGA.

I might be wrong here, but I don't actually believe there is such thing as a "DVI-I" cable (either dual or single link). The whole point of the DVI-I output is that it's more flexible. It allows you to send a digital signal to a monitor that supports it over a DVI cable. Or, if you have an older monitor or projector that only has a VGA input, it allows you to use a cheap passive DVI -> VGA adapter and connect it on the same port. In other words, it removes the need of having separate VGA and DVI ports. My understanding is that this feature helped aid the adoption of DVI ports on computers and graphics cards. They could include the (then) new DVI port, but bundle an extremely cheap adapter to ensure those without DVI-capable monitors could still connect their displays.

There isn't really any point having a DVI-I cable, as the monitor receiving the signal has no use for both a digital and analogue signal. If it has a DVI port, it'll use the digital signal which would make the analogue signal entirely pointless.

 

[Noob333]

I already kinda had thought that DVI-I and DVI-D didn't use different cables. Besides that and the adapter thing all of that was new information to me. I have tried looking at the Wikipedia, it just too long and doesn't make much sense to me. Thanks for explaining it. Your response was much easier to understand and not as crazy long as Wikipedia. I get kinda ADD with long Wikipedia posts. And, yeah I haven't been getting much in the way of help with my threads... besides you. I don't really know if people just don't see them or if they don't know the answers or what the problem is.