Here's my quick review of the new Official Raspberry Pi HDMI to VGA Cable, as bought from the Pi Hut - see https://thepihut.com/products/official- ... -vga-cable.
Yes, this is an official Raspberry Pi product, but it has not yet got its own product page, or documentation, on the Raspberry Pi website.
My current desktop monitor is an Iiyama ProLite XB2474HS - a cheap 24" screen I bought a few years ago. It has 3 inputs - one each of DisplayPort, HDMI, and VGA. I bought this adaptor cable so that I can more easily connect two Raspberry Pis to the screen without having to swap HDMI cables over, with the DisplayPort connector used to hook up my Windows laptop via a powered USB-C docking station. An alternative solution was to use an HDMI switcher box, but I prefer to avoid those, and the adaptor cable was quite cheap anyway - £6 + delivery from the Pi Hut. It's a basic 1080p60 screen.
The cable itself says "HIGH SPEED HDMI CABLE WITH ETHERNET" on it, so presumably this means that the electronics to convert from HDMI to VGA are in the VGA-connector end of the cable. The HDMI plug is larger than on the official Raspberry Pi HDMI-only cables, but perhaps this is simply because it's from a different supplier, rather than to accommodate electronics.
For testing, I used a Raspberry Pi 3B+ Rev 1.4 which I recently bought from CPC. With the 2024-07-04 release of Raspberry Pi OS with desktop 64-bit Bookworm it was completely plug and play - output from the Pi was visible at all stages of boot, from firmware rainbow splash, through legacy display output, right through to KMS/DRM and the desktop.
Raspberry Pi OS reports that there is an HDMI audio output device when the Pi is connected to this screen using this cable, although the converter cable does not have an audio output on it. To check whether it was the cable or the monitor reporting audio support in the EDID, I tested the monitor with a native VGA source - an old laptop. This revealed that the adaptor cable is reporting audio support by changing the EDID returned to the host. Among other things, when using the HDMI to VGA adaptor cable, edid-decode reports a CTA-861 extension block (block 1) which does not exist when a native VGA source is connected to the monitor. It also alters block 0 to report a digital, rather than analogue display with no analogue voltage levels reported, and the screen type as unspecified, which is reported by edid-decode as 'monochrome or grayscale display' (per Raspberry Pi engineer dom's description of a similar EDID in a thread I can't find right now).
So overall - very happy with the new cable. Works well, was cheap to buy, and it has the advantage of being just a cable - no need to use a separate adaptor. Plus the fact that it has the Raspberry Pi name on it is a useful reassurance that it is going to be supported on Raspberry Pi computers now and in the future. I've previously used an HDMI to VGA converter from CPC with a Pi several years ago, and it stopped working correctly with any of my Pis, so I then bought another converter, which worked fine but doesn't have the screws on the VGA side to hold it in place.
I actually have a workaround for the converter cable not supporting audio, since this monitor has a 3.5mm audio input - connecting a flylead from the 3.5mm AV jack on the Pi 3B+ to the monitor gets me audio, so it's good to know that works since I've never used it. Audio is not something I expect to use with the VGA-connected Pi anyway.
Yes, this is an official Raspberry Pi product, but it has not yet got its own product page, or documentation, on the Raspberry Pi website.
The cable itself says "HIGH SPEED HDMI CABLE WITH ETHERNET" on it, so presumably this means that the electronics to convert from HDMI to VGA are in the VGA-connector end of the cable. The HDMI plug is larger than on the official Raspberry Pi HDMI-only cables, but perhaps this is simply because it's from a different supplier, rather than to accommodate electronics.
For testing, I used a Raspberry Pi 3B+ Rev 1.4 which I recently bought from CPC. With the 2024-07-04 release of Raspberry Pi OS with desktop 64-bit Bookworm it was completely plug and play - output from the Pi was visible at all stages of boot, from firmware rainbow splash, through legacy display output, right through to KMS/DRM and the desktop.
Raspberry Pi OS reports that there is an HDMI audio output device when the Pi is connected to this screen using this cable, although the converter cable does not have an audio output on it. To check whether it was the cable or the monitor reporting audio support in the EDID, I tested the monitor with a native VGA source - an old laptop. This revealed that the adaptor cable is reporting audio support by changing the EDID returned to the host. Among other things, when using the HDMI to VGA adaptor cable, edid-decode reports a CTA-861 extension block (block 1) which does not exist when a native VGA source is connected to the monitor. It also alters block 0 to report a digital, rather than analogue display with no analogue voltage levels reported, and the screen type as unspecified, which is reported by edid-decode as 'monochrome or grayscale display' (per Raspberry Pi engineer dom's description of a similar EDID in a thread I can't find right now).
So overall - very happy with the new cable. Works well, was cheap to buy, and it has the advantage of being just a cable - no need to use a separate adaptor. Plus the fact that it has the Raspberry Pi name on it is a useful reassurance that it is going to be supported on Raspberry Pi computers now and in the future. I've previously used an HDMI to VGA converter from CPC with a Pi several years ago, and it stopped working correctly with any of my Pis, so I then bought another converter, which worked fine but doesn't have the screws on the VGA side to hold it in place.
I actually have a workaround for the converter cable not supporting audio, since this monitor has a 3.5mm audio input - connecting a flylead from the 3.5mm AV jack on the Pi 3B+ to the monitor gets me audio, so it's good to know that works since I've never used it. Audio is not something I expect to use with the VGA-connected Pi anyway.
Statistics: Posted by andrum99 — Fri Jul 12, 2024 4:51 pm