They work as external cards and can extend a desktop, for greater productivity

Dec 8, 2011 14:29 GMT  ·  By

There are a whole bunch of different monitor plugs and ports, but not quite as many means of bridging between them, so StarTech took it upon itself to remedy this situation.

The company makes converters and adapters that allow pieces of equipment to work in tandem even if they normally lack the required input/output capabilities.

In this case, StarTech made two USB 3.0 adapters, one that converts signals into HMDI/DVI and another one for VGA support.

They are called USB32HDE (USB 3.0 to HDMI/DVI Adapter) and USB32VGAE (USB 3.0 to VGA Adapter).

“Our primary goal with the release of the USB 3.0 video adapters was to harness the high-speed capability offered by the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface to support high display resolutions up to 1080p/1920x1200” said John Mardinly, senior product manager for StarTech.com.

“The transfer speed capability of USB 3.0 ensures smoother imaging than USB 2.0 video adapters, with faster video playback, and more responsive performance from office or business applications, which presents creative ways to use a secondary monitor or multiple displays on a computer.”

The converters use the 5 Gbps bandwidth to deliver high-resolution content and can help, among other things, to extend the working space over more displays than would otherwise be possible.

The maximum resolution is of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels (not achievable while in the slower, USB 2.0 mode).

StarTech also implemented support for features like Windows Aero interface and 2-channel audio (USB32HDE only).

Finally, up to five USB 3.0 video adapters can be used on a single system and the company even threw in an optional HDMI to DVI-D adapter (USB32HDE only, can turn into USB 3.0 to DVI-D that way).

The USB 3.0 to VGA Adapter (USB32VGAE) has a price of £91.99 (108 Euro / $145) while the USB 3.0 to HDMI/DVI Adapter (USB32HDE) is priced at £89.99 (105 Euro / $141).

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