one touch input swapping with e2400hd?

[Grombo]

i've got my comp connected via DVI and my ps3 connected via HDMI. is there any way i can swap input with a touch of a button?
i can swap inputs by going into the monitor's properties and whatnot, im just curios if there is a faster way

[bad_brain]

hm, there are HDMI switches, and you can connect DVI to it via DVI/HDMI adapter. the problem is that cheap ones (switches and adapters) can decrease the signal quality a lot.
on the german boards someone asked for something similar (DVI/HDMI adapter) so I have checked for hardware already. you can get such adapters already for about 10 USD, but high quality ones cost about 60-70 USD. if you are willing to spend some money best check you local hifi store for good components ("Oehlbach" or "Monster Cable" are good brands for example)....of course you can also try cheap noname components, but it's risky.

[leetnigga]

hm, there are HDMI switches, and you can connect DVI to it via DVI/HDMI adapter. the problem is that cheap ones (switches and adapters) can decrease the signal quality a lot.
on the german boards someone asked for something similar (DVI/HDMI adapter) so I have checked for hardware already. you can get such adapters already for about 10 USD, but high quality ones cost about 60-70 USD. if you are willing to spend some money best check you local hifi store for good components ("Oehlbach" or "Monster Cable" are good brands for example)....of course you can also try cheap noname components, but it's risky.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the signal transmitted over those cables is digital. That means if you're ever going to lose bits, you're going to have an unwatchable signal or heavy macroblocking in the video. The main difference between the cables is what they're making the connectors out of. Gold is used in the more expensive ones because it doesn't tend to corrode which can lead to those funky signals. That kind of corrosion would be after leaving the cable out in the rain for a month, not from normal use. Even when your cables do corrode that way it would be cheaper to buy a new inexpensive one.

I thought you might want to know that.

[bad_brain]

Correct me if I'm wrong

ok, there you go:
depending on the material and the structure of the cable there are some multiple parameters that affect the signal quality.
1. the skin effect
when you have a wire with a diameter of 1mm the signal stream happens in specific areas of the wire, depending on the signal frequency. the higher the frequency the more the signals swap towards the surface of the wire, this is called "skin effect". so on a cheap 1mm cable you have maybe an effective signal transfer area of 0.2 mm, while on a good cable you have better values.
2. the resistance
I don't think I have to explain what this means in regular wires. but even optic cables have a resistance, depending on the inner structure more or less inner reflections appear.

of course also the connection of the wires to the plugs are important, the quality of the soldering, the soldering material (more silver = better, but more expensive and harder to use).

now, let's come to your theory that "digital=digital, so either it works or not". this is simply wrong, because there are techniques used to correct or replace missing bits....without those techniques a single tiny dust particle on a DVD or CD would already cause a black screen or a "hop".

missing or corrupted bits in the digital data stream are called "jitter" (a bit can be corrupted by an inner reflection in the wire for example, so the bit get async to the data stream clocking).
depending on the quality of the correction techniques more or less jitter can be corrected until you really notice it by a messed up screen or a hopping CD....but even a low amount of jitter is already bad, because the correction mechanisms have no crystal ball and know what the original bit was....so they "guess". the most common "guessing technique" is to check what the last and the next bit was/is and calculate what the missing one most likely was (of course there are buffers, so the next bit can be checked before it is reproduced on the screen or in the speakers).
this might effect only 1 pixel on the screen, but more jitter == more guessed values == higher residual error probability == more wrong information on the screen/on the speakers.


before I got back into computers I was into hifi/highend and had the opportunity to listen to stereo sets that cost half a million bucks and more (MBL, Burmester, McIntosh, etc.) and on such listening sessions often different cables were used (digital cables in the high end segment often have even the same plugs, WBT plugs are the de facto standard for highend cables), so I know that different cables can sound different...even when it's digital.