Digital video only cable for X200?

The only choice right now is to buy the $200 ultrabase in order to get the DisplayPort connection. As I'm only interested in the digital video connection it's a bit of a high price to pay for this. It's not only about the price as it about the mobility of the ultrabase, if I want to connect the machine to a tv in a hotel or over a friend's house, I don't want to carry around the ultrabase.

I wish Lenovo will make just a cable from the ultrabase connector to disaply port. I will be more than happy to buy it. if there are any other x200 users here, will you buy it also?

and for the modders, do you think there is a way to create such a cable??

 

This may have been a conscious design choice by Lenovo. Many users are willing to pay for the ultrabase just to get a digital video output. This means more $$$ for Lenovo.

VGA is always an option. In real-world use you probably won't notice a difference in picture quality between the VGA and digital output from your notebook.

Have you noticed that the ultrabase is $100 off right now? This makes it much more palatable but doesn't solve the portability problem.

 

Yep, I've seen some sales on the ultrabase, but as you've mentioned it doesn't solve the portability option.

VGA is common on LCD and plasmas, but I'm not sure how common it would be on tv sets on the next few years. Another advantage of HDMI is that it you don't need a seperate cable for the audio.

 

You do need to realize that the x200 is a business notebook. So that primarily means projectors and monitors with VGA inputs. I use the ultrabase for the digital out. The machine is in no ways a media centric laptop as the audio-out is pretty bad on the ultrabase.

HDMI would involve more circuitry (as you would have to keep VGA) and lenovo goes with displayport (sans licensing fees) anyways. You also do not have HDMI with audio on notebooks...

Also I don't understand your comment..."I wish Lenovo will make just a cable from the ultrabase connector to disaply port." It is displayport on the ultrabase...

 

I think some other brands (e.g. Acer, HP, Dell) do support multi-channel audio and HD Video over the HDMI ports. I know the x200 w/ DisplayPort doesn't even though it is possible in theory.

I believe the OP wants some kind of cable that is dock connector on one side, and DisplayPort [only] on the other. I highly doubt Lenovo would ever make this kind of accessory.

 

Ah, I see. Upon some further googling it just seems like a lot of people did not know how to enable the digital audio over HDMI. I haven't had a notebook with HDMI to play with personally so I was going off of anecdotal evidence.

Do the dell displayports output audio? I'd personally much rather have a displayport that eventually could do dual monitor output given the bandwidth possibilities.

For audio I could just use external dacs via usb.

 

Thank you all for your replies. I know that the X200 is a business laptop, no problem with that here. I just expressing a wish to have something that is both portable and not expensive to allow digital output. It's not a "must have" but just "nice to have".