Thinkpads Forum

So my friend is looking for a durable laptop for his fam and I have loved my thinkpads I have owned the T42's X41's and Z61 which I'm on now and I am needing to get another one as well but will never buy a 300$+ laptop again lol.

So my question is what Video output options do I have with the 400 series? Are they all the same can you get a normal HDMI out or even a min HDMI would work? That's the only thing I have holding him back because he will want to have it on his HD Tv. I see most have a weird output but don't want to have issues with an adapter working with other HD Tv's. Thanks for the help and experience connecting this series to hdmi TV's.

The T400, T410, and T420 don't have HDMI ports. The T410 and T420 do have Displayport though, and you can use a passive Displayport-->HDMI adapter/dongle.

T410 and newer have DisplayPort++ ports which allows for HDMI output, including audio, via a simple passive adapter. I don't recall if it is supported on T400s (the regular T400 does not have any DisplayPort output), but I seem to recall it is not (at least not the audio aspect of it).

So what's everyone's opinion on the display port adapter on the T420's? Does it work well with a wide variety of HDMI TVs? Projectors? Does it work well over long cable lengths of 25ft-50ft? Does it give true 1080p res? Will it work with MHL? 3D Support? If anybody can send me a ebay/monoprice link of the type of adapter this is (DisplayPort++)?

I don't know about MHL or 3D, but I can say this...

I have my T420 hooked up to a temporary projector setup which consists of an amplifier and a projector; the projector is connected via VGA and the amplifier via HDMI (to get surround sound audio). There's a 40 foot HDMI cable running under the floor to the amplifier as well as a couple intermediate short cables at each end (there's a 3' cable between the wall and amplifier and there's a 6' DP-HDMI adapter cable going between the T420 and the other wall port). So all in all, about 50' worth of HDMI cable.

For a couple movies this setup worked fine, then suddenly the computer stopped seeing that anything was connected to the DP. The troubleshooting I did included driving video across the same cables using a computer with a native HDMI port (success), attempting to connect using a different T420 (failure), and connecting the T420 directly to the amplifier (success). I then decided to try using an HDMI signal amplifier... which fixed the problem. So my conclusion is that the DP on the T420 (possibly the T410) isn't powerful enough to drive a clean HDMI signal for more than the "official" HDMI max. cable length of 10 meters. Then I found this on Wikipedia: "More importantly, HDMI can sustain full bandwidth for up to 10 meters of cable length, while DisplayPort can carry full bandwidth for up to 3 meters only." which says it all.

So in short... if your TV or amplifier is more than 10 feet/3M away, be on the safe side and get yourself an HDMI amplifier. Otherwise, the thing has worked on anything with an HDMI port I've tried to connect it to so far.

Thanks Terminator most helpful!!! I doubt he will need the length but I will as I have a media room with about the same setup you have. How much did you pay for your HDMI amp what brand is it? I will be feeding a 6ft run to a Yamaha AirPlay receiver and from the receiver there will be a 30ft. run to the projector. You know if any receiver acts as a video amplifier.

The HDMI repeater I used was the one Radio Shack sells in stores. It's about $25 off the shelf, but I found someone on eBay selling some for like $6 shipped. The cheapest on eBay now is this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/RadioShack-HDMI ... SwhcJWHUQl

Our HDMI receiver/amp is a Yamaha RX-V473. The DP-HDMI cable I bought was this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/151353051575

At the moment the signal chain looks like...

Computer -> DP-HDMI Cable -> HDMI Repeater -> 6" HDMI cable -> Wall plate/coupler -> 40' HDMI under floor -> Wall plate/coupler -> 3' HDMI -> RX-V473

Probably more connections than ideal, but with the signal repeater in place I get good quality video and audio at the TV and out the 5.1 speakers.

I'd imagine the receiver acts as an amplifier, since it has to decode the signals to get audio etc. before it passes the video on through the output port. I've got about a 6' run from the receiver up the wall to our TV though. Later on I plan on reversing the flow through the under-floor HDMI cable from the receiver to the projector once I buy an HDMI capable unit. Since you're only going six feet or so from the computer to the HDMI amp/receiver, I don't think you'll need to buy a separate HDMI repeater.

Ok great. Sounds like this is the next 4 laptops for me then lol. Ill be getting the 8GB 500GB drives I need the space more than the speed. Thanks for your info much appreciated!!