video out via usb3 with dock

[pcpete]

I have a client who has used this dock in his office to output video. He says you plug in one usb3 port to it and that is all you need. He wants to know if this will work in his home office with his wife's and his laptop. Based on how the dock seems to work, it seems like usb3 can be used to output video as a normal feature? Would it be safe to assume most laptops with usb3 with proper drivers installed can use that port to output video in place of the standard video out port along with everything else the laptop needs to do? Any insight to how this product works would be appreciated

 

[Sky-Knight]

Just install the drivers and yes, it should work.

that is... unless it doesn't... those things can go horribly wrong. And when they do, I've never found a fix. Reinstall Windows and it'll probably work, maybe...

I don't use them because of consistency issues. Dell branded USB docks are this same brand, same issues there too.

 

[SAFCasper]

Yes, pretty much any Windows laptop with a USB3 port will be compatible with a dock like that.

The downside with USB3 docks is they don't utilise your laptops graphics processing. They have a dedicated graphics chip within the dock which is generally quite low power. This makes them useless for any graphic intensive work. For example, even if you have a GTX2080 in your laptop it will suck at gaming while docked.

We have quite a few Dell D3100 docks in active use and they work well for general office type use. Only real issue I can think is the screen sometimes gets laggy but this is fixed with firmware & DisplayLink driver updates. Oh, and there is no screw holes for the VGA cable so it always falls out >.>


If you have the option, thunderbolt docks are much better and will also charge the laptop through the same cable. We recently deployed a few Dell WD19tb docks and they are really nice

 

[Markverhyden]

The USB 3C is just the bus connectivity between the laptop to the dock. It doesn't "play" video. The video stream is just encapsulated with all the other traffic. The manual says it'll go up to 2048 x 1152.

 

[pcpete]

so does that mean that laptops with usb3 don't pass a full digital video signal out the usb3 port that can be passively changed to hdmi or other digital signal?

 

[Sky-Knight]

No, it's a USB attached video device. There's enough bandwidth on the USB 3.0 bus to do that.

 

[pcpete]

I have been researching usb graphics devices and found it interesting that there is only about a 15% drop in performance as opposed to the same chipset being attached directly inside the computer via the pci express bus

 

[Sky-Knight]

USB 3.0 has some decent bandwidth, 4.0 is even better.

 

[PCS]

USB video is somthing devised by DisplayLink I think, every USB to video adaptor or docking station I've ever seen weather it was HP, Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba or aftermarket brand has always used DisplayLink driver. If you cant find a recent vender driver, the most recent driver at https://www.displaylink.com/ has always fixed it for me.

 

[mikeroq]

Yes the DisplayLink chipset will get you video from USB. I despise those docks. Thankfully with USB-C that will go away since the port can pass though HDMI or DisplayPort video output from the graphics processor in the computer.