HDMI to DVI
 

My Polaroid LCD has a DVI input, and it is listed as HDCP compatible DVI-D (right under the input) However, it looks like a dual link DVI-I input, yet is listed as DVI-D. I heard that it looks like that, but it compatible with dual link, and single link DVI-D, and it has the appearance of DVI-I so you can hook up a computer monitor. The cable i bought is HDMI to DVI, and it fits perfectly, but i have not bought my HD-DVD player yet. Anyone have any insight?

What exactly do you want insight on? Sounds like what you have should work. But HDMI is a mess, so you'll really just have to try it once all your equipment is in hand. Dual link shouldn't be necessary for anything with an HDTV, that's for high-res computer connections that make HDTV look like VHS.

Wikipedia has a good article on DVI...: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvi

Most (almost every) DVI device will have a DVI-I Dual Link physical connector even if the device itself does not support DVI-I Dual Link. This is simply because the DVI-I Dual Link connector is a super-set of all the other DVI variants in terms of pins, and subsequently allows any DVI cable to physically connect.

(The most common case probably being the use of Dual Link cables with Single Link devices.)

If your Polaroid is sold as an "HDTV" and not a computer monitor, it's very likely to utilize DVI-D single link only.

1) DVI-I I believe is only commonly used with computer graphics cards - to allow easy conversion to VGA for CRT monitors.

2) Dual Link DVI, as Spiky said, is not useful for HDTV, even 1080p resolutions fit within Single Link.

3) DVI-A (analog) is not used for much of anything as far as I've seen.

The two things main things to worry about with HDMI - DVI connections are...

1) Potential HDCP hand-shake issues. This is really just a result of HDCP being so new, sometimes there are bugs / issues that cause problems.

2) Color-space conversion. The color-space of HDTV is slightly different than the one used for PC. The earlier DVI devices were often based on the PC color-space, and when connected to newer HDMI devices can look *slightly* off. Emphasize slightly because it's not a big issue, Red doesn't turn to Blue or anything, rather you can get effects such as "black crush" which causes some detail to be obscured in dark scenes because blacks blend together into fewer distinct shades.

Ooops - Double Post