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The Videk AN2440 is one of the new range of USB Display Adaptors, essentially USB graphics cards, using the amazing DisplayLink chip technology.

It is worth remembering that this is technology that simply was not available two years ago - when most people would have said it wasn’t feasible either!

With an office full of Dell USFF machines only capable of driving one display, we decided to try one of these adaptors for a project to extend a user’s desktop up onto a wall-mounted HD TV and use that to stream live share prices.

The Videk adaptor comes in a clam-shell of plastic retail packaging, once you have got inside you’ll find the adaptor itself, a Quick Start Guide, software mini-CD, as well as a USB cable and a DVI to VGA adaptor.

The most important item in the quick start guide is that you must install the driver before letting the PC see the USB device.

Note: That is a mini-CD. This was actually a wee bit inconvenient as our physically locked machines all had vertically mounted DVD drives that didn’t have the necessary little catches to hold a miniCD, however the driver itself was very happy to install direct from a flash drive.

Within Windows the driver supports the standard behaviours of either mirroring the primary display or extending your desktop onto it, it can also be designated the primary display.

The inclusion of the DVI-to-VGA converter was a much more welcome surprise, the PDF product information sheet on the Videk website suggested it was to be an optional extra.

Videk currently have three models in this range:

(2494V)  AN2410 - USB 2.0 to VGA Display Adaptor £49.50

(2494D)  AN2420 - USB 2.0 to DVI Display Adaptor £54.50

(2494HD) AN2440 - USB 2.0 to High Resolution DVI Display Adaptor £59.50 (~118USD)

[They also have a model in the older casing, the 2496 USB to VGA adaptor - supporing resoluions up to 1024x768. The older casing was much more tacky looking, although we shouldn't blame Videk for this, as it also appears to be a generic casing, turning up on the sadly sole current product at Maplin.]

As we would be using it with a large HD screen we went for the AN2440 High Resolution model - which adds support for 1440×900 and 1600×1200 resolutions and also, according to the pdf product information sheet, could be the only model to support the DVI to VGA adaptor. [Or is the only model to come with it.]

Design wise, it features what appears to be the current standard casing for all models based upon DispalyLink’s supplied circuit blueprint.

However you should keep in mind that performance and capability will depend on how much your manufacturer has been willing to spend inside.

The DisplayLink chip does compress the data - or rather decompress it - so the signal is not being sent as a video signal across the USB link, therefore the higher the screen resolution you want to connect, the more memory needed inside the box and the faster it needs to operate.

The unit itself has just two connections, so yes - it is a host-powered device as well. The DVI output connector is at one end and the mini-USB input connector the other.

Once connected the device itself reminds you of a hardware dongle, however as the ‘bulk’ is attached to the display end, rather than the computer end, it can be easily hidden away leaving just a slim USB cable reaching the computer.

Our objective was to extend a users desktop onto a HD television screen and use that to display a window containing an array of fine-textual information.

Previously we were a tad apprehensive about whether there would be abundant compression artefacts on the screen or whether the Display Link chipset could really cope with such constantly updating information right across the screen.

The results were amazing, in fact we were blown away. No matter what I dragged onto the TV I could see no compression artefacts or other problems and the screen updating was also perfect, there were no ‘delta-type’ compression lags either.

The image above is a photograph of the HD television screen with an Internet Explorer window. Notice how fine the text is on the word “Internet” in the status bar. I can assure you any blurriness is just due to the camera, and was not present on the screen.

So it now appears you can now essentially connect your monitor and displays by USB cable - outsourcing the video/display signal to a point much closer to the display itself.

However the mere thought of connecting a monitor to a computer using USB will still seem very shocking and ‘wrong’ as you are setting it up - and for quite a while afterwards!