Jim said:
I bought a new wide monitor - Dell ST2210. it has inputs for vga, dvi,
and hdmi. My video card has a DVI output.
I bought a cheap DVI-DVI card at Microcenter by ordering, but the
cable didn't look like the one in the catalog - has a right-angle
connector on one end that won't fit on either the card or the monitor
- pins are in the wrong direction!
By an old ordering mistake I have a cable with DVI on one end and HDMI
on the other. Will it work? I don't need audio.
The pragmatic answer is "plug it in and try it".
There are a few more comments here. Part way down, they
address your question.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface
I don't watch enough movies here, to tell you what would happen
if your setup doesn't have working HDCP. HDCP is a mechanism for
encrypting the data between the video card and the monitor. The
movie player software, tries to set up a "protected path",
so you can't pirate the raw digital data. If the protected
path cannot be set up (i.e. working HDCP), then the movie might
not play, or it might play in a reduced resolution. I hope that
won't affect other usage of the monitor.
There are good odds, if you have a relatively recent video card,
that HDCP capability is there. If a video card has an HDMI connector
on the faceplate, then HDCP is supposed to be mandatory, as far as
I know. If the card has only a DVI connector for digital data,
HDCP is optional (not guaranteed). In which case, you'd try to
look up the spec for the card, if that was important to you. Some
older OSes, don't support protected paths, and don't monkey with
the output like modern OSes do. Which might at least make the screen
work well for ordinary purposes.
This is an example of what happens, when you tell your customers a
card has HDCP, when it does not.
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/6/11/get-a-free-ati-radeon-hd-4650-.aspx
*******
Do you have a link to the product you bought on the Microcenter site ?
I see they're selling at least one "extension cable", which would have
the wrong polarity on one end if you just wanted to connect a monitor
to a video card.
Paul