Surface Pro Mini DisplayPort to Dual HDMI Adaptor by Zotac works well

[jeffskent]

I just got the above adaptor for less than $50 (S&H included) hooked up to a 27" Planar and a 24" Dell monitor. It displays well on both monitors and the mouse moves from screen to screen smoothly. The windows move easily from display to display. The SP appears to have the power to display 1920X1080 screens on the tablet screen and the two external screens as it is now.

I believe that Panos Panay said during the last Reddit conversation that MS is working hard on making Win 8 handle multiple monitors better than it does now.

 

[jeffskent]

I'm surprised that there isn't more interest in dual hdmi monitors working well on the SP. The display is 3840X1080 and it displays as many Windows windows as you would like. Using the Stardock ModernMix $5 utility, it is also possible to display as many Modern(Metro) style windows on the desktop as you wish. I ran the FutureMark 3DMark benchmark suite and it ran fine with the dual monitors, except that it said the graphics adapter wasn't supported, and it ran all the tests from the center point of the two external monitors. So far no glitches or issues that I can find. It will be nice to have a real time stock market viewing program (Charles Schwab's StreetSmartEdge) running and the Schwab.com website account page both open and active on large monitors at the same time. I could also monitor space ship launches in real time on multiple monitors, if I had any space ships to launch.

 

[Profoxcg]

I'm surprised that there isn't more interest in dual hdmi monitors working well on the SP. The display is 3840X1080 and it displays as many Windows windows as you would like. Using the Stardock ModernMix $5 utility, it is also possible to display as many Modern(Metro) style windows on the desktop as you wish. I ran the FutureMark 3DMark benchmark suite and it ran fine with the dual monitors, except that it said the graphics adapter wasn't supported, and it ran all the tests from the center point of the two external monitors. So far no glitches or issues that I can find. It will be nice to have a real time stock market viewing program (Charles Schwab's StreetSmartEdge) running and the Schwab.com website account page both open and active on large monitors at the same time. I could also monitor space ship launches in real time on multiple monitors, if I had any space ships to launch.

I have to say that this is amazing - and while at first I thought that having a 3840 x 1080 screen as opposed to having the conventional two screen was a little weird, it is actually the same if not better ?

I just got my Zotac tonight and I managed to find two HDMI cables to test. I am very impressed at how the surface makes all this work so well.
I really like having the task bar stretch across both screen having that and having the "eyefinity" look.

 

[jeffskent]

I'm amazed as well. MS is still supposed to be working on improving the ability of Win 8 to handle multiple monitors with multiple resolutions. Also, ModernMix seems to work well at making MS Store apps appear in re sizable windows, so one could, if one had the need to do so, have 8 or more Win 8 and Modern apps, in their own windows, placed anywhere on the two 27" monitors running a combined desktop resolution of 3840X1080. Not bad for a $999 machine that weighs only two pounds and fits in a manila envelope.

 

[Profoxcg]

I want to know though if it is possible to make the external monitors behave as two rather than one large screen, or better yet, to prevent dialog boxes from appearing in the center of the screen.
Otherwise I am in love. Jeff post a picture of you setup, ill post mine.

 

[anthonyfear]

did you ever figure this out?

I too would prefer two separate screens rather than being detected as a single large one.

I've tried using a USB adapter instead but it's so much slower than DP.

 

[jeffskent]

There seems to be a problem with using 2 hdmi cables on the Zotac adaptor a year later. I can't get two monitors to show up all the time. Even one monitor will black out for 5 seconds or so from time to time unless all the cables are plugged in tightly and not moved at all. I don't know if this is the fault of the Zotac, but I think it is. An MS store cable works fine for one monitor. A Fry's adapter works fine for one monitor, but adding the second monitor on my Surface Pro 1 now seems very unreliable. I bought the MS dock and returned it because I couldn't get reliable power connections to the Pro. I suspect the problem lies in the small size and fragility of the MiniDisplayPort connection, but further testing is required to confirm this.

 

[Wellington Perera]

jeffskent ... from where did you purchase this?

 

[Arizona Willie]

I had bought a display adapter but couldn't get it to work with my monitor.
Chromecast DID work but, because it went through the wireless network, it was ungodly slow. Terrible delay so I took it back.

Now I have a 4K TV with HDMI ports ( my old HD tv was from 2004 and did not have HDMI ) but I can't find that Microsoft adapter that I bought.

I too am using an original Surface Pro I and my desktop computer has big problem so I am stuck trying to use the tablet for everything. I'm sitting in the Living Room right now .... wishing I could get this tiny screen to show on my 55" Sony UHD TV.

Just in case someone may have run into the same problem with their computer and knows how to solve it --- my desktop machine's C drive .... a SSD ... has been losing Free Space for no reason. Avast ... my virus program company ... spent 4 hours or so running verious tests trying to clean up the machine but didn't find any ACTUAL virii.

They managed to clean out some old files or something and got about 75 GB free but after a couple of hours it was all gone and was down to 2 GB free space.

I thought it was the drive's controller and bought a new drive and started re-building and installed Windows was installing my programs and copying data files from backups and noticed the brand new disk was running out of free space too.

It's an ASUS motherboard but their tech support is no more help than our cats.