Hey there do it yourself technicians today. I want to talk to you about a scammy product that should never exist at HDMI to VGA cable. This is kind of a follow up to the episode that I did a couple of weeks ago about adding a screen to your computer But it's a warning because everything is not always as it seems. I really don't like dodgy marketing practices and when it's dodgy marketing for a dodgy product I get really annoyed. Case in point is this. A HDMI to VGA cable. In basically every scenario I can find this cable does absolutely nothing. It looks like you should be able to plug it into the HDMI port of your laptop and plug it into a VGA screen. It won't work. It can't work. It's just a cable. VGA is an analog signal. HDMI is a digital signal. The two simply are not compatible. Somebody described it as oil and water. Now you can get an adapter something that looks like this. The difference is there's if electronics in here that do the actual conversion and those electronics cost money. These adapters tend to be in the 20 to 30 dollar range. Often these have to be powered. Although these days they've managed to steal enough voltage from the HDMI and VGA signal to be able to work without power. But what they do is a digital to analog conversion. So one of these combined with a standard VGA cable like this will get you a HDMI signal out of your laptop and into a VGA monitor. But one of these will not. I mean it's a great idea to be able to do it with an 8 dollar cable. But an 8 dollar cable that simply doesn't do anything is completely useless. So why do they exist? Well I found two use cases that might actually work. I've seen posts about an upscaling DVD player that actually outputs VGA over the HDMI cable somehow. But why they would do such a thing? I have absolutely no idea. And there was also some mention of some ATI graphics cards doing the same. If that's the case, ATI, stop it. It's silly. Don't output analog signals through a VGA connector. Please. But these cables are available all over eBay and Amazon. The thing is if you look really closely, they get a whole lot of bad reviews. Simply because people buy them and try them and they don't work. Now what really confuses me is they also get some good reviews. I don't know whether people have a lot of these edge type units that actually do work or whether they're too embarrassed to say anything or whether they buy the cable because they think they might need it one day and they never actually use it. I have this cable. I don't even know where it came from. Somebody probably gave me a box of cables at some stage and it was in there. And maybe it's a good lesson for everybody. If you're trying to buy something and it looks too good to be true, maybe just do a Google and see what you can find out. Googleing HDMI to VGA converter brings up a list of articles especially on Cora where people discuss how they can't possibly work. But as I'm very fond of saying, you don't know what you don't know. Sometimes it's a lesson you need to learn. But I'd also recommend if you have bought one of these recently, I would lodge a case with eBay. It's simply not a known workable product. Yes, they do have a little caveat down the bottom that says that it won't work but it's way down and not very obvious at all. Of course, if they can provide a use case where it does actually work, then maybe I will understand that. But at least they need to advertise it upfront. This cable simply can't work as designed. It's an analog signal to a digital signal. Now if somebody is exporting an analog signal over a digital connector, they need to stop that too. Follow the standards people. Shhhh. Question of the day. So, do you know one of the edge cases where one of these cables actually work? I'd love to know. Let me know in the comments down below. Or if you've been scammed, let me know that too. I really want to get the word out so people don't buy these stupid cables. The tech doctor exists to help you become your own technician. Learn about the technology, protect yourself from the bad guys and scammers and fix it when it breaks. If you're watching this on YouTube, there's some older episodes you may not have seen before here and here. And you can click on the logo down here to subscribe to the channel, then click the bell to be notified of all the new episodes as they come here. Thank you so much for watching. Have a great day and I'll see you on the next episode. Bye.