Forum Discussion
Wireless connect disables external Display Port
MicrosoftNice timing I was preparing my techsummit session yesterday and we faced the exact same issue.
Long story short it is an HDCP issue. We work around it with a samll box that we put between the HUB and the screen. It changed all the behavior.
Not sure I understand all but I can share the reference of the hardware if you wish.
I would be interested in what you have between the HUB Display Port and the external display.
The tricky part is that I need to keep the digital audio intact from the laptop through the DP out on the HUB to connect to a Cisco SX80 codec. The codec drives the displays and feeds the audio amplifier. With the DP/HDMI operating, the digital audio is passed along and decoded in the codex. When the HUB Display Port out is disabled, that will require me to run to run 70' of audio cable back to the Cisco SX80, and doing the Digital-Analog-Digital dance as well.
Yes, this flaw is not documented anywhere - in fact the Surface HUB product is poorly documented. Had we been aware of this, we would have rejected the proposal and purchased a much less expensive "display only" screen without the crippled version of Win 10.
The confirmation on HDCP is appreciated. I know of the devices of which you speak.
Greg, you will not get digital audio out of the display port output of the HUB for very specific reasons. The HUB is designed to work almost entirely with its own peripherals when it comes to sound and to a lesser extent video. The reason for not exporting sound by design is for echo cancelling. The speakers and microphones are engineering to work together to provide a good conferencing solution. Although you can connect third party USB and bluetooth devices, these would also typically have their own echo cancelling built in. However exporting just audio out to an external speaker while using wide field microphones built into the surface would cripple the echo cancelling capabilities of the unit. Although my client is also using theirs as a presentation device, I acknowledge that the surface is really designed to be a self contained conferencing and collaboration device.
Greg
I don't think this is necessarily a fault of the Surface Hub, this is a requirement of HDCP which is a well documented standard. However I agree that it could be made clearer in the Miracast information on the Admin guide that HDCP will cause the DisplayPort out to go black when using Miracast.
I will also agree that the Surface Hub used to have quite poor documentation. In fact, when we got our first ones for testing in September 2016, there was almost NO documentation. We had to figure most of it out ourselves. These days though, almost everything is documented.
The case in point is Microsoft cannot account for every scenario and every use of the device with third party peripherals. They can document the device itself and it's various functions, but they can't necessarily say how it will perform in other cases. I'm not looking at Microsoft to explain how the Surface Hub will react to the new AV kit we're installing, I'm having to make reasonable assumptions based on known behaviours.
Regarding the box, my guess is Eric is using a Miracast receiver that then plugs into the Surface Hub over cable for video in. At that point the Hub can then send the video out on DisplayPort as the HDCP won't apply from the Surface Hub side. However I could be wrong and would also like to check what Eric used to get around the problem.
To say that the Hub runs a 'crippled' version of Windows 10 though is wrong. You and I both know that it's not crippled; it's optimised for the device and the use case. Trying to use standard Windows 10 on a large touch-screen is a complete no-go for a meeting room environment. I should know, we trialled it and it was a disaster! The thing that makes it so useful is that the OS is optimised for the type of device it is and the scenarios for which it is being used, restricting issues caused by end users messing around with it and turning a Windows 10 device into an appliance. In a meeting room scenario, where you need to know the device will reset properly and be ready to use from a known good configuration each time this is VITAL.
Given you have a Cisco SX80, I'm a little perplexed why you would have bought a Surface Hub for the room to be honest? We looked at both a Cisco solution (including the SX80 for our boardrooms with the MX700) and the Surface Hub, and would never have tried to marry both together. For us it was clear it's one or the other, otherwise it's getting to be a bit much and introducing too many failure points.
