EDID Managers

[AdevProjects]

What are some good brands/models of EDID managers? As cheap as possible but Im looking for something that is also reliable.

[Oaktown]

Gefen HDMI or DVI detective plus are great, easy to program and reliable. They also will work with 4K EDID.

[synapse_gh]

Gefen HDMI or DVI detective plus are great, easy to program and reliable. They also will work with 4K EDID.

I'd call the DVI detective anything but reliable, I've seen them crash entire shows before.

[dirtyjohn_lv]

I've never had problems with the DVI detective (using the same 4 on a regular basis for 5+ years). I know several several guys that travel with them and never had issues either. Great way to get the edid of whatever outputs you need and program a show away from actual screen.

I've also seen several guys travel with DVI parrot (although they are a bit more expensive)

[cosmowe]

Both very reliable...but not very cheap.

Lightware EDID Manager HOME

DVI Parrot HOME

I'm afraid, I can not recommend you any cheaper heardware, because the Gefen EDID managers where the cheapest I've used on a show. An EDID manager is a very important piece of hardware if you use them in your system...The rest of your gear can be so damn f***ing good and solid...but when your EDID Manager break down while your show....you are f***ed!

Wishes
cosmowe

[Oaktown]

I'd call the DVI detective anything but reliable, I've seen them crash entire shows before.

Not sure how they crashed a show but if the lock button isn't moved to lock position and you accidentally hit the program button (which is easy to do), they'll reprogram themselves causing the GPU to resync while doing so.

We own 20+ Gefen HDMI and DVI Detective Plus and they work flawlessly show after show. They are super easy to program with the power adapter and you can lock the EDID once you're done. You can also program them to 5 different default resolution setups. Once they're programmed, they get their 5V power from the HDMI or DVI cable directly.

[synapse_gh]

Hey, maybe I got the only bad one in the batch.

[Warspite]

My Gefen DVI detective died very shortly after purchase. Kramer and Startech works but i am not too happy with all three of them because they cannot force matrox tripple head to send signal to linsn sending cards.

[dirtyjohn_lv]

I dont trust most startech stuff anymore. 8 out 10 things I would ever buy from them would die/not work properly or was so cheap there would be resolution issues.

Not sure why the gefen couldn't force a triple head to send the linsn cards. That exactly how I used them for a couple years with a Macbook pro before getting a server and zdec and novastar stuff

[Warspite]

Linsn is upgrading its hardware. Maybe your card was a bit newer with incard edid done not so disastrous. I started to work with linsn long ago and went all circles of hell. Whether or not your videocard or matrox will detect linsn depends on multiple factors. Starting from sending card hardware revision ending at driver version and number of matrox output and even hotplug or cold start.
As i remember with help of gefen i was able to force matrox to send on one output (2 or 3, but not number 1) and monitor on other. With Kramer i can run two linsn, but only on PC with nvidia, on Macbook Retina with Nvidia - no synk. And Startech just puts my Triple Head in coma. (Any moment i will prefer datapath in place of crappy matrox.)

I can agree about startech hardware overall, but my edid manager works like a tank and forced tons of various laptops to output so needed 720p.

But my verdict is - avoid gefen, kramer and startech - they are definetely not saint graal of edid emulators.