How is video playback on the UGA-2K-A? Any video, flash, file, and DVD.
Hi - thanks for the question!
DisplayLink devices like the UGA-2K-A use a bunch of techniques to make video playback the best it can be for real-time encode/decode over USB 2.0.
With that, there are two main bottlenecks for video playback - the USB 2.0 bus itself, and the CPU which has to apply all those techniques.
As a blanket statement, videophiles who are sensitive to playback artifacts will want to play back video on their main, non-USB screen. USB 2.0, having a max throughput of 480Mbs, will always be a bottleneck for perfect playback at higher resolutions, and no techniques or tricks can get around it (until USB 3.0 products arrive … )
Even normal users will not be happy a whole 2 hour movie over USB in most cases – there will be cases where the CPU or the USB bus can’t keep up, and frames will be dropped. It might not be noticeable in many cases, but when, for example, you have dialog where you’re watching lips move while people speak, small delays will be visible.
So that’s why at Plugable we make a blanket recommendation that you should plan on just moving your video over to your main (non-USB screen).
That said …
For flash and youtube video – especially when running in a window – you start to get into the range where on a modern machine, the quality of playback becomes almost indistinguishable from a PCIe graphics controller attached montior.
So, in practice, on modern machines (dual core or better), we find that most people doing typical web video stuff don’t ever notice or care that what’s running on a USB display.
So all of this depends on a lot of factors, but I hope this answer helps in terms of giving a general idea of whether the products here are what you’re looking for – it depends most how sensitive you are to artifacts, and your PC’s power.