Club 3D DisplayPort to HDMI 2.0 Adapter Connects Skylake NUC To a UHD TV – Mini Review

The Skylake NUC hit the shelves some 6-7 weeks ago, but the lack of HDMI 2.0 port was a disappointment to many people looking forward to use the Skylake NUC as a HTPC. The full-size HDMI 1.4 port in the NUC can only support 4k resolutions at a maximum of 30 frames per second. However, there is also a DisplayPort 1.2 in the NUC that has enough bandwidth to support 4k at 60 frames per second. However, there are very few televisions with DisplayPort connectors on the market (why?).

DisplayPort 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 adapter seems like a good and easy solution, but there has been none on the market before! It doesn’t sound that complicated, but actually an adapter needs to have quite a bit of active electronics to convert DP 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 signal. Initially there were some DisplayPort to HDMI adapters that were marketed as enabling 4k with high refresh rates, but were actually not HDMI 2.0 compatible and thus they did not enable 60 Hz at 4k resolutions. Club 3D is one of the first manufacturers who have been able to bring their true HDMI 2.0 capable product on the market. The product that I’m looking at today is the Club 3D Mini DisplayPort 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 adapter (CAC-1170). There’s also a full size DisplayPort version.

Features

The spec sheet looks pretty comprehensive.

  • Compliant to DisplayPort Specification 1.2 for 1.62Gbps, 2.7Gbps and 5.4Gbps per lane. Effective (video) bandwidth 17.28Gbps
  • Compliant to HDMI™ Specification 2.0, data rate up to 6Gbps per TMDS channel. Total throughput 18Gbps
  • Supports full link training and no link training
  • Repeater for HDCP 1.3 and HDCP 2.2
  • 24-bit color and 4:4:4 color sampling
  • Internal YCbCr 4:4:4 / 4:2:2 to YCbCr 4:2:0 conversion capability
  • Supports UHD resolutions up to 3840 x 2160p @ 60Hz and 1080p 3D

Note! Supports Intel HD Graphics 5000 and newer. I tried it with my Haswell i3 NUC that has HD Graphics 4400 and while it worked, the maximum resolution of 3840×2160 was limited to a refresh rate of 30 frames per second (which I could get with standard HDMI 1.4 without the adapter as well).

Unboxing and Installation

The device is shipped in a relatively big packaging made of recycled paper. Inside you’ll find the adapter itself. The adapter is not very exciting, it’s just a piece of cable with a HDMI 2.0 connector at the other end and Mini DisplayPort connector at the other end. Well, it’s an adapter, what did I expect!? Anyhow, it’s small enough to completely disappear behind your NUC and/or TV.

I plugged it into my Intel NUC6i3SYH (also known as Skylake i3 NUC) that should support 4k @ 60 fps. Then I connected a regular HDMI cable (no need for fancy HDMI 2.0 compatible cables, most of them work) between my Samsung UE48JU6075XXE 4k TV (basically UE48JU6000 series TV) and the adapter. That’s it.

Start the NUC, picture comes up as expected and Windows starts ok. Looks good, but the frame rate initially was only 30 fps. However, the driver let me change to 60 fps and that worked just fine.

I took a short video of using the adapter in both Windows and Linux (OpenELEC).

Of modelines, xorg.conf and xrandr..

When I started my Linux-based HTPC for the first, I was disappointed to see 4k resolution only available with 30 Hz refresh rate. However, after some digging I found out that the TV does not report the 3840×2160 resolution with 60 Hz refresh rate in the EDID data to the NUC. There’s a command xrandr that will print out each supported mode. There was no 3840×2160 with 60 Hz refresh rate.

I found out that this is pretty common and that you can add a mode into the list of supported modes. In my case, the two following commands did the trick.

xrandr --newmode "3840x2160_60" 594.000 3840 4016 4104 4400 2160 2168 2178 2250 +hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode DP1 "3840x2160_60"

Then it was possible to change the mode with the following command.

xrandr --output DP1 --mode 3840x2160_60

Now I’m not sure if it is the adapter or the TV that is not reporting the correct mode back to the NUC. I assume it’s the TV, but am not fully sure. Anyone out there with the same adapter and can get 4k@60fps in Linux without any tricks?

Conclusion

Well, it seems to work. I’ve been happily using the Skylake NUC with my 4k television for a few days. I can get 4k@60 fps out from my i3 Skylake NUC both in Windows and Linux, which is why you want to buy an adapter like this. The price is pretty reasonable as well ($30 / €40 as of Feb 2016) and I expect it to come down as more vendors enter the market. I did not have a chance to try out the HDCP 2.2 support that is claimed for the device, but maybe later then.

This device helps to overcome the other major issue that the HTPC folks had with the Skylake NUC: lack of HDMI 2.0 connectivity. Other than that it’s pretty hard to get too excited about it. It’s just an adapter that seems to do its job.

PS. If you have one with an older firmware, contact Club 3D to upgrade the firmware. Otherwise you might have issues getting your NUC to feed 60 fps modes to your TV.

25 Responses

  1. Michael says:

    Thanks Olli… NUC’s are addictive and I have 2 x NUC5PPYH, one as a server with an 8 bay USB3 enclosure attached and the other as the streaming client. I am probably going to hold out until 2nd half of this year for the Kaby Lake NUC with HDMI 2.0 and 10 bit, rather than getting the Skylake NUC. Also since they finally announced the UHD premium alliance specs, I’ll get one of the new 2016 TV’s later this year which leaves my AV receiver…. It’s a 2015 Sony STRDN1060 and whilst it supports hdcp 2.2, it seems its only 4:4:4 at 30 hz and 4:2:0 at 60 hz, so I’m trying to get some sort of idea of the actual noticeable difference between 4k at 60/30 hz which you will have seen with this adapter.

    I know Skylake is only 8 bit, and I know I should be to connect the Kaby Lake NUC’s HDMI 2.2 direct to the tv and then run the ARC back the receiver anyway but can you describe how much difference you see from 4k at 60 hz and 4k at 30 hz please? It’s hard to notice the difference on your video and to get maximum benefit of UHD premium specs, then everything in the chain has to support it….

    • Olli says:

      Well, you want to have 60 Hz if:
      – you’re watching 50/60 Hz material
      – you’re using the NUC as your desktop PC

      I did notice siginificant difference between 30/60 Hz when using Windows on it. 60 Hz is just so much smoother. Also, watching a 60p movie on a 30p screen skips every other frame leading to noticeable judder. Remember that playing a 60p movie at 30p will not look too good, but a movie shot at 30p and played at 30p will look good, as the characteristics of 30 frames per second have been considered already during the shooting (shutter speeds, motion blur etc).

      However, if all you’re going to do is to watch 24p 4k movies on it, you will not notice any difference (there won’t be any)! So, it all boils down to the question: what you want to use your NUC and the TV for?

      • Adam says:

        Exactly! That’s why I don’t understand why it’s a dealbreaker as a HTPC, 90% of the content will be 24Hz so you don’t need the adapter. Even if you just want to read few articles in the browser 30Hz is just fine. But if you want animated things then yes, 60Hz is needed but HTPC users don’t want to browse stuff much, they just select their file and play it

        • nucblognet says:

          Well, it all depends on your use case. There are already UHD TV broadcasts on some satellites that are 4k at 50 Hz in Europe. Of course too much of the broadcasts are still just full HD, so that’s not here yet.

          However, as we’re on the break of UHD and HEVC, I consider that a real futureproof HTPC should be able to do 10-bit HEVC decoding and output 4k at 60 fps. My needs are not there yet, but they’ll be in the future I’m sure. However, I currently have a two-year old Haswell NUC in my living room that fulfill all my current needs – no need to upgrade that one until I can get the two things mentioned above. Other people probably have other needs and Skylake NUC might just be the perfect HTPC for them.

          • Adam says:

            TV broadcasts are coming through your TV or set-top box normally. The majority of Movies and TV shows will not be 60Hz (in the near future). So I just can repeat myself, very few 60Hz content out there so it’s not a dealbreaker.
            The only main source of 4K@60fps is YouTube, but you can soon enjoy that on your TV anyway.

            What future proof? Even with that, there will be other reasons to buy a new NUC. Yeah having that could add 1 more or 2 years if it’s enough future proofing for you :D

            But I agreed that if the machine is capable to run 4K@60Hz without any problems then why the heck they cut that tiny cost of the 2.0 port. I’m pissed off as well because I need a new HTPC and would love to have 4K@60Hz but it’s definitely not a dealbreaker, it’s just inconvenient

  2. Onizuka says:

    Anyone willing to help a poor soul upgrade their adapter? Neither my Broadwell NUC nor my Haswell MacAir (running Win10) recognize the intel graphics and refuse to update the firmware. Will pay shipping both ways!

  3. Necrosis says:

    Confirmed working indeed.

    @OLLI: I Would suggest adding the following to an advanced section of this guide to make it complete.

    For a perfect setup do the following:

    Create autostart.sh in the configfiles folder (via SAMBA) and add the following line in there:

    xrandr –output DP1 –set “Broadcast RGB” “Full”

    The above sets the color spectrum to full RGB range (removes banding and raises black levels). Make sure you have you TV also set to Full range otherwise it won’t work.

    Then:

    Before adding the resolution by typing: xrandr –newmode “3840x2160_60” 594.000 3840 4016 4104 4400 2160 2168 2178 2250 +hsync +vsync

    You need to set SSH to the right display:

    export DISPLAY=:0.0

    I also suggest following the EDID guide.

    http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php/Configuring_a_Custom_xorg.conf#tab=Intel

    Basically enter via ssh:

    ls /sys/class/drm

    cat /sys/class/drm/card0-DP-1/status

    mkdir -p /storage/.config/firmware/edid
    cat /sys/class/drm/card0-HDMI-A-1/edid > /storage/.config/firmware/edid/edid.bin

    cd ~
    mkdir -p cpio/lib/firmware/edid
    cp .config/firmware/edid/edid.bin cpio/lib/firmware/edid/
    cd cpio/
    find . -print | cpio -ov -H newc > ../edid.cpio

    mount -o remount,rw /flash
    mv ../edid.cpio /flash/

    Lastly, edit the kernel boot parameters to load the cpio archive and the edid data:
    nano -w /flash/extlinux.conf

    Add to the end of the APPEND line:
    initrd=/edid.cpio drm_kms_helper.edid_firmware=HDMI-A-1:edid/edid.bin

    Then reboot!

    • Olli says:

      Thank you for your comprehensive post, I’m sure it will help many. And my apologies for not responding earlier as I’m currently travelling.

      Do you know if it’s the adapter or the tv that doesn’t report the 60Hz mode in the EDID data?

  4. Necrosis says:

    A typo on the last line:

    HDMI-A-1 must be DP-1

  5. Onizuka says:

    What exactly are you accomplishing with these extra steps?

  6. Christian says:

    How did you get sound? Via the DP–>HDMI adapter as well?

  7. Marek says:

    Thanks for your help guys but I am still struggling here. Recently (a week ago) I purchased Skylake NUC i3 version and I installed Windows 10 / Kodi and OpenELEC will be next. My major reason for this was to get all HD audio working out of Kodi in Windows as I was coming from Mac Mini and Mac OSX just does not support HD Audio codecs. So right now, out of Kodi (v.16) I am getting all HD audio (Dolby TrueHD and DTS MA) via HDMI to my receiver by enabling bitstream in Kodi. However the quality of the video in Kodi such 1080p is of i.e. the black levels are weak and colours are washed out and not enough contrasts etc… The same material looked exceptional on mac mini running Kodi (same version)
    I have Sony xbr55850c TV so it is full 4K TV but right now I am not using Display Port out of NUC because I am ordering 3d club adapter shortly and then I want to switch to using DP —>HDMI at 4K/60p by connecting directly to TV.

    So here my questions issues:

    – how do I fix colour/contrast/black leve issues right now with 1080p resolution ? Are there settings in Kodi,NUC and Sony TV that I need to set in order to get the best picture quality ? Please help me with those if you can ?

    – once I start using DP to my 4KTV will I need to also set the settings up ?

    – my ultimate goal is to hook this NUC up to SONY 4K TV via DP /HDMI 2.0 adapter just for video portion and then simultaneously use NUC’s HDMI port to feed HD audio into my receiver. According to NUC documentation the simultaneous output should be possible ? Did any body try that yet and are there any tricks that I should know ?

    Lastly, just FYI – I tried one miniDP adapter to HDMI 2.0 but it was not from 3d company so I assume that it was not working properly, It was displaying 4K but at 30fps only. And another odd thing was that with that adapter, under audio properties supported formats were only showing 6 channels and no HD audio, was that because I had it connect to HDMI on the TV not on the receiver ?

    Any help would be greatly appreciated , I am so close to have my perfect media player with this NUC :)

    Thanks,
    Marek

    • Olli says:

      Hi Marek,

      Sorry for the slow response, but have been travelling lately. Checkout this page for the washed-out-blacks issue:
      http://kodi.wiki/view/Video_levels_and_color_space

      It’s quite a bit to read, but eventually helpful. Basically you’ll need to make sure that Kodi output correct values for your TV (and its current settings). Some screens take values 0-255 and some 16-235.

      The NUC is capable of outputting content from both ports simultaneously. Then it’s up to your OS/application to put out the video stream from one port and the audio on another. 4k@60Hz through DP together with 1080p@60Hz through HDMI is supported by the NUC.

      • Marek says:

        Thanks Olli, I figured out the video levels :) but I want to be able to output 4k@60Hz through DP together with 1080p@60Hz through HDMI at the same time in Kodi – how would I go to acomplish that or in any other application for that matter – can Kodu split outputting video and audio via 2 different ports ?

        I would like to send my Kodi video to 4K TV via DP to HDMI 2.0 and the audio from that file via HDMI to my Denon receiver at the same time.

        That’s is my ultimate goal so I don’t have to buy a new receiver since the current one supports HD Audi codecs ( DTS HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD)

        Help please :)

        Marek

  8. If your Sony 4K is an Android one, then you should have received an update that fixes a lot of problems and adds HDR to all Android based TVs. You can adjust the picture settings for each HDMI input source individually

  9. Robin St.Clair says:

    I am trying to run a second 4K display at 60fps. Given that HDMI 1.4b does not support 60fps, is the USB 3 port a valid option?

  10. cschaubr says:

    I seem to have issues when enabling hardware acceleration in KODI 15.2 Jarvis (16.1 gives me too many crashes when starting movies). The colours just seem completely off. I’m using the Intel NUC6I3SYH and have the latest HD Graphics Drivers (15.40.23.4444). Am I missing something? Any ideas?

  11. Kenni says:

    For those interested, here’s a Xorg configuration file, which should hopefully work out-of-the box on a Skylake NUC with a Club 3D 4K@60Hz adaptor for all of the common refresh rates which you would need on a HTPC:
    3840×[email protected]
    3840×[email protected]
    3840×[email protected]
    3840×[email protected]
    3840×[email protected]
    3840×[email protected]
    3840×[email protected]
    3840×[email protected]

    All of the modelines in the file have been tested with success on my NUC6i5SYH with the Club 3D adaptor and a Sony X80C 4K TV. As I’m in Europe, with most content being delivered in 25fps, I’ve selected the 50Hz modeline to be the default one rather than the 60Hz modeline. It makes the Kodi menu a tiny bit less smooth (barely noticeable), but makes starting and stopping video playback faster by a couple of seconds, as no resolution/refresh rate change is needed by Kodi or by the TV in most cases. If you want 60Hz to be the default refresh rate, change line 12 from “3840x2160_50.00” to “3840x2160_60.00”.

    The first five modelines are commented out, as these are already detected correctly on my system.

    Download the configuration file here:
    http://pastebin.com/raw/kZqeW0ZQ

    ..save it into the Xorg configuration directory, like for example:
    /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/01-skylake-nuc.conf

    …and restart the system :)

    If it doesn’t work, have a look at the xorg log file, which should give you an indication of what’s wrong. In my case the maximum vertical/horizontal refresh rates provided by the TV through EDID was sufficient for the higher refresh rates, but it might be necessary with other TVs to manually add the maximum vertical/horizontal refresh rates to the configuration file.

  12. regulatorwatts says:

    Just wanted to post that I can’t get this adapter, even with the latest firmware, to display 4k @ 60Hz on my 2014 HU7500 Samsung UHD TV with a NUC5i7. I’ve tried everything, new HDMI cable, 2.0 certified, latest TV firmware, UHD Deep Color enabled (sets the HDMI port to 2.0 mode), latest Intel 6100 graphics driver… A pity.

    • Kenni says:

      Hi,

      Which modeline are you using with xrandr? The 60Hz modeline used in this blogpost and in my xorg.conf in my comment above are created by simply multiplying the pixel rate of the EDID modelines with 2. I have been unable to get any calculator to create the same modelines.

      Since that one apparently doesn’t work in your case, you can try with a modeline calculated from the CVT/GTF standards. I’ve calculated some alternative modelines below, which you can try with xrandr:

      $ cvt 3840 2160 60
      # 3840×2160 59.98 Hz (CVT 8.29M9) hsync: 134.18 kHz; pclk: 712.75 MHz
      Modeline “3840x2160_60.00” 712.75 3840 4160 4576 5312 2160 2163 2168 2237 -hsync +vsync

      $ cvt -r 3840 2160 60
      # 3840×2160 59.97 Hz (CVT 8.29M9-R) hsync: 133.25 kHz; pclk: 533.00 MHz
      Modeline “3840x2160R” 533.00 3840 3888 3920 4000 2160 2163 2168 2222 +hsync -vsync

      $ gtf 3840 2160 60
      # 3840×2160 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 134.10 kHz; pclk: 712.34 MHz
      Modeline “3840x2160_60.00” 712.34 3840 4152 4576 5312 2160 2161 2164 2235 -HSync +Vsync

  13. Timo Repo says:

    Hi,

    Does this adapter transfer True-HD and DTS-HD MA or video signal only?

  14. I know this post is a year old now, but I’m hoping you remember something about your i3 Haswell NUC.

    You say you could only do 3840×2160 @ 30Hz because of CPU/GPU limitations. However, the docs for the i3 Haswell NUC (D34010WYC) says it supports 3840×2160 @ 60Hz on display port.

    How sure are you that you cannot use this converter to get full res @ 60Hz on a Haswell NUC?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.