Unable to get video from an M1 MacBook Air or Intel iMac via USB-C

Products Spectrum ES07D03 | General Discussion
1

My Spectrum is working correctly on my Windows PC via HDMI and everything looks great. When I plug my M1 MacBook Air to the USB-C input, switch the input on the Spectrum, the Mac charges, but doesn’t detect a second display. The Spectrum eventually says “No Signal” and goes to sleep. I’ve tried the same on my Intel iMac with the same result. I’ve tried the USB-C cable that came with the Mac as well as a USB-C Thunderbolt cable from my 24" LG that I know works.

I’ve updated the Spectrum to the latest firmware, and it didn’t help. Has anyone else seen this?

1 Like
2

Look’s like someone has a similar mac issue here 4K 144Hz over USB-C from MacBook Pro? - #12 by farvz

3

I am also having the same doubt. I don’t now if the type C cable can be directly used for display purposes. In my case is not working either…

4

There’s 2 things that can be easy to overlook that could be the cause of display connection problems with a USB-C cable.

(1) The cable has to be plugged into the USB-C port at the bottom of the Spectrum, right next to where the power cable plugs in. The USB-C port on the side, just under the regular USB ports, is only used for connecting peripherals to the USB hub

(2) The cable needs to be a proper USB 3.x cable, with a transfer speed of 10Gbps or more for DP1.2 or 40Gbps for DP1.4.

There are a lot of USB-C cables on the market that are mainly intended for charging, and they’ve only got the USB 2.0 wires connected.

3 Likes
5

Thank you for the response!

  1. I’m definitely plugging into the downward facing USB-C port.

  2. I’ve tried the Thunderbolt 3 cable which came with my LG UltraFine 4K. On that monitor, I’m able to get 4K60 with this cable.

I’ll play around with it a little more today.

6

So then it is confirmed that we cannot display the MacBook in the spectrum using the C type cable that brings the Mac?

7

Ok, used the USB-C cable that came with my external hard drive and it works.

@Luque535 I think we can confirm that the charging cable that comes with MacBooks won’t work for using the Spectrum as an external display.

3 Likes
8

Yes, data-transfer speed of the Apple USB-C Charge Cable is limited to 480Mbps and it doesn’t support video. But I don’t know why your tb3 cable didn’t work :thinking:

Anyway, congratulations!