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Apple has just announced the new MacBook Airs, Mac mini, and Thunderbolt display. One of the features of the Thunderbolt display that caught my eye was its ability to daisy-chain two displays together from one Thunderbolt port (on a MacBook Pro).

I already have two 24" monitors and I don't feel like paying for two £900 displays. I worked out that all I need is a Thunderbolt hub/splitter so that I can plug the two cables that emerge into mini DisplayPort-to-DVI adapters.

Does anyone know of any Thunderbolt hubs or splitters? Or does anyone know of an alternative method?

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arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/09/… – user11741 Oct 7 '11 at 22:05

4 Answers

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I think that this question has already been asked:

Does Thunderbolt Support Chaining Multiple Monitors?

To sum it up, it is too early for a splitter or hub for a Thunderbolt port. But you can daisy chain.

And this sums it up as well: http://www.the-cable-store.com/contents/en-us/d44_lightpeak_hubs.html

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up vote 2 down vote

There is no hub or splitter available at present.

At the risk of leading to further open-ended discussion (something they don't like here on Ask Different), let me mention that Intel held a technology demonstration in September, last month, at their Intel Developers Forum, where they showed prototypes of many Thunderbolt peripherals and devices from several different manufacturers. For each one of them, they indicated that the product would be available for sale sometime in the summer of 2012.

In other words, there will be many types of Thunderbolt devices and peripherals at some point in the future, but there is very little on the market right now.

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up vote 1 down vote

At the very least, you can get one Thunderbolt display and daisy-chain one of your 24" monitors off of that. I don't know about splitters; I haven't seen any.

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I read on the Mac Forums that this is not possible, they must both be Thunderbolt displays to daisy chain. There was apparently a demonstration using a hub where it did work though but not daisy chaining. – vaughan Oct 28 '11 at 9:52
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The Apple ThunderBolt displays have a bug where you cannot hook a mini DisplayPort monitor or adapter directly to them, but it's possible that they'll fix the bug in a firmware update, and I doubt future models will have the bug. If you have the display then another TB device, the mini DisplayPort monitor will work after that. – CajunLuke Oct 28 '11 at 14:10
up vote 1 down vote

This device allows you to connect two DVI monitors attached to one Thunderbolt/DisplayPort.

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The Saphire adapter does not allow for independent use of each monitor. it will either mirror the same thing on each one or treat them both as a single display together, stretching your desktop across both. I want a solution that will treat each monitor as it's own display. I feel like there isn't anything like this on the way. – user28119 Aug 27 '12 at 15:43

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