Two external monitors with Dell W19 docking station

@js1177 as noted in the WD19's documentation available on support.dell.com, the dock's USB-C and HDMI outputs use a common source within the dock and therefore cannot be used simultaneously.  They are the only two ports on the dock that are "switched" in this way to create this limitation.  Any other combination of display outputs can be used simultaneously.

Also note that I'm not sure you'd be able to run dual 1080p at 75 Hz.  I know you can run up to dual 1920x1200 at 60 Hz -- the documentation only mentions 1080p since Dell seems not to acknowledge that 1920x1200 exists anymore, although it does work -- but I'm not sure about 1080p at 75 Hz.

@jphughan Thank you for your help. Looks like the DisplayPort to HDMI adapter will be the way to go for this.

@tadtman I ran into this unexpected limitation with another user. It seems that the WD19 does support Dual Mode DisplayPort, which is the ability to send a native HDMI/DVI signal out of its DisplayPort output, but only supports it on one output at a time. In the other user’s case, they fixed it with a USB-C to HDMI cable, since USB-C ports can only send DisplayPort signals and therefore those cables have active signal converter chips to switch the signal to HDMI within the cable, and that worked around this limitation. But that user had three total displays. If you only have two displays and they have HDMI inputs, why don’t you run one of them from the dock’s actual HDMI output using a regular HDMI cable?

Hello, I am running into the same issue. I have two HP monitors that only have HDMI inputs. So I went ahead and bought two DisplayPort to HDMI adapters, and am running two HDMI cables through the adapters to the Docking Station, thinking that would work, but I can still only get one monitor to turn on at a time. Is there anything that I can do to make this arrangement work?

Thanks for responding. Yeah, this seems like a pretty big limitation considering that's the only reason why I got this docking station. And yes, I tried running one HDMI-to-DisplayPort, and one HDMI-to-HDMI and it's the same thing, I can only get one monitor to run at a time.

Please let me know if there is any other way to make this happen, w/o returning the docking station or needing to get new monitors. It seems like a pretty big miss if this powerful docking station cannot run two monitors at once.

Thanks!

@tadtman The docking station can run four displays at once in WD19DC form, which uses the same core unit.  It just seems that DisplayPort to HDMI passive adapters/cables seem to create an issue, although I wasn't expecting that to prevent you from even using regular HDMI alongside it.  But you could try an active DisplayPort to HDMI adapter/cable, since again that means the dock no longer has to rely on Dual Mode DisplayPort, since it will instead run native DisplayPort and have the adapter perform the conversion.  Look for an adapter that mentions support for AMD EyeFinity, since that indicates the correct type of active adapter.  (There is another category of active DP to HDMI adapter meant to connect an HDMI output to a DP input, which is not normally possible, but that's also not what you need here.  But the active adapter types aren't interchangeable.)  Unfortunately you can't use the HDMI and USB-C outputs on the dock simultaneously, otherwise that would have been even easier.  But that's the one combination of outputs that isn't allowed simultaneously.

Ok, I think I see what you mean. So my next steps are to try an active DisplayPort to HDMI adapter (with AMD Eyefinity), or I was also wondering if a DVI to HDMI adapter would work as well? I guess I originally stated that these monitors only had HDMI inputs, but it has an VGA port as well. So do you think a VGA to HDMI cable might work as well?

@tadtman HDMI and DVI are identical signals at an electrical level up to 1920x1200.  But if your displays have HDMI inputs and the dock has HDMI outputs, I'm not sure why you're looking at DVI at all.  VGA might work, but ancient VGA is an analog signal, so any setup that involves using VGA will result in lower image quality.  And all HDMI to VGA adapters are active, but there are separate adapters cables for each direction (HDMI source to VGA display and vice versa), so that's another case where you'd have to be careful to buy the correct type of active adapter.