Apple Thunderbolt Display with Apple TV / Fire TV

[gguerini]

Hello,

My company is selling their Apple Thunderbolt Displays for $300. I *think* it's a good deal. Even though it's not a 4K display, I still really like the quality of it. I couldn't find anything for this price range on eBay/Amazon. The ones I found are refurbished or have some sort of dent or other small defects.

The question is, can I plug an Apple TV or Fire TV it? I know the display is Thunderbolt (mini display port), not HDMI, but I think I can find a Thunderbolt to HDMI adapter, right?

Well, I just google for an adapter but I couldn't find a female Thunderbolt/Mini display port to HMDI. So now I don't know what to do.

What do you think?

Thanks

 

[Lennyvalentin]

The question is, can I plug an Apple TV or Fire TV it? I know the display is Thunderbolt (mini display port), not HDMI, but I think I can find a Thunderbolt to HDMI adapter, right?

No, the Apple TB display only works with thunderbolt. You can't coax it into showing a picture from HDMI devices with an adapter or anything like that. You'd have to plug your HDMI device into a video framegrabber attached to a Mac, which is then attached (via thunderbolt) to the TB display... Kinda clunky and expensive, going that route.

Also, I wouldn't pay $300 for a used TB display, not after all this time. TB display uses old, obsolete TB1/2 mini displayport type connector, and its performance and characteristics is unimpressive today. There's just as good, if not better new displays to be had for that kind of money these days. And, if Apple has declared the TB display obsolete you can't even get it repaired if it breaks, unless you find someone somewhere with spare parts, or buy a second monitor 2nd hand to cannibalize. I've been trying to find out if this is the case, but not been able to find out. Apple did stop selling them back in 2016, so if they're not officially obsolete yet it's probably not long until it happens. After all, it's a really old monitor design by now, they first came out on the market back in august of 2011 IIRC...

So save your money, dude.

 

[pgilmore7]

I have my Apple TV hooked up to my 27" Cinema Display A1316. There is an adapter Kanex XD, it converts HDMI to Mini Display Port, it works great. I don't know if it will work with the Thunderbolt Display A1407. A lot of times people call the Cinema Display a Thunderbolt Display so I figured I would mention it. You can still find parts for them (sometimes used) and they are not hard to work on. You can score one on Ebay at times for $50-100.

 

[chuckimo]

I too would like to use the TB Display for Apple TV—there’s a lot of aesthetic value to the Apple display that is not present in the market today. I know I’m not alone in this thinking because the market for used TB displays is still very good and they are maintaining their value well. Tho the market would be small, I have to (perhaps overly optimistically) imagine that there’s a way to convert the signal to work without putting a Mac in the middle? :-/

 

[chrfr]

I too would like to use the TB Display for Apple TV—there’s a lot of aesthetic value to the Apple display that is not present in the market today. I know I’m not alone in this thinking because the market for used TB displays is still very good and they are maintaining their value well. Tho the market would be small, I have to (perhaps overly optimistically) imagine that there’s a way to convert the signal to work without putting a Mac in the middle? :-/

There's no way to use any Thunderbolt device with an Apple TV whatsoever. The glare on those displays makes them a poor choice for use as a TV anyway.
Apple did sell the Cinema Display version that used Mini DisplayPort (as mentioned in post 2 of this thread), and you could adapt that with an HDMI converter, but there are no brightness or color controls available when the displays are not connected to a computer so this would all be of limited usefulness.