I am now having this issue as well on el capitan after upgrading from yosemite, on 2015 retina iMac. I even specifically waited for a .1 release of 10.11 to hopefully not have launch issues.
On yosemite, it was working, but i had to turn off/on the monitor after ever restart/sleep, but it would work.
now, nothing I've tried works.
- thunderbolt to dvi = no joy
- thunderbolt to hdmi = no joy
- thunderbolt 2 dock, direct hdmi to hdmi = no joy
- thunderbolt 2 dock, thunderbolt to hdmi = no joy
- thunderbolt 2 dock, hdmi to dvi = no joy
tried pram, smc reset. tried my old trick as well, no luck.
interestingly, thunderbolt to hdmi on my 2015 retina mbp works. so does hdmi direct. same config on iMac as above does not.
it's a dell monitor (2408wfp).