Since a huge volume of data will be sent – especially for 4K resolutions, the connection will be done through an USB-C or Thunderbolt port. Instead, you will need to use a capture card that will connect via USB to your laptop and the device you want to stream for.

With the money spent on buying such a gadget, you could easily purchase a decent 4K TV instead.īut if you don’t have enough space for an external TV or you simply prefer to use your laptop’s monitor for receiving signal from an external source such as a gaming console, you can do these, but not via HDMI. However, these involve investing into a capture card or similar devices which are usually pretty expensive. Workarounds that you can useĮven though the easy route – that of simply plugging in an HDMI cable into your laptop and a console, for example – is not possible, there are workarounds to use the display of your laptop as a monitor for external devices. You can still find a workaround to receive signal and display it on your laptop’s monitor, but that won’t happen by changing the HDMI to input. A laptop’s HDMI port is built to be output only, so you can’t use it as an input port no matter what. And as long as your laptop’s port is only built to send signal to an external source and not receive audio and/or video signal (like most laptops today), changing HDMI output to input on a laptop is impossible. It’s not the cable that decides which way the signal goes, but the port itself.

A laptop with a port built for Output only will only be able to send signal and not receive it. Unfortunately, many websites out there tell you otherwise and recommend investing in HDMI adapters of sorts but that is not going to help. And it is built only for output – which is sending signal, no matter what cable you plug in. It’s not the cable that is responsible for sending or receiving signal, but the port itself and how the laptop is built. It is not possible to use an HDMI adapter or anything similar to change a laptop’s HDMI output to input.

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