I have a FW16 running Windows 11 with all the latest updates to OS and BIOS/drivers/etc.
I speak at a lot of conferences and many of them use Decimator (https://www.decimator.com/) display systems, and I always have problems with it, regardless of which port I use or whether I use HDMI or USB-C. The laptop sees the external display and thinks it’s working, but the Decimator system just stays dark.
I know other laptops have similar problems - e.g. a lot of Microsoft’s Surface devices - and I wondered if anybody knew of a solution?
Odds are good the Decimator module is stuck thinking the signal looks like X and it is Y then just aborts. If the problem with Decimator is with things like Surface devices; it is internal to the Decimator configuration. This is especially true at higher resolutions because timing and cables now become an issue.
The hard part is figuring out which one of the 20,000+ combinations they brag about it will actually pass thru. You may have better luck with DisplayPort as the standards are tighter than HDMI and wild rodeo of USB-C that is difficult to narrow down if it does not work on the first try.
Like @Xavier_Jiang said, the first culprit is likely uncommon resolutions. Always stick to common resolution formats when trying to figure out display outputs. There used to be just a handful; now every display maker wants a custom resolution to fit however they manufactured their device for native resolution.
My goto is always 1920x1080, then 1280x1024, then 1024x768, and then 800x600. The last resort is 640x480.
Most presentation devices will have what their native resolution is and typically they follow regular video formats 1080p, 720p, along with some standard computer resolutions listed above. Ideally if they can tell you what it is natively driven at you can bypass the Decimator entirely.