Question on Displayport and Thunderbolt

[satori83]

So I have a Macbook Pro with mini display port and I bought a Thunderbolt enabled iMac. I thought because of the supposed "backwards compaitbilites" that everything would be fine to connect. I bought the Thunderbolt cable recommended by an Apple Authorized Reseller, only to find out that it cant connect the laptop to iMac for use as a bigger display. Further research confirmed that a thunderbolt device can go to mini display, but not the other way around.

So I am wondering, if I have a mini display to hdmi, can I buy a Thunderbolt to hdmi and use the hdmi to link to two since the signal will be converted for hdmi?
I really need this to work...

 

[CCerta112]

I think that will be impossible.
As far as I know the Target Display Mode only works if you have two Thunderbolt Macs or two... pre-Thunderbolt ones. Unfortunately it is not mix and match

And the backwards compatibility on the Thunderbolt Mac is only for outgoing Displayport signals, not for incoming ones.