Connecting the Mac Mini to a HDTV
Monday, 11 February 2008
The first thing to do is connect the Mac Mini to the TV, this really isn't as easy and straight forward as it should be, so much so that Apple support have a whole forum dedicated to it [ Apple.com > Support > Discussions > Mac mini > Using Displays with the Mac mini]. The MM has a DVI socket on the back and comes with a VGA converter so you can easily connect it to any standard computer monitor with VGA input but using it as a media machine you'll probably want to connect using the superior digital HDMI input of your HDTV. Apple sell an HDMI cable but it is overpriced, there are loads of cheaper DVI-HDMI leads available - CPC is always a good source for those types of things (cpc.co.uk).
This is where all my problems started; I could not get a full 1920x1080 picture to fill the screen. If I used the VGA cable then I was limited as my TV didn't support 1920x1080 on the VGA socket, only the more typical VGA resolutions which it then scaled to fill the screen. Using the HDMI lead I couldn't get the 1080P output to scale properly on the screen, it was either stretched too big so you lost the edges of the screen or it was shrunk so you had wide margins around the screen. This was dependent on whether overscan was switched on or off on the MM display preferences. I eventually got the stretching thing fixed by switching on underscan on the TV and switching on overscan on the MM. But I still had a problem with the image not being aligned correctly and sitting left off the screen about an inch.
These problems are not unusual, just see the above mentioned forum, and appear to derive from the fact the the MM's DVI output isn't really designed for using on TV's and is better suited to monitors. This is crazy considering many people do buy them to use with their HDTVs's. The Apple TV doesn't suffer from this problem so it's not beyond Apple to get it right - though the Apple TV has an HDMI not DVI socket.
My solution to the offsetting was to use a utility SwitchResX which allows you to define non-standard display modes. Finding the right settings to use with SwitchResX is not easy if your TV manufacturer does not publish the full specification of the signal needed and if you get it wrong then you'll restart the MM and just have a blank screen and have to reboot into safe mode. It can take many hours of trial and error to get it right, I suggest looking for them in the above mentioned Apple forum. I found the right ones for mine on another forum after a couple hours Googling it.
This is where all my problems started; I could not get a full 1920x1080 picture to fill the screen. If I used the VGA cable then I was limited as my TV didn't support 1920x1080 on the VGA socket, only the more typical VGA resolutions which it then scaled to fill the screen. Using the HDMI lead I couldn't get the 1080P output to scale properly on the screen, it was either stretched too big so you lost the edges of the screen or it was shrunk so you had wide margins around the screen. This was dependent on whether overscan was switched on or off on the MM display preferences. I eventually got the stretching thing fixed by switching on underscan on the TV and switching on overscan on the MM. But I still had a problem with the image not being aligned correctly and sitting left off the screen about an inch.
These problems are not unusual, just see the above mentioned forum, and appear to derive from the fact the the MM's DVI output isn't really designed for using on TV's and is better suited to monitors. This is crazy considering many people do buy them to use with their HDTVs's. The Apple TV doesn't suffer from this problem so it's not beyond Apple to get it right - though the Apple TV has an HDMI not DVI socket.
My solution to the offsetting was to use a utility SwitchResX which allows you to define non-standard display modes. Finding the right settings to use with SwitchResX is not easy if your TV manufacturer does not publish the full specification of the signal needed and if you get it wrong then you'll restart the MM and just have a blank screen and have to reboot into safe mode. It can take many hours of trial and error to get it right, I suggest looking for them in the above mentioned Apple forum. I found the right ones for mine on another forum after a couple hours Googling it.
posted by Gary Lynch @ 22:00 - PERMALINK
