External LCD and Intel MacBook?

ButtermilkJack

I'm thinking of buying the new 13" 2.0GHz Intel MacBook and want to connect it to an LCD TV for main day-to-day use.

Does the DVI connection on the MacBook allow this? Is there anything special I need to know when buying the LCD, other than it having DVI support?

Has anyone done the same? Are there any things to watch out for?

Thumper Long

you will need to buy the mini dvi to dvi adapter for use with the LCD as the MacBook does not come with any adapters for the mini dvi connection it has, the adapter is an extra €19 and you can order it at the same time if buying from the apple store online.

ButtermilkJack

Good stuff. I've just been looking at some LCD tv's around the 23" - 26" range and they all seem to advertise screen resolutions of around 1280 x 800. Does this mean that all I will be doing is 'enlarging' the native MacBook desktop on a larger screen?

It says it supports up to 1900 x 1200 on an external display so does that mean I have to buy an LCD tv that has a resolution of 1900 x 1200 in order to gain extra desktop workspace?

StephenC_IRL

I have a macbook, and the dvi adapter, i am using a philips 26" television or 19" Xerox monitor, and they both work fine. the only thing you have to watch is some monitors have DVI connectors but are ment for vga. in this case the dvi connector that goes to the computer will have a pin arangment that will look like the analog+digital connectors in this :

http://www.cs.unc.edu/Research/stc/FAQs/Video/dvicon.gif

the macbook dvi adapter only supports the digital only connectors. so check your cable first, you might have to buy another dvi cable without the analog pins

ButtermilkJack

Hey thanks for that. I've just bought the MacBook and love it so I'm now ready to buy the LCD tv. Do you have the model number/resolution of the Philips you bought?

I got the mini-DVI to DVI connector at the same time as the laptop so I presume that's digital only. I know I have to buy a seperate DVI cable as well (something I didn't realise at the time ) so perhaps that's when I should be checking connections?

ZENER

Some TV's have odd non-VESA resolutions that computer video cards don't support. This means the TV will stretch the image to fit or only use the pixels supported by the computer.

For example, I have a G4 cube connected to a Samsung 32" TV, (R73) whos resolution is something like 1377x768 (not 100% on this just now). The closest res the Cube's Radeon 7500 video card supports is 1024 x 768, so the resulting stretched image is slightly blurred.

Most LCD TV's list the VESA modes they support in the user manual.

The OS on the cube (Tiger) doesn't "see" the monitor or read any info from it in this case. It's connected using a 15 pin D-Sub VGA connector rather than a DVI one, may make a difference ?!

ZEN

ButtermilkJack

Yeah that's something I've been wary of alright. The MacBook says it supports up to 1900 x 1200 so I reckon if I can find a monitor with a resolution of 1900 x 1200 and a DVI connector I should be ok.

It's just very hard to find an LCD TV with that resolution!

K.O.Kiki

ButtermilkJack wrote:

Yeah that's something I've been wary of alright. The MacBook says it supports up to 1900 x 1200 so I reckon if I can find a monitor with a resolution of 1900 x 1200 and a DVI connector I should be ok.

It's just very hard to find an LCD TV with that resolution!

You don't have to find an LCD with that res; anything below it will be fine too.
Probably better for it, too, as the Macbook only has an Intel GMA950 for graphics...

ButtermilkJack

K.O.Kiki wrote:

You don't have to find an LCD with that res; anything below it will be fine too.
Probably better for it, too, as the Macbook only has an Intel GMA950 for graphics...

Sorry, I don't quite follow. Are you saying then that even if I do get a larger display that the GMA950 in the MacBook hasn't got the power to display the graphics too well anyway. So I'm better off in a sense going for WXGA (1366 x 768) or WSXGA (1680 x 1050), but not as high as WUXGA (1920 x 1200)?

Or are you simply saying that the MacBook will support 'in-between' resolutions too, and that I don't neccessarily 'have' to get 1920x1200?

Certainly makes my searching easier

Thanks!

K.O.Kiki

Well, for 3D-display (eg, games), the Intel GMA950 isn't too hot - and higher res would drop frames to single-figures.
But yeah, it will display all resolutions up to WUXGA -- so you can safely buy WXGA/WSXGA displays, save yourself a good few hundred.