Screen for a Mac Mini?

Irish Halo

Hi,

I'm thinking of getting a Mac Mini as I want one screen in my room which will support my Mac and Wii needs.

Now the Wii is easily sorted as long as the display has component connections I get the best possible from the Wii(only 480p) but I'm a little lost on what I need to check the display has for the Mac Mini.

I want a high quality picture (I had an iMac which was stolen and am using a new MacBook so want comparable quality to those). Now I know the Mac outputs in DVI and you can get an adaptor to VGA or HDMI and I was looking at the 26" version of these:
Samsung R72(they're about £500) which has a PC D-Sub which I think is VGA(probably wrong) and it also has HDMI(I could just buy a DVI to HDMI cable) so I think this is the type of thing I need but I'm not sure.

In short, help please.

jkb_dub

Irish Halo - I've a Samsung (LE40M61B) and it has a VGA port on the back, Samsung refer to it as a D-Sub 15pin(VGA~WXGA). Download the manual for the TV and you can review the connection panel on the back of the TV.

My TV with the Mac Mini works a treat using the VGA connection as it picks up the resolution perfectly. Haven't tried it with HDMI.

Rgds,
Ken

ZENER

Hi jkb_dub

I have a Mac Mini connected via VGA (D-Sub) to a Samsung 40" LCD TV but it doesn't detect the proper resolution of the TV which means that Movies, photos etc are proportioned wrong. How did you get yours to work ?

ZEN

jkb_dub

Zen,

To be honest it was plug and play, one thing to note is my mac mini is fairly new, only about a month old.

As soon as I plugged the mac mini into the TV the resolution was 1366 X 768 (i think) and it detected the monitor as a Samsung.

What resolution is your mac mini outputting to the TV ?

I've heard of two pieces of software that may be able to help change the detected resolutions but I believe they can be tricky to configure. The 2 programs are switchresx and displayconfigx.

HTH,
Ken

ZENER

Strange, The Mac Mini I'm dealing with was bought in December '06 so should be similar to yours. There is a possibility that I'm not using a fully wired VGA 15 pin cable but I doubt it.

I intend getting the DVI<>HDMI adaptor shortly to see if that solves things but for now the screen resolution is only 1024 x 768 stretched to fill the screen. There are rumours that the Intel graphics set used in the Mini and MacBook don't work so well with HDMI connectors - not being able to offer the full native res of the TVs panel. Others say that on some sets the HDMI only detects true HD resolutions, i.e. 720P, 1080i/p etc and will not upscale to fill the screen. Many have tried the utilities you talk of, most without success though.

The screen I have connected to the Mac Mini is the 40" version of this. The whole thing is set up in a customers house.

If you really have managed to get the Mac to output 1366*768 then you've done better than a lot of others.

ZEN

jkb_dub

Hmmmm... very strange indeed... my TV is a little older than yours and the mini's are both new... I wonder if it could actually be the VGA cable (sounds daft but)...

I took my VGA cable from my Dell PC which I had previously hooked up to the TV and the resolution was perfect with that also... If it's not the cable, I wonder could it be something with the newer Samsung models.

I've kept an eye on 123macmini.com as I was also thinking of going HDMI from the mini (using a DVI with audio to HDMI converter) to make it easy to distribute to multiple TV's but having seen other people having difficulties I'm probably going to go with Apple TV instead as it has an HDMI port. Also gives me an excuse to buy another gadget

Ken