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Resolved Question regarding dual screens on Mac Mini (mid-2011) server

O

osx-addict

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 8, 2013
28
0
Ok.. So we recently bought a pair of HP 27xi monitors and we are trying to use them on the above mentioned mid-2011 Mac Mini... The first screen is plugged in using the DVI port on the monitor and using the apple supplied DVI adapter. For the 2nd screen we purchased a mini-display port to HDMI adapter and plugged into the 2nd screen's HDMI port and skipped the DVI port on that screen.

One of the screens is at a higher resolution than the other which I find rather annoying -- unfortunately I don't know off the time of my head which port is driving the higher resolution but will fill in the details when I'm at home. I'd like to have the same resolution when using a pair of the same screens so I can easily drag windows from one screen to the other without the need to resize since that window won't fit into the lower-res screen.. Make sense? Am I crazy for wanting this?

I checked the display settings and find nothing that will allow the two screens to be at the same resolution unless I drop the higher res screen down considerably.. One of the displays is showing as 1080p whereas the other display has a specific XxY size specified (don't recall what as mentioned earlier since I'm at work).
 
Last edited:
P

paulrbeers

macrumors 68040
Dec 17, 2009
3,963
123
osx-addict said:
Ok.. So we recently bought a pair of HP 27xi monitors and we are trying to use them on the above mentioned mid-2011 Mac Mini... The first screen is plugged in using the DVI port on the monitor and using the apple supplied DVI adapter. For the 2nd screen we purchased a mini-display port to HDMI adapter and plugged into the 2nd screen's HDMI port and skipped the DVI port on that screen.

One of the screens is at a higher resolution than the other which I find rather annoying -- unfortunately I don't know off the time of my head which port is driving the higher resolution but will fill in the details when I'm at home. I'd like to have the same resolution when using a pair of the same screens so I can easily drag windows from one screen to the other without the need to resize since that window won't fit into the lower-res screen.. Make sense? Am I crazy for wanting this?

I checked the display settings and find nothing that will allow the two screens to be at the same resolution unless I drop the higher res screen down considerably.. One of the displays is showing as 1080p whereas the other display has a specific XxY size specified (don't recall what as mentioned earlier since I'm at work).
Click to expand...

Do you have overscan turned on in the display settings, on the HDMI monitor? This would cause the HDMI monitor to appear to have what appears to be a lower res/larger images.
 
O

osx-addict

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 8, 2013
28
0
So.. I verified, now that I'm at home, that the HDMI driven screen is the culprit and is maxed out at 1080p while the native display (not the thunderbolt driven screen) has maxed the resolution at 1920x1080.. If I drag a window from the higher res screen over to the lower res, I'm missing the three window buttons in the top-left corner of the window.. I checked for overscan settings in the monitor and found none -- I tried the factory reset but nothing came of that either..

If I switch over to using the DVI port on the screen is that likely to fix the problem? I did see someone else that had this same screen kinda sorta indicate that it would change the behavior that way.. :confused:

Here's the HDMI driven display -- running at 1080p
Screen Shot 2013-04-17 at 7.13.41 PM.png

Here's the other display driven by DVI running at 1920x1080:
Screen Shot 2013-04-17 at 7.14.27 PM.png
 
O

osx-addict

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 8, 2013
28
0
ok.. Solved it.. Apparently there is an overscan feature I missed.. I plugged the HDMI cable on the left display into the primary screen port on the Mac after removing the supplied HDMI->DVI adapter and noticed I had no Finder menu and some of the dock was chopped off on the bottom ..

The setting was under the Image Control->Custom Scaling->Overscan which was set to Auto.. I changed it to 'off' and magically the rest of the screen came back and now the two are all aligned again.. Thx!!!!
 
SAL8116

SAL8116

macrumors regular
Jun 24, 2010
198
7
Florida
osx-addict said:
ok.. Solved it.. Apparently there is an overscan feature I missed.. I plugged the HDMI cable on the left display into the primary screen port on the Mac after removing the supplied HDMI->DVI adapter and noticed I had no Finder menu and some of the dock was chopped off on the bottom ..

The setting was under the Image Control->Custom Scaling->Overscan which was set to Auto.. I changed it to 'off' and magically the rest of the screen came back and now the two are all aligned again.. Thx!!!!
Click to expand...

Hate to bump this, but just got the HP Pavilion 27xi monitor had problems setting up the monitor, till I did what you said in second paragraph. THANK YOU!!!
 
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