Macbook alumnium to TV, Wow, so easy.

[timmciglobal]

So.. a little background.

I'm a PC guy. Not a "oh I've used PC's" but I've run servers, built every PC I've owned since I was a teen and been fairly happy.

I about a year ago bought a media center PC. (That is to say I bought a small acer with HDMI out, installed more ram, better HD and made it into a media center PC.) I installed vista, played around with nvidia drivers a ton, figured out aero needed to be on to prevent screen tearing, had to make a custom refresh rate for my TV and in general have it running very nice.

So I was ready for a bit of work with my macbook. Will I connect it to the TV alot? No. But I wanted the ability to do so if I needed/wanted so I picked up mini display port > HDMI and a toslink mini > toslink (and a regular 3.5mm stereo male>male) cables. I had a DVD running, plugged the adapter in, plugged HDMI in and...

http://www.divergentservices.com/mactv1.jpg

... it just worked. See... for the mac people here your probably saying "big deal" or "and?" but that's not how PC's work. I would of had to know where to launch multiple display wizards, setting up spanning, matching resolutions, hoping the TV resolution was supported, selecting the right output, having to setup how the span or mirror worked...

So just for kicks I was wondering "I wonder if it's just working because it's using lowest common demoniator 640x480 and my tv is just spanning it"

http://www.divergentservices.com/mactv2.jpg

... not only did it detect my TV but it inputed the exact optimal resolution.

Wow.

Tim

[timmciglobal]

Just an FYI too the first picture looks how it looks due to getting a shutter speed that would show the mac and the TV without the background being pitch black the actual picture was pefect, that was shot at 1/20th of a second which is more then 1 frame of TV showing.

Tim

[nyry30]

So.. a little background.

I'm a PC guy. Not a "oh I've used PC's" but I've run servers, built every PC I've owned since I was a teen and been fairly happy.

I about a year ago bought a media center PC. (That is to say I bought a small acer with HDMI out, installed more ram, better HD and made it into a media center PC.) I installed vista, played around with nvidia drivers a ton, figured out aero needed to be on to prevent screen tearing, had to make a custom refresh rate for my TV and in general have it running very nice.

So I was ready for a bit of work with my macbook. Will I connect it to the TV alot? No. But I wanted the ability to do so if I needed/wanted so I picked up mini display port > HDMI and a toslink mini > toslink (and a regular 3.5mm stereo male>male) cables. I had a DVD running, plugged the adapter in, plugged HDMI in and...

http://www.divergentservices.com/mactv1.jpg

... it just worked. See... for the mac people here your probably saying "big deal" or "and?" but that's not how PC's work. I would of had to know where to launch multiple display wizards, setting up spanning, matching resolutions, hoping the TV resolution was supported, selecting the right output, having to setup how the span or mirror worked...

So just for kicks I was wondering "I wonder if it's just working because it's using lowest common demoniator 640x480 and my tv is just spanning it"

http://www.divergentservices.com/mactv2.jpg

... not only did it detect my TV but it inputed the exact optimal resolution.

Wow.

Tim


nice dude, plus you have 24 showing :)

[timmciglobal]

24?

That's stargate continum.

Tim

[nyry30]

24?

That's stargate continum.

Tim

lol oops, i thought it was 24, because William Devane played a similar role on 24. :o

[angemon89]

I can tell you're a PC guy from the Apps on your desktop. hehe

just teasing



But anyway, what were you using to play the movie. Quicktime? If so, make sure you go into Quicktime's prefs and under fullscreen, make sure you have the "remain in fullscreen when player is inactive" box checked. In all honesty it took me a while to figure that trick out. It's useful for if you want to use your Mac while still watching something in fullscreen.