Another Mac Mini Owner with Display Issues

[MrXiro]

Originally Posted by sno1man

I had to adjust the display significantly in addition to using the color profile that I linked to.

Specifically, the contrast and sharpness settings are both jacked way too high by default. Mine ended up at 30 for contrast and 10 for sharpness.

The profile fixes the color balance issues and the contrast and sharpness adjustments addressed the washed out look.

It's still not to the level of the TB display, but then again I paid less for the mini and the dell display combined than I did for a TB display.

PS: you would not think so, but small viewing angle adjustments make a big difference. I got the best results accidentally by putting the display on top of the mini. That results in an almost perfect 90 degree angle with my eyes and the center of the screen

Give mine a try I posted it in the post above your last one.

[sno1man]

Originally Posted by MrXiro

Give mine a try I posted it in the post above your last one.

Hmm, using your profile, it looks a bit too warm. I suspect that the difference may be due to manufacturing variation which I suspect is much more prevalent in a $250 display than a $999 one.

I appreciate the effort though, and either profile is leagues better than what you get by default!

[MrXiro]

You might be right about inconsistencies between same make and model monitors.

What I noticed on mine vs the one on the site is mine has better contrast. The whites are whiter and the colors are slightly more vibrant on the profile I made. I am also using standard profile just as the base color with contrast at 50-60, brightness at 60 and sharpness at 50.

I'm still debating on keeping this monitor. .

Maybe I'll just pick up a thunderbolt and be happy with it. :P

[MrXiro]

Originally Posted by sno1man

Hmm, using your profile, it looks a bit too warm. I suspect that the difference may be due to manufacturing variation which I suspect is much more prevalent in a $250 display than a $999 one.

I appreciate the effort though, and either profile is leagues better than what you get by default!

Just got home and tried your settings. I completely prefer mine much more... it MUST be inconsistent panel quality. My profile still looks way better to me. Sharpness of 10 is too blurry on my screen. Strange... I stopped by Best Buy on the way home and oogled the TB Display...

Wish I had $1000.

[sno1man]

Originally Posted by MrXiro

Just got home and tried your settings. I completely prefer mine much more... it MUST be inconsistent panel quality. My profile still looks way better to me. Sharpness of 10 is too blurry on my screen. Strange... I stopped by Best Buy on the way home and oogled the TB Display...

Wish I had $1000.

Ha ha!I was in best buy this morning for different reasons, but did the same as you, the TB display is gorgeous.

Makes me wonder again about my dell though. I'm also having the black out issue though it's tolerable since it only happens 2-3 times a day.

I'm still in the return window for the dell and i also saw the new Acer 24inch display with built in touch support (I work in Windows 8 occasionally) It too looked very nice and was half the price of the TB display.

I guess there's a reason my wife cringes every time she hears me say I'm going to best buy

[MrXiro]

Originally Posted by sno1man

Ha ha!I was in best buy this morning for different reasons, but did the same as you, the TB display is gorgeous.

Makes me wonder again about my dell though. I'm also having the black out issue though it's tolerable since it only happens 2-3 times a day.

I'm still in the return window for the dell and i also saw the new Acer 24inch display with built in touch support (I work in Windows 8 occasionally) It too looked very nice and was half the price of the TB display.

I guess there's a reason my wife cringes every time she hears me say I'm going to best buy

HA! My wife cringes too! BB and the Apple Store. Sony store too but Sony and Apple are next door to each other at my mall.

I also checked out the IPS S2340m Dell monitor. It looks pretty good as well just a tiny bit smaller and not a completely bezel free screen. Not sure which one I like better though. It's on sale for 169 right now too, (I scored my S2440L for $199.99 on price match with Amazon... so I'm not sure which one is a better bang for my buck...)

I have a 60 day return at Best Buy (for Mac Mini, S2440L and a iPad Mini) so I'm totally still deciding between everything... even opened up my inner debate to the iMacs now, BUT I just looked them up and NON of them offer an i7 stock... I'd have to BTO if I want an i7 on an iMac... which might make the Quad i7 Mac Mini the best bang for the buck in the whole Mac Line up now.

I too have the the flicker issue. At first I thought my monitor was going to sleep. I wonder if there will be a fix for it.

One reason TO get the TB Display though... all those extra ports! 3 MORE USB (2.0) 1 more FW and 1 more TB.
Not to mention an HD facetime camera and the best damn screen I've ever seen. It's going for 835 on Amazon right now... wish it was still tax free in Cali.

[lamerica80]

Washed out whites, blurry text. Not happy at all. The calibration didnt really work. It just doenst look as natural and pleasant as with my old mini..

Is this a HDMI issue?

[MrXiro]

Originally Posted by lamerica80

Washed out whites, blurry text. Not happy at all. The calibration didnt really work. It just doenst look as natural and pleasant as with my old mini..

Is this a HDMI issue?

No it's and HD4000 issue.... Calibration worked really well for me. I am enjoying the look of my monitor now...

[thekev]

Originally Posted by MrXiro

I've gone back to the color profile I created with ColorSync vs the one I downloaded from the link above. It's very similar but the profile I made has sharper contrast more akin to my old iMac monitor. The only thing I feel is that the reds don't pop in the same way.

Well the colorsync thing just attempts to remap gamma midpoints in a kind of weird way. It's focused on adjusting the pivot per channel, and it's using a set of instructions fed to the display to achieve this. This is basically the same as when you're profiling via colorimeter, but those do a better job if you follow their instructions. Some higher end displays have their own internal processing, which tends to be a bit better. I've only seen terrible (in my opinion) results from the colorsync utility. This isn't an operator error thing, as it's a very very simple application.

[applemike68]

I returned my one day old Mac mini for the blurry/color issue. Will probably pick up the new imac instead. My 2011 mini worked great, shame on me for selling it on ebay.

[Sean869]

I have changed from an HDMI cable to a Thunderbolt / HDMI cable which has solved the black screen issue, I have downloaded the colour profile for my monitor from the link in this thread which has solved the harsh white tones problem, so for the moment its all good. However as this is my first MAC having switched from windows, I'm not happy that it was so difficult to sort it all out. What ever happened to 'plug and play' ???

[calvol]

Originally Posted by applemike68

I returned my one day old Mac mini for the blurry/color issue. Will probably pick up the new imac instead. My 2011 mini worked great, shame on me for selling it on ebay.

Yeah, good move, I just RMA'd my 2012 Mini, and picked up a 2011 Mini with Radeon GPU on Ebay. I'm sitting out on anything with a HD4000 GPU, Intel obviously doesn't have their $h1t together on graphics.

[Robertsmania]

i need to use my 2012 mini via HDMI and have run through the calibration routine several times and although it does make it better, I dont find that I can get a result that is really satisfactory.

For those who have run through it and are happy, I'm curious how this test looks for you:

Open a Finder window and switch it to the List view. Do you see the alternating white/grey lines clearly?

For me, even after adjusting the gamma and expert calibration settings the list view lines still appear washed out and hardly visible. If I put another window over it, the drop shadow does show the lines.

I have a 2009 mini and connecting that to the same display also with HDMI is like night and day switching between them.

[sno1man]

Originally Posted by Robertsmania

i need to use my 2012 mini via HDMI and have run through the calibration routine several times and although it does make it better, I dont find that I can get a result that is really satisfactory.

For those who have run through it and are happy, I'm curious how this test looks for you:

Open a Finder window and switch it to the List view. Do you see the alternating white/grey lines clearly?

For me, even after adjusting the gamma and expert calibration settings the list view lines still appear washed out and hardly visible. If I put another window over it, the drop shadow does show the lines.

I have a 2009 mini and connecting that to the same display also with HDMI is like night and day switching between them.

Your post was a good find!

I have been struggling with getting a good image with my Dell s2440L monitor. Even though I thought i got it much better with a downloaded profile, it still seemed washed out looking and off and your tip about finder list view let me see it clearly.

In my case, what should have been grey stripes were just barely visible yellowish bands.

After trying the expert calibration again and not getting much better i started tweaking the monitor settings. The break through was ignoring the directions at the beginning of the calibration steps about setting contrast to 100%.

Long story short, this monitor has a very narrow band of about 3 steps where it actually produces a full range of contrast. On my monitor was right about 67.

leaving the contrast set there and re-running the calibration, I got a 300% improvement at least in PQ. Enough that I can finally leave it alone.

I guess yet another trade off in low cost monitors. Our tech guy terms it poor linearity..

[bruinsrme]

Originally Posted by calvol

Yeah, good move, I just RMA'd my 2012 Mini, and picked up a 2011 Mini with Radeon GPU on Ebay. I'm sitting out on anything with a HD4000 GPU, Intel obviously doesn't have their $h1t together on graphics.

I am running a dell notebooks with the hd4000 attached to the same monitor as my mini.

Please explain to me why the dell looks fantastic compare to the mini?

Is apple writing their own driver?

[Negritude]

Make sure when connecting via HDMI that your monitor is not overscanning or underscanning. If possible, make sure the monitor is in PC or computer mode, not TV or A/V mode.

[southerndude39]

Originally Posted by Negritude

Make sure when connecting via HDMI that your monitor is not overscanning or underscanning. If possible, make sure the monitor is in PC or computer mode, not TV or A/V mode.

That's a great point! I bought my new mini last week and purchased a Samsung S27B350H monitor as well. I hooked it up via HDMI and for the life of me I could not get the colors right. The monitor had the PC / AV mode and neither made a difference. I always had the slider for overscan and could not get it to be recognized as a monitor. I ended up taking the Samsung back and I ordered an Apple Thunderbolt display.

[sno1man]

Originally Posted by southerndude39

That's a great point! I bought my new mini last week and purchased a Samsung S27B350H monitor as well. I hooked it up via HDMI and for the life of me I could not get the colors right. The monitor had the PC / AV mode and neither made a difference. I always had the slider for overscan and could not get it to be recognized as a monitor. I ended up taking the Samsung back and I ordered an Apple Thunderbolt display.

Have the same issue with my Dell s2440l display. No matter what, the mini sees it as a TV.

I thought about getting a TB display, but by the time you add the two together you are well in to iMac price range.

If anything, the mini is going back if they can't fix this by Wednesday which is when my return window is up. Given the numerous issues being reported, I'm not hopeful

[southerndude39]

Originally Posted by sno1man

Have the same issue with my Dell s2440l display. No matter what, the mini sees it as a TV.

I thought about getting a TB display, but by the time you add the two together you are well in to iMac price range.

If anything, the mini is going back if they can't fix this by Wednesday which is when my return window is up. Given the numerous issues being reported, I'm not hopeful

True, it is almost the same price when you add the two together. I thought about just buying another iMac to replace my 4 year old iMac. I decided the Mini is easier to upgrade and also in 2 years if they come out with a new Mini that I want to upgrade to it will be cheaper than upgrading a whole new iMac again.

So far I've added a SSD and memory to the Mini and in the long run it'll save me money.

[sno1man]

Looks to be a widespread issue. Lots of things that help like a utility called gamma, but no real fix which has matched my experience

https://discussions.apple.com/thread...rt=30&tstart=0

[MrXiro]

Originally Posted by sno1man

Looks to be a widespread issue. Lots of things that help like a utility called gamma, but no real fix which has matched my experience

https://discussions.apple.com/thread...rt=30&tstart=0

I gave up on the S2440L, I got a great deal on it but the S2340M I picked up for $150 looks MUCH better.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Dell+-+2...340m&cp=1&lp=1

Give it a shot. On sale this week.