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Apple Releases Mac Mini EFI Firmware Update 1.7 to Fix Flickering on HDMI External Displays

M

MM123

macrumors member
Apr 4, 2008
83
0
CE
Robertsmania said:
I was excited to see this update, but sad that it does not fix my primary problem.

With the 2012 Mac mini, every monitor I have access to does not display properly when connected with HDMI. The colors appear washed out - and the whites are 'crushed' (light colors appear white). Thats the symptom, and I believe that the real issue is that the computer thinks it is working in the RGB color space (as shown in the display profiles) but the monitors get a signal that tells them to work in the CMYK color space.

We have other Mac computers and laptops, and they all work fine with the same monitors/cables.

If you use HDMI with your 2012 mini, try this - open up a finder window and switch to the list display. Do you see the alternating light blue and white lines or is the whole window white? If it does look white, drag another window on top and see if the drop shadow reveals the alternating lines.

This has been reported on the forums and apple support, but I have not heard of anyone finding a real resolution. Most people seem to drop the HDMI and use DVI or Display Port. Some report improvement after using the calibration options in the System Preferences Displays Color options. I have not been able to get a satisfactory calibration, and believe that its not really possible since the computer and display appear to disagree about which color space they are using.

If you use HDMI, please check. If you do see the alternating white/blue lines properly I'd be curious about what kind of monitor you are using and what display profile is selected. If your mini shows the crushed whites - send Apple a message at apple.com/feedback.

I did enter a bug into bugreporter.apple.com and it has been tagged as a duplicate of an existing bug and remains open. I believe they know about the problem but dont know if it really does affect all 2012 Mac minis using HDMI or if its just some...

Image
Click to expand...

I have exact the same issue, calibrating doesn't help much, I have to switch to a TB-DVI cable (adapter) which gave me all my colors back. The firmware "fix" didn't help for me.

The strange thing with this HDMI issue is,that my Hackintosh with HD4000 has no issue at all, so it makes me think a little different about all the "pain" with an Hackintosh :)
 
MagnusVonMagnum

MagnusVonMagnum

macrumors 603
Jun 18, 2007
5,193
1,442
mwong61 said:
The new firmware has not fixed the "crushed whites" poor gamma issue for me using HDMI to HDMI on my Samsung P2450.

Using the DP/TB port to DVI=>DVI solves the issue for me but I would
like to see a true fix and have an operational HDMI port for my new Mac Mini.

Michael-
Click to expand...

Do you have the problem with HDMI output to DVI with the included adapter or is it a straight HDMI cable? I'm using the adapter with an LG 24" monitor right now and colors are dead-on. I get no flicker, but I have gotten an occasional blank-out (although it hasn't done it today yet and I've been on here for many hours and I have NOT installed the firmware update).
 
briandc17

briandc17

macrumors newbie
Dec 11, 2012
5
0
Rhode Island
Mac OS X 10.8.3 (12D38) completely fixed the bright white issue on my 2012 Mac Mini i7. So I no longer need to use the HDMI to DVI/Thunderbolt adapter to get the proper color. Everything is working great with just HDMI!
 
briandc17

briandc17

macrumors newbie
Dec 11, 2012
5
0
Rhode Island
I take that back. Huge improvement in color with 10.8.3 with just HDMI but my screen colors are still more accurate (richer and sharper) when using the Thunderbolt port... The bright white issue has been minimized greatly though through HDMI.

Examples: I can see the slight grain pattern in the Safari toolbar background, and the traffic lights look richer, etc. when using the Thunderbolt port. This isn't noticeable through the HDMI port, but the list view stripes are viewable when connecting through both HDMI and Thunderbolt now.
 
Last edited:
P

pinthea

Cancelled
Nov 21, 2009
13
0
Robertsmania said:
I was excited to see this update, but sad that it does not fix my primary problem.

With the 2012 Mac mini, every monitor I have access to does not display properly when connected with HDMI. The colors appear washed out - and the whites are 'crushed' (light colors appear white). Thats the symptom, and I believe that the real issue is that the computer thinks it is working in the RGB color space (as shown in the display profiles) but the monitors get a signal that tells them to work in the CMYK color space.

We have other Mac computers and laptops, and they all work fine with the same monitors/cables.

If you use HDMI with your 2012 mini, try this - open up a finder window and switch to the list display. Do you see the alternating light blue and white lines or is the whole window white? If it does look white, drag another window on top and see if the drop shadow reveals the alternating lines.

This has been reported on the forums and apple support, but I have not heard of anyone finding a real resolution. Most people seem to drop the HDMI and use DVI or Display Port. Some report improvement after using the calibration options in the System Preferences Displays Color options. I have not been able to get a satisfactory calibration, and believe that its not really possible since the computer and display appear to disagree about which color space they are using.

If you use HDMI, please check. If you do see the alternating white/blue lines properly I'd be curious about what kind of monitor you are using and what display profile is selected. If your mini shows the crushed whites - send Apple a message at apple.com/feedback.

I did enter a bug into bugreporter.apple.com and it has been tagged as a duplicate of an existing bug and remains open. I believe they know about the problem but dont know if it really does affect all 2012 Mac minis using HDMI or if its just some...

Image
Click to expand...

White crush is EXACTLY what I've been experiencing since buying the new 2012 Mac Mini this past Saturday. I thought it was this crappy monitor but I tried another one that I know not to be crappy and the same thing happens. Not only is white crush evident, VERY evident, but the text is blurry, like it's not operating at the native resolution but I know it is. This thing is going back, the video quality is terrible...
 
N

Negritude

macrumors 6502
Jul 14, 2011
297
199
pinthea said:
White crush is EXACTLY what I've been experiencing since buying the new 2012 Mac Mini this past Saturday. I thought it was this crappy monitor but I tried another one that I know not to be crappy and the same thing happens. Not only is white crush evident, VERY evident, but the text is blurry, like it's not operating at the native resolution but I know it is. This thing is going back, the video quality is terrible...
Click to expand...

Blurry text usually means A/V Mode (your monitor is acting like or being detected as a TV, instead of a monitor). Turn off OVERscan and UNDERscan and/or switch to what could be called "PC" mode. This is going to be a different setting on each monitor.

I don't know why the memo about this hasn't gotten around to more people. I had this exact problem with an HP 2311x and a 2011 Mini, and once I changed one simple setting on the monitor, everything was fine. This has been talked about numerous times, but folks still think it's a 2012 Mini specific problem. It's not.
 
M

MM123

macrumors member
Apr 4, 2008
83
0
CE
Negritude said:
Blurry text usually means A/V Mode (your monitor is acting like or being detected as a TV, instead of a monitor). Turn off OVERscan and UNDERscan and/or switch to what could be called "PC" mode. This is going to be a different setting on each monitor.

I don't know why the memo about this hasn't gotten around to more people. I had this exact problem with an HP 2311x and a 2011 Mini, and once I changed one simple setting on the monitor, everything was fine. This has been talked about numerous times, but folks still think it's a 2012 Mini specific problem. It's not.
Click to expand...

Are you sure about it? I highly doubt it, anyway, no change in my case, still "crushed whites".
 
N

nifmus

macrumors newbie
Nov 3, 2012
11
0
Squuiid said:
Color issue has been fixed in 10.8.3 Build 12D38 (Pre-Release) released on December 5th.

I can now use HDMI without blown out colors and without the screen blanking issue! :D
Click to expand...

I can confirm that 10.8.3 fixes the color issue. A developer friend of mine helped me install the beta version after I explained the issue to him and all is back to normal.

Only issue we experienced though is that the color issue is still present when using the display port -> HDMI adaptor. If you connect directly via HDMI only, all is perfect again.

Cheers,
Steve
 
S

SeattleMoose

macrumors 68000
Jul 17, 2009
1,960
1,670
Der Wald
Took The Plunge

Been holding off, got a mini last night. Gonna get it going this weekend now that I know a fix is "in the can" (at least for most folks).
 
L

lawburr

macrumors newbie
Oct 24, 2012
3
0
Michigan
Bricked my mini

I updated the firmware and now I get kernal panics anywhere from 30 sec to ten minutes after booting up. Apple says reload OS but the mini will not stay up long enough to do it.
 
A

agenda893

macrumors regular
Jul 17, 2004
141
157
lawburr said:
I updated the firmware and now I get kernal panics anywhere from 30 sec to ten minutes after booting up. Apple says reload OS but the mini will not stay up long enough to do it.
Click to expand...

Boot into safe mode (hold down shift at boot) and see if you can use Lion DiskMaker to make a bootable 10.8 USB installer to boot from. Once you have that, boot from it and do a clean reinstall.

----------
MM123 said:
Are you sure about it? I highly doubt it, anyway, no change in my case, still "crushed whites".
Click to expand...

I hade the crushed whites with my mini-hdmi-samsung D8000 setup and it took adjusting all of the video settings on the TV, then calibrating with advanced setting on the mac and then fine tuning the settings on the TV. It was a huge pain in the ass, but eventually I got it looking good.
 
A

adonis3k

macrumors 6502a
Apr 15, 2012
531
101
Well it didnt work for me!

Installed the firmware, connect hdmi up rebooted, black screen :mad:

Back to MD-HDMI (with gamma corrected settings!)
 
MagnusVonMagnum

MagnusVonMagnum

macrumors 603
Jun 18, 2007
5,193
1,442
I have yet to see the screen black/blank out since the firmware update (I would get them a few times a day on average before the update), but I did get snow on waking from sleep today for the first time for about 10 seconds (never was on there that long before the update, maybe a second or two at most, but then I have seen the same thing occasionally from AppleTV Gen2 when waking it from sleep as well through HDMI). I never had any color/rendering issues even before the firmware update, though. Everything looked normal until it blanked. But then my old PowerMac Digital Audio running an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro with DVI output would also blank once in awhile as well (not quite as often as the Mac Mini did), so I suspect there's more going on here than JUST the hardware (maybe something in Apple's graphics drivers in general?)
 
N

nMeOnEs

macrumors newbie
Apr 7, 2013
1
0
Help?

I have just purchased my first Apple product (besides all my iPod's) last night, that being a iMac Mini. I'm not having any problems with my HDMI connection and I absolutely LOVE this computer. After reading all these post I am nervous to download the firmware upgrade 1.7 via the App Store (?) If I'm not having any HDMI issues I shouldn't worry about the update correct? Thank you in an advance from the newest and proudest Apple owner.
 
U

unlimitedx0

macrumors member
Nov 18, 2014
59
16
The production date of my 2012 Mac Mini was in April of this year. I have Mavericks 10.9.4 installed. I have an HDMI cable plugged in from the Mini to TV. I have used another cable as well. I have the flickering issue at the login screen after the system restarts or is powered on. And it will occasionally flicker after I log in. This seems to only happen when I'm running OS X.

I tried to install the 1.7 firmware. But I am getting errors with the installer program: "this does not apply to your system."

When I restart and boot into Windows, there's no flickering issue on the login screen.
 
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