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1080p is all messed up

M

mistasparkaru

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 19, 2010
20
0
I have a 32" LCD television that I use as a monitor. I was using 1080p over VGA fine with my windows PC but I cant seem to get anywhere with my Mac pro, I have a clean install of 10.8.3 but 1080p does silly things.

VGA. if I set 1080p the screen is squashed vertically into the left hand side of the screen.

VGA. I can use 1600*1200 and that looks blurry, I dont think my TV can even handle 1600*1200

HDMI. The display is scaled and is never fits properly, it either has black borders or the top is cut off.

HDMI. The picture is very bad quality and pixelated even though the resolution is high.

Do I need any specific drivers for my GT120?
 
justperry

justperry

macrumors G5
Aug 10, 2007
12,557
9,750
I'm a rolling stone.
mistasparkaru said:
I have a 32" LCD television that I use as a monitor. I was using 1080p over VGA fine with my windows PC but I cant seem to get anywhere with my Mac pro, I have a clean install of 10.8.3 but 1080p does silly things.

VGA. if I set 1080p the screen is squashed vertically into the left hand side of the screen.

VGA. I can use 1600*1200 and that looks blurry, I dont think my TV can even handle 1600*1200

HDMI. The display is scaled and is never fits properly, it either has black borders or the top is cut off.

HDMI. The picture is very bad quality and pixelated even though the resolution is high.

Do I need any specific drivers for my GT120?
Click to expand...

One thing, it seems TV's are nott made for monitor use, I have an LG 1080P capable TV and on HDMI is is a bit pixelated as well but the picture is filling the whole display though, no problem there.
 
M

mistasparkaru

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 19, 2010
20
0
I dont suppose they are, but me being tight I thought it would be a good idea... it did work fine in windows though.
 
justperry

justperry

macrumors G5
Aug 10, 2007
12,557
9,750
I'm a rolling stone.
mistasparkaru said:
I dont suppose they are, but me being tight I thought it would be a good idea... it did work fine in windows though.
Click to expand...

Just play a bit around with Display Preferences and the TV's settings, might help.
But, I do agree it's not really that good, for instance, if I use AppStore, before it loads the data from Apple's site the background is grey and very pixelated, now, is this a problem with the TV, OS X or display/HDMI, I just don't know.
played around with settings but didn't improve here.
I did not however use VGA, I could try and see how that works.
 
T

TheEasterBunny

macrumors 6502
Jan 22, 2013
251
0
Delaware
I have a Mac Mini on my 46in vizio Plasma.
When I first connected it, I used VGA.
It was fuzzy, seemed like it had some interference from time to time.
I'm not sure of the cause, but I eventually went to HDMI.
This cleared it up a lot, but still not what I hoped for.
I started playing with the TV's settings.
This did the trick!
I set the scan rate at max, for my TV this is 120hz.
I played with sharpness, black level, contrast, and brightness back and forth until I got something I could live with.
In my situation I was looking to only use it for media play back, movies, DVD's, and iTunes.
Even with all the playing, although it was better, and acceptable, things like text are not as sharp as text needs to be, to be used as a monitor. Granted this is old tech for a TV, and a Mini doesn't have the graphics power of your Pro, I think those TV settings will help you.
Windows has many short comings, but video display and graphics performance is NOT one of them!
Hope this helps
 
justperry

justperry

macrumors G5
Aug 10, 2007
12,557
9,750
I'm a rolling stone.
TheEasterBunny said:
I have a Mac Mini on my 46in vizio Plasma.
When I first connected it, I used VGA.
It was fuzzy, seemed like it had some interference from time to time.
I'm not sure of the cause, but I eventually went to HDMI.
This cleared it up a lot, but still not what I hoped for.
I started playing with the TV's settings.
This did the trick!
I set the scan rate at max, for my TV this is 120hz.
I played with sharpness, black level, contrast, and brightness back and forth until I got something I could live with.
In my situation I was looking to only use it for media play back, movies, DVD's, and iTunes.
Even with all the playing, although it was better, and acceptable, things like text are not as sharp as text needs to be, to be used as a monitor. Granted this is old tech for a TV, and a Mini doesn't have the graphics power of your Pro, I think those TV settings will help you.
Windows has many short comings, but video display and graphics performance is NOT one of them!
Hope this helps
Click to expand...

I think there are several problems here.

1. TV is too big, mine is 32" and only 1080p, now, until now there are no bigger resolution, actually there are but way too expensive.

2. The TV's electronics are not up for the job.

3. Colour Profiles maybe.

4. Apple HDMI scaling to HDMI is not very good.(maybe)

BTW, The Mini can easily drive a 1920x1080 display, especially for static UI.
 
T

TheEasterBunny

macrumors 6502
Jan 22, 2013
251
0
Delaware
I am happy with the Mini's performance on my TV. The TV is set to 1080p. To be honest, hulu and netflix don't transmit a good enough signal, to warrant any change to my set up. DVD/file playback has no issue at all.
I have another Mini I used to use for work and it was on a 24in monitor with native 1080, it performed much better.
It's like you said earlier, a TV is not a monitor, and it isn't designed to act as one. (paraphrased)
My suggestions were designed to make the best of a less than ideal situation.
 
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