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(10.7.1 update: no good) Getting the Dell u2211h to work properly on a 2010 Mac Mini

Update: (Mostly) good news

Got the DisplayPort to DVI cable today. Absolutely no pinstripe issue of any kind, and most of the blurriness seems gone. However, text doesn't look quite as sharp as my MBP. Maybe it's my imagination, or the different coating of the LCD panel. Anyway, not a big deal.

Like this guy in this other thread, I did notice that Portrait mode is a bit worse, and there are noticeable tearing issues. I just type in portrait mode anyway, so it doesn't bother me too much.
 
Cougarcat said:
Got the DisplayPort to DVI cable today. Absolutely no pinstripe issue of any kind, and most of the blurriness seems gone. However, text doesn't look quite as sharp as my MBP. Maybe it's my imagination, or the different coating of the LCD panel. Anyway, not a big deal.

Like this guy in this other thread, I did notice that Portrait mode is a bit worse, and there are noticeable tearing issues. I just type in portrait mode anyway, so it doesn't bother me too much.
Click to expand...

The difference in the clarity of the type could be due to the different resolutions/ppi/dot pitch of the displays. You'll notice that that the U2211H has the lowest ppi and the the largest dot pitch.

  • Dell U2211H - 1920 x 1080 - 21.5" - 16:9 - 102.46 ppi - 0.2479mm
  • MacBook Pro 13.3 - 1280 x 800 - 13.3" - 16:10 - 113.49 ppi - 0.2238mm
  • MacBook Pro 15.4 - 1680 x 1050 - 15.4" - 16:10 - 128.65 ppi - 0.1974mm
  • MacBook Pro 17 - 1920 x 1200 - 17.0" - 16:10 - 133.19 ppi - 0.1907mm
 
DewGuy1999 said:
The difference in the clarity of the type could be due to the different resolutions/ppi/dot pitch of the displays. You'll notice that that the U2211H has the lowest ppi and the the largest dot pitch.
Click to expand...

No, my iMac's ppi is worse.

I think it has to do with the Anti-glare coating. Quick google search says some describe it as "grainy." I think that's accurate. My eyes have been acclimated to glass displays, so I guess it's something I'll just have to get used to.
 
Same issue here. It's mostly noticable with the grey that Photoshop uses for its canvas. Here's a capture of the exact grey shade... this file as you will see on other systems is 100% solid grey, but has a very "OS X Panther" style prominency of pinstriping with the Dell monitors under OS X!

totallygrey.gif


This is on a Hackintosh using a GTX 460 graphics card and it's fine under Windows (I just rebooted to test), so it's clearly an OS X software issue of some sort.

Curiously, I had a very similar problem in the opposite direction when I had my iMac i.e. it was fine under OS X but had pinstriping when using Boot Camp to go into Windows. Methinks there's definitely a difference of some sort in how the OSes blend colours. Wish I know what.


Edit: I can "move the problem around" by playing with the gamma settings. If you go to your monitor settings there is a Mac gamma mode, and then you can go into System Preferences->Display->Color and recalibrate your now washed-out monitor. That at least shifts the pinstriping to the darker greys such as 80% and 85% (less irritating for general use - it removes it from most websites like Macrumors but adds a Retro OSX style to the bottom half of my window header where Safari's bookmark bar is)

Edit 2: Anyone tried DisplayPort to HDMI? (Frustratingly, the Dell monitor only supports DP and my video card only supports HDMI)
 
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Intriguing find... thanks Cloudane!

As mentioned in a previous post, all the pinstriping has disappeared of its own accord on my end, even with older versions of Snow Leopard. I'm still getting a ton of kernel panics (15 so far since September :eek:) so I still have some troubleshooting left to do.

Incidentally, I do find it amusing that the NVinject kernel extension, originally made for hackintoshes, could fix a problem with actual Macs. Why did I pay $700 for a Core 2 Duo-based machine again? I'm probably getting more kernel panics than p55-based hackintoshes as well :rolleyes:.
 
You shouldn't get so much trouble with kernel panics. Could you please post a few logs from System Profiler? Maybe we can help you solve the problem. :)
 
Cloudane said:
PROBLEM SOLVED on NVidia cards :) (Sorry ATI folks, but maybe it'll give you something to work from)

http://psychtoolbox.org/wikka.php?wakka=BitsPlusPlusPlatformVariations

Follow "possible solution 5."
Click to expand...

Woah, good work Cloudane! Tested this out just now and it works perfectly, brilliant - thank you :) Where did you find that out, out of interest?

Searching the net for more reveals: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/psychtoolbox/message/10369 - basically, it sounds like this is an issue with Mac OS X (and also some Windows and Linux set ups...) where the GPU driver fails to detect that the monitor can support 8-bit colour, and so sends out 6-bit colour using temporal dithering. My guess is that the Mac is doing this for every monitor, but there is some specific quirk of the Dell that causes this to result in stripes.

So it sounds like the root of the issue is in the Mac OS video drivers, but it's not noticeable on other monitors due to an issue with the Dell.

While it's great to have a fix courtesy of NVInject, I'd much rather have an official solution, so I think all those affected should submit bug reports to Apple specifying what the problem is. It'd definitely be worth mentioning the problem affects this "Bits++" device too, otherwise it may be written off as a bug with the Dell monitor. I may contact the guy who wrote that post to see if he has any thoughts/advice on doing this (he doesn't seem too positive that Apple will do anything!) - any thoughts?

@Dolphin, I don't think I've ever had a Kernel Panic either with or without my monitor connected. Your problem may lie elsewhere?
 
tomd25 said:
Woah, good work Cloudane! Tested this out just now and it works perfectly, brilliant - thank you :) Where did you find that out, out of interest?
Click to expand...

Glad it's working for people! Credit to whoever originally came up with that solution, I just happened to find the correct terms to put into Google. After a lot of digging around I heard that some people were having the issue with other monitors including Apple's own, which helped to broaden the search. Turns out a few were mentioning the dithering conflict theory including this thread and the Dell forums, and it seemed to make perfect sense. From there a quick Google search for "disable dithering OS X" and there it was. Easy when you know what to look for... it did take a little while to get to that point though :)

That led to the Yahoo Groups post you just linked to, and from there the wiki link.

As one person said in one of the threads somewhere, it's kind of ironic that the hackintosh community provides better support than Apple. Apple themselves unfortunately, for all their good points and good everyday customer service and hardware support, do have a penchant for sweeping software bugs under the carpet and pretending you didn't mention them, official bug report or not (if you do find a bug reporting process that is likely to be looked at though post it up, we might as well have give it a try.)

My dad was getting a lot of display related panics on his Mac Pro.. seems to be a heck of a bug. I think it was with an NVidia card in at the time. It was related to a monitor switch... it didn't seem to like losing and regaining the DVI connection.

Temporal dithering eh. Sounds like something off Star Trek.
 
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Heilage said:
You shouldn't get so much trouble with kernel panics. Could you please post a few logs from System Profiler? Maybe we can help you solve the problem. :)
Click to expand...

tomd25 said:
@Dolphin, I don't think I've ever had a Kernel Panic either with or without my monitor connected. Your problem may lie elsewhere?
Click to expand...

Cloudane said:
My dad was getting a lot of display related panics on his Mac Pro.. seems to be a heck of a bug. I think it was with an NVidia card in at the time. It was related to a monitor switch... it didn't seem to like losing and regaining the DVI connection.
Click to expand...

I'm unsure if the two problems are related or not, but in any event, if my calls to AppleCare are not fruitful, I'll be making a separate thread to post my logs and such just to keep this one on-topic (if the monitor does end up being the culprit, however, I'll update this thread as well).

EDIT (Feb 2011): Turns out that the RAM was causing my kernel panic troubles all this time!
 
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Vertical pin striping fix

Its a problem with OSX snow leopard / leopard and dithering. There is a fix that disables this dithering and all my pin stripes are now gone . I use a U2311H

follow possible solution #5 also worked for me !

CONFIRMED WORKING !:D:D:)
 
dolphin842 said:
As mentioned in a previous post, all the pinstriping has disappeared of its own accord on my end, even with older versions of Snow Leopard.
Click to expand...

So, as it turns out, the pinstripes are still here (EDIT: as are the sleep/wake problems, essentially unchanged from my original post) :rolleyes: ... they're just showing up on different colors now. The color swatches on the Lagom lcd test appear fine, but on the Apple Start Page, the slightly gray backgrounds on the Hot News, Video Tutorials, and Movie Trailer sections exhibit the symptoms. I'd try the NVinject method, but I'm currently in the process of unloading 3rd party kexts as part of my kernel panic troubleshooting. Once I do get around to it, however, I'll report in with my results (looks like it's working for people so far though!).
 
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Yep, see the posts right above yours!

Someone on the Dell forum spotted uneven "boldness" in the fonts which I guess is something like the anti-aliasing expecting dithering to be turned on. I wouldn't have noticed it and consider it far better than the pinstripes!
 
Ah good, was going to say you have to run it from where you downloaded it (or possibly google "kext helper" if too unfamiliar with the terminal)

Apple are perhaps unaware of the problem, but I'm not sure how we would go about getting them to fix it? Apart from the fact that they're the grand masters at denying the existence of obvious problems even when the evidence is held up in front of them, you'd have to fight through all the layers of "try zapping your PRAM" and "try repairing permissions" from people who see them as magic solutions to everything but don't understand what they actually do.
 
I've noticed that the fix Cloudane posted causes dithering to be disabled for both the internal display and the external display. Unfortunately (on my 13" Macbook at least), this causes colours to appear banded on the laptop display (as it is only a 6-bit display so needs the dithering, I guess?).

Luckily, it's easy to modify what the NVinject kext does, so I've attached a version which disables dithering only for the external display, keeping the internal display as is.

Just use the attached file in place of the NVinject.kext file on the Psychtoolbox site.

If you have previously installed NVinject, you may need to force your Mac to pick up the new version - do this by typing: "sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions" without the quotes at a Terminal.

All is well in the world now, many thanks again for finding this Cloudane!
 

Attachments

  • NVinject.kext.zip
    11.5 KB · Views: 166
Not sure if this helps anybody, but I had scrolling slanted strips on very specific colors using a U2211h on my 2006 MBP. I first noticed it with the blue background of the MacRumors header. My contrast was set to 90 on the U2211h, but changing it to either 89 or 91 made the slanted stripes go away. However, at 89 I noticed the stripes were now on Facebook comment boxes. Changed contrast to 91 and how I haven't noticed the stripes anywhere... yet. This is also after calibrating, so the contrast levels may differ.

BTW, this is a 2.16GHz C2D MBP with the ATI Radeon x1600.

Edit: I found more colors which stripe on different contrast levels. Here are four problematic colors I've found thus far:

Colors.jpg
 
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This behavior is indeed the type of problem we've been covering. The colors that trigger the problem change with each step in the contrast setting. If you mess around with the contrast setting on a page with color swatches (such as the Lagom lcd test), you'll see the pinstriping jump around to various colors at random.

Are you connecting the Dell via DVI or DisplayPort? Have you tried disconnecting and reconnecting the cable to see if the problem goes away?

My Mini keeps oscillating between having and not having the problem. For the past several months I've had to do the unplug/replug trick on every boot. Recently, however, the problem doesn't show up at all.
 
dolphin842 said:
Are you connecting the Dell via DVI or DisplayPort? Have you tried disconnecting and reconnecting the cable to see if the problem goes away?

My Mini keeps oscillating between having and not having the problem. For the past several months I've had to do the unplug/replug trick on every boot. Recently, however, the problem doesn't show up at all.
Click to expand...

Tried restarting with the monitor off, then turned it on at login screen, problem still present. Tried disconnecting and reconnecting while computer was on, still no fix.

This is using a DVI cable with no adapters. However, when using the DVI to VGA adapter, the stripes are no longer there (I had to recalibrate, but I looked at swatches while changing the contrast and didn't notice and striping). I honestly can't tell the difference in quality yet, between DVI and VGA, so I might just stick with VGA.

Do we know if DVI (on Mac) to DisplayPort (on U2211H) is a solution as well? I saw you went that route Cougarcat, but did you ever come across the pin-striping issue with other connection methods?
 
Ah, I neglected to see that you're running a 2006 MBP (hence no DisplayPort). Converting DVI to DisplayPort requires an (expensive) active adapter I believe. Your best bet is probably using VGA, since the NVInject method isn't available for ATI cards so far as I know.
 
So is this happening on ATI too? I'd be most curious to hear if anyone tries this monitor with the new MBPs as they have the new 6000 series support (which will no doubt find its way to Hackintoshes and free me from the Hell that is NVidia Fermi)
 
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