Does anyone else get bad AirPlay screen quality?

[Hieveryone]

I just got my Apple TV in the mail. I wanted to run airplay to get my Macbook Pro retina screen onto my external monitor.

The only issue is that the resolution is bad.

Any tips?

 

[D.T.]

Well, you’re going to want to set the external display (i.e., the ATV+TV) to a native resolution to avoid any scaling. I bet you’ve got the TV trying to display a non-native resolution (and the retina resolutions are probably flipping it out since they’re _way_ above native TV specs!)

When in Airplay you can Mirror or Extend. Mirror matches the resolution between the displays, Extend is like an additional display, and it can have an independent resolution set.

So in the attachments you can see the AirPlay selector showing the ATVs, the available displays, initially set to "Mirror All”, and then you can see the Display Prefs showing the matching resolution, or when Mirror is disabled (i.e., Extended), you can set each independently (also neat way to do a wireless display, I can drag windows from our plasma, across my internal MBP display, over to my 24” desktop display )

 

[waw74]

what exactly do you mean "the resolution is bad"?

your retina screen on your mac is either 2560-by-1600 (13") or 2880-by-1800 (15")

your TV is at max 1920-by-1080, in a much larger space, so the pixels will be larger causing the images to be "blurrier"

if you're trying to watch video on the TV, airplay mirroring is a bad option for this. Because of the way it works, the image will be jerky and possibly pixelated. an ethernet connection is really the only way to clear this up, and even then it won't be perfect.
airplay mirroring is good for stuff with just a bit of motion, for things where the whole screen is changing rapidly it doesn't work.

to a native resolution to avoid any scaling. I bet you’ve got the TV trying to display a non-native resolution (and the retina resolutions are probably flipping it out since they’re _way_ above native TV specs!)

airplay only sends up to 1080. so that's not going to be an issue. all scaling is done on the mac end.