Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Fuzziness on External Monitor

P

psionic1

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 26, 2005
6
0
N/A
Hi,
I just switched to the mac (got myself a powerbook 12"). When I
atttach it to an external monitor (non LCD) 1280x1024,
I noticed that the screen fonts look fuzzy.

Things I've tried:
Reducing font smoothing, no effect.
Changing font, no effect
Messing with monitor color settings etc.,. no effect.
Upping the refresh rate (now at 85Hz). no effect.

I'm a a bit of a loss on this. Anyone have any ideas?
My monitor is quite old (21" Hitachi CM2198), but
it worked well with Windows, so I don't think its the
monitor.

I am using the mini-dvi to vga connector for this, and
the vga connector on the monitor uses a RGBHV cable.

thanks.
--S
 
No, no reboot necessary as far as I know.
I saw the effects of the changes, they just didn't
help with the fuzziness
 
Good question. Mostly the fonts are fuzzy, but there is
some fuzziness on images, I looked closely at the
screen, and noticed that I see moire patterns on the
background, and also what looks like ghosting. Could this
be a problem with the signal coming from the dvi connector?
 
Does the monitor have any sort of setting for impedance on the input connector, either as a switch on the back, or in the menus? This does sort of sound like a cabling-related issue.

So you have BNC connectors on the monitor, and a RGBHV cable that pools these all together into a VGA plug, and then that plugs into the DVI-VGA adaptor, which plugs into the PB DVI port, right? Is this (minus the DVI adaptor) the same setup you used on your PC, or did it drive the BNC connectors directly?
 
I had that same problem with my 12" pb.

I had a much newer 22" Diamondtron display though. The horizonal and vertical phase was way, way, way out of line when I hooked it up to the pb. It resulted in a readable but very fuzzy picture that you wouldn't want to look at for more than 10 min. I think there's a lot of signal loss in the mini-dvi connector. I ended up having to return the CRT and get a 17" LCD which works beautifully. Sorry this isn't very encouraging.

On the plus side, LCDs are pretty cheap these days. You can get a good one for about $250 usually.
 
Connectors are:
mini-dvi -> adapter -> vga connector -> 5 wire bnc.
From the last post, I guess getting an lcd is in the cards, but
considering that my monitor is around 10 years old, I'm
not too put out on spending a couple of hundred dollars
on a newer lcd monitor.

Luckily there is a fry's near me, so I can go get one,
and if the focus issue isn't resolved, I can return it,
Fry's have a great return policy.

I'll post my results sometime tomorrow (Sunday).

--S
 
One new Samsung Syncmaster 193MP later, and all the fuzziness woes are gone. I really didn't want to spend as much as i did on the monitor, but once it was hooked up...oh boy..what a difference 😀 !!!

Many thanks for everyones input on this.
--S
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back