new mac mini display issues on 720p LCD TV

[tommyshawmp3]

I purchased a 2.2 GHz Mac Mini today and connected it to my Samsung 720 p LCD TV via mini-DVI to HDMI adapter. I've already adjusted to remove overscan but all text on the screen is blurry. By blurry I mean it has ragged edges and looks "chunky." It's not good.

Text looks clean and crisp on high-def TV channels. Photos look decent. Even YouTube videos (HD) look pretty good. But the text is awful.

My display settings are 720p so it displays at 1280 x 720 @ 60 hz. If I plug in my Dell laptop, the same TV defaults to a 768 x 1360@60 hz display and looks great.

I've tried all the display settings ranging from 480 p up to 1600 x 900. They all look pretty bad. So I'm stumped. Any suggestions?

 

[linuxidiot]

Odd my Samsung 720P tv displays wonderfully at a 1360 resolution, however I went the mini-displayport to HDMI adaptor.

 

[Kurfer]

Bumping this thread...

I have the same issue except I am using a samsung 46 inch LED tv. I set the mac mini to 1080p and the test looks horrid, so do images in the safari browser. When I turn off overscan my display is small surrounded by black outer frame so that's not an option.

My windows PC looks fantastic at 1080p resolution so it has to be something with mac.

It's the same new mac mini as the OP has.

 

[JRob3529]

Solution??

Did anyone ever find a solution to this problem? Facing the same issue with the new mac mini and my panny projector (720p/1080i)

 

[mrderik]

Greetings -

I'll take a stab at this. When your are talking about 720p vs. 768 x 1360 you are talking about two totally separate formats. First off, if the Mac outputs 720p that is a 'television' resolution and it should be carried over an HDMI or an RGB cable. If you are outputting 1360 x 768 then that is a computer resolution and should be carried over a VGA / DVI cable. With of course the Television being set to input accordingly. I will tell you that a 720p (output from your Computer) viewed on any TV bigger than about 46" and the text isn't going to look very good. (Period) For larger, 50+ inch TV's you definately want a (native) 1080p set if you are going to view text. The exception is a Native 1368x768 set will look ok - if that's the (computer) resolution you are inputting but remember that's if you are using a VGA / DVI cable. Some sets are TV (only) and are limited to 720p and so when you input a 768 image the TV scaler has to downsize the image and it is going to distort it every which way to sunday. Images are forgiving, text is not.

If you're TV only has a 720p (native) resolution but downconverts 1080p signals to 720p (which it likely does) then I would output from your computer 1080p to the TV (HDMI - with a 'high speed' HDMI cable) and let the tv soften the image. This is where the Good TV's get separated from the Cheap ones. If you have an "Cheap" one it's video scaler is pretty much junk and text is going to look blurry. The Samsung's are ok and same with Sony. With the Mitsu being some of the best.

So that's the basics. Some TV's are just tv's - 720p and they typically do not come with VGA ports. But some TV's are actually "Monitors" with native 768 resolution and this is what you want if you are going to view your computer on them. Doesn't seem like much of a difference, but it makes all the difference in the World for viewing text outputted from a computer.