Pleas help: Hooking up external monitor

[macness]

Hey guys. So I finally have a desk so I can hook up my late 2011 MacBook Pro to an external monitor. I've tried a couple monitors using mini display port to HDMI. Here's my question: I know that my MacBook is not "hd" but how come when I hook it up to an hd monitor it doesn't display in HD. I hooked up my MacBook to a samsung monitor in best buy yesterday and the pixels were horrible

 

[snaky69]

Hey guys. So I finally have a desk so I can hook up my late 2011 MacBook Pro to an external monitor. I've tried a couple monitors using mini display port to HDMI. Here's my question: I know that my MacBook is not "hd" but how come when I hook it up to an hd monitor it doesn't display in HD. I hooked up my MacBook to a samsung monitor in best buy yesterday and the pixels were horrible

You were probably mirroring your display, the lowest resolution of the two displays will be used in that situation. (In most cases, it'll be the MBP's) So you were probably displaying a 1440x900 image on a 1080p or similar screen, the image was quite probably very blocky and ugly.

Extending your desktop would allow you to use native resolution on both the MBP and the external.

 

[macness]

I did extend the desk top. The secondary display was not in HD. Even though I set it to 1080 resolution. I could see tons of pixels in the YouTube video I was playing and in the icons on my doc

 

[meson]

What was the size and resolution of the monitor you tried?

There are many large displays 24"-27" that are only 1920x1080 in resolution, making the pixels significantly larger than the ones used in your internal display. If you are limiting yourself to a 1920x1080 HD display, you will want the smallest size available to have a similar pixel size to that in your MBP. A large screen at that resolution might work ok for video oriented projects, but for text and detail based projects, the difference between your internal display and the external can be noticeable.

Over the weekend, my old external display died and I ordered a 22" 1920x1080 display at a fair price. The pixels should be just a bit larger than my internal display, and it should serve me well. Unfortunately a larger high res monitor was not in my budget.