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Using 42" Phillips LCD TV as Macbook monitor

D

Daerog

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 23, 2008
4
0
Hey all,

I'll be a new Mac user come this Christmas and I had a question concerning my TV. I have a 42" Phillips 3000 Series LCD 1080p TV - it has no VGA input but it does have HDMI so I was going to go with the DVI-HDMI cord on the Macbook. My question is: will the picture/colors suffer from the transfer of display?

What resolution would I have to set my Macbook to in order to optimize the display settings? Would I have to alter my TV in any way in terms of settings or calibrations? Any and all advice is appreciated! Thanks!

-Damian
 
New Macbook or old Macbook. If it's a white Macbook, you'll need the $30 miniDVI-DVI adapter from Apple and a DIV-HDMI cable. You'll also need a way to send the audio to the TV as well. You'll need a mini-jack to RCA adapter and then a set of RCA-audio wires. Caveat - not all HDMI inputs allow for audio using RCA(L/R).

ft
 
It would be the newer generation Macbooks - and, yes, more than likely the white.

As for RCA cables, my DVD player is connected to my TV through only an HDMI cable - no components, no RCA's. Does that mean it would work the same for the Macbook, or would I maybe have to do as you say and route it through the RCA?
 
Daerog said:
It would be the newer generation Macbooks - and, yes, more than likely the white.

As for RCA cables, my DVD player is connected to my TV through only an HDMI cable - no components, no RCA's. Does that mean it would work the same for the Macbook, or would I maybe have to do as you say and route it through the RCA?
Click to expand...

The spec for HDMI includes audio, so that's how your DVD player is sending audio.

On the Macbook, you're actually using a DVI port, which does not include audio. So even though you adapt the DVI to HDMI using an adapter, there's no audio. You'll need to run audio from the Macbook separately ... but don't worry, it's easy. You just need to know if your TV has separate audio inputs for the HDMI port (note - you may need to go into the TV's menu and activate the audio ports for the HDMI input).

ft
 
I've got a (somewhat) similar setup, in that I've got a Mac Mini attached to a Philips 37PF9830 TV. I've actually got the DVI out of the Mac plugged into a 4-way HDMI switch via a DVI-HDMI cable.

A couple of things to note:
1. There should be no degradation of quality - the signal is digital
2. Depending on your TV, you may have an overscan issue. In a nutshell, this means that the TV may not fit the Mac screen perfectly within its borders. My Philips doesn't, and I had to use a program called DisplayConfigX to rectify it.
3. You mentioned sound. As others have noted, the sound from your Macbook will need to be routed separately from the image. Depending on the TV, and depending on whether you route your sound direct to your TV or to an amp, you may find that there appears to be a slight synchronisation issue with the TV - this often occurs as the TV is performing some processing on the image, and this will cause a slight delay, whereas (say) the amp is pumping out the sound as soon as it gets it. One way around this (on my setup at least) is to configure the TV to say that the channel is a "Game" - this will ensure that the TV and sound are not out of sync (and if they are, the TV will adjust every now and then).

Hope this helps...
 
Could you please let me know the DisplayConfigX seting you used. Thanks
ideonode said:
I've got a (somewhat) similar setup, in that I've got a Mac Mini attached to a Philips 37PF9830 TV. I've actually got the DVI out of the Mac plugged into a 4-way HDMI switch via a DVI-HDMI cable.

A couple of things to note:
1. There should be no degradation of quality - the signal is digital
2. Depending on your TV, you may have an overscan issue. In a nutshell, this means that the TV may not fit the Mac screen perfectly within its borders. My Philips doesn't, and I had to use a program called DisplayConfigX to rectify it.
3. You mentioned sound. As others have noted, the sound from your Macbook will need to be routed separately from the image. Depending on the TV, and depending on whether you route your sound direct to your TV or to an amp, you may find that there appears to be a slight synchronisation issue with the TV - this often occurs as the TV is performing some processing on the image, and this will cause a slight delay, whereas (say) the amp is pumping out the sound as soon as it gets it. One way around this (on my setup at least) is to configure the TV to say that the channel is a "Game" - this will ensure that the TV and sound are not out of sync (and if they are, the TV will adjust every now and then).

Hope this helps...
Click to expand...
 
Andrew60 said:
Could you please let me know the DisplayConfigX seting you used. Thanks
Click to expand...

Timing

The following numbers are for Active, Front Porch, Sync, Back Porch
Horizontal: 1224, 112, 80, 232
Vertical: 672, 30, 5, 43

Not interlaced

Pixel Frequency: 61.800
Horizontal: 37.500
Refresh Rate: 50.000 (I'm from the UK, where 50Hz is better for domestic programming)
 
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