Mini with Samsung HDTV woes

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I've been waiting for the new Mac Mini to be released before I took the plunge into the Mac world (my wife worked long and hard to convert me), so with the release last week I went ahead and purchased a 2.26/4GB/320GB model to use as the center of my home entertainment system. I'm connecting it to a Samsung 40" 1080p LCD (LN-S4095D) via the mini DVI to DVI converter and a DVI to HDMI cable.

The image quality is fantastic, but the problem is I either get a "cropped" screen (about 1" or so is cut off on all sides so I can't see the menu bar or 1/3 of the dock icons) when overscan is enabled or a "letterbox" effect where I can see everything on the desktop but black borders surround the image with overscan is disabled. I called Apple support and did some fairly extensive web surfing but can't seem to find a solution yet, so any help is very welcome! My next step would be to suck it up and just use a VGA connection, but that kinda defeats the purpose of high def...
 

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Other than switching over to using a VGA cable, you might try resetting the resolution on your Mini to see if you can get a fit. However, what may happen is that you'll wind up with a less than desirable display on the Samsung. Anything less than the native resolution of the Samsung may result in a poor quality picture.

Regards.
 
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Something is probably being lost in all the conversions necessary to get from mini DVI to HDMI. Did you check in System Preferences>Displays to make sure you are using the correct resolution?

If I were you I would just use the VGA connection. You would still be running 1920x1080 to the TV, so it would be high def and would probably look just as good as with HDMI, and it should display correctly. I used to connect my MacBook to my 42" LG this way and the picture quality was great.
 

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The only answer I can give is the stock answer saying that it has to do with TV's and the fact that they overscan. As you have already found out, by turning off overscan on your Mac, you end up with a black border around all four sides of your TV screen.

This is a lot of bunk. This is one of the areas where Windows has it right and the Mac just flat out has it wrong. I've been using computers attached to HDTV's via HDMI for well over 3 years now and this is only an issue on Mac's. It is not an issue in Linux (at least for the versions that will work with HDMI as not all of them will) and it is not an issue in Windows from XP forward.

I am typing this booted up into Win 7 on my MBP and windows fills my TV screen using HDMI perfectly, exactly where it should. No overscan to turn on and off. In this particular matter, I have to say, Windows "just works" and the Mac doesn't.

As much as I like OS X, this is a big gripe for me. It's caused me to hold off setting up an HTPC for the 2 years I've been considering it now.

The mini's improved graphics almost has me ready to get one for an HTPC, but this single issue still has me sitting on pause.

This has to boil down to either OS X not having the capability of reading the EDID of the TV and knowing what to do or not requesting this matter to be fixed in the driver of the graphics cards Apple is using.
 
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Thanks for the very detailed responses, I had suspected this involved the two devices not properly communicating with each other but it's good to get some confirmation. Previously I have connected my wife's MacBook Pro to the same television using a VGA cable (our short-term HTPC hack setup) and everything worked very well with nice image quality, so as long as I'm not loosing much by avoiding the HDMI input in favor of VGA I can stomach it. Besides, now I can return the overpriced DVI-HDMI cable I had to buy...

I'd have to agree though that this weakness in the Mac OS is very surprising to me given how everything else seems to work almost magically. I'm used to strong arming my PC's into submission in order to get them configured just how I like them, but other than this video gripe the Mini has required almost no attention. Wireless inputs just worked, optical output to the receiver just worked, it was so easy I knew something would have to go wrong :Smirk:

Ah well, at least I don't have Windows on my TV!
 

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Now I remember why VGA is a waste of time. Senility, you know.

Before you run out and get a VGA cable for your fancy widescreen HDTV, might as well open up the owner's manual for your TV and take a look. Most HDTV's have a very limited number of resolutions that they will support through the VGA port. The better manuals will list their supported resolutions.

I've owned a total of 6 HDTV sets thus far ranging in size from 26" to 65". Brands you ask? Panasonic, Toshiba, Sony Bravia, Westinghouse, LG. Not a single one them has supported anything over 1024 x 768 on my widescreen TV's. Yep, that's right 4:3 picture is all they'll support through VGA. Kinda pointless. That leaves HDMI as the only real option.
 
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That's wierd.. I own two 42" TVs, one is an LG and the other a Westinghouse, and both support the TV's full resolution with the VGA input.
 
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Alright, I'm about ready to put this thing back in the box and get a refund... no reason getting a TV connected should be this hard. I confirmed that the VGA input on my set would support 1920x1080, so I went to the nearby Apple store and got a mini displayport -> VGA adapter. I come home and hook everything up and... nothing. The TV didn't recognize any input at all on the VGA port. The interesting thing is if I attach both the DVI to HDMI as well as the displayport to VGA cables from the mini to the TV (yes, silly I know but I was curious) the mini goes into dual display mode and sees both connections as active, however only the HDMI input on the TV sees any kind of signal at all.

Ah well, time for the next round. I went back to the apple store, returned the adapter and got a mini DVI to VGA plug instead. The stars aligned and I was successful in getting the screen fully filled with a 1920x1080 image! It doesn't look as good as the HDMI did, but for movies I can't really tell the difference, however text in a browser is very hard to read. On a whim I thought I'd simply lower the resolution for web browsing to a point I could read things and then bump it back up for media viewing. Big mistake! I tried a couple resolutions (sorry, don't remember which) to see what was best, and the third one I tried turned the screen black and killed the signal to the TV. I tried switching back to HDMI, rebooting, and monkeying around with the connection but nothing works. Now my mini doesn't send any recognizable signal to the TV... great.

Any advice whatsoever would be welcome. I don't have another display in the house to hook the thing to, but could probably get my hands on a monitor if necessary.
 

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Turn off the TV and the computer, hook up via HDMI. Then turn on TV first and computer 2nd. Would also put it in mirror mode while experimenting.

Think I am going to try out SwitchResX this weekend to see if I can get the picture setup correctly via HDMI or not.
 
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Well, I had some limited success yesterday and thought I'd share my current progress for anyone else dealing with this issue. I was able to get the resolution reset to something visible by starting the computer in safe mode (holding left shift on startup evidently does that special trick...). After that was corrected, my adventure with switchresx began!

By leaving overscan enabled, and messing around with the resolutions (yes, much trial and error here) I have been able to shrink the screen down to a size where I can now see everything. There are some great tutorials online to show how to use this software with an LCD TV, and in all honesty it isn't that hard... just time consuming. I'm having some difficulty getting the picture centered on the screen and I have managed to create a weird blue bar on the bottom and right sides of the picture, but I'm getting closer. Hopefully I can finish this up before I have to leave the state for the week on business...

So far I would definitely recommend downloading this package and playing around. It is fairly intuitive and the picture looks significantly better with the HDMI input. No, I'm not a resolution snob, but there is definitely a visible difference to be seen.
 

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