Why is viewing photos with 40" hdtv so inferior to 24" iMac?

Hi everyone,

I just acquired a new Samsung 40" 1080p hdtv and a current Mac Mini hooked via HDMI cable. Photos from my Sony 5n that looked gorgeous on my old Mac now look dreadfully digitized on the Samsung. Even internet viewing experience is poor, such as typing this thread and reading forums on this site. Is it because of the screen size? Are the pixels bigger on the TV vs monitor? Maybe I'm confused about what the screen resolution numbers really mean.

Someone on another forum informed me that the new Mini does not support 1080 resolution even though it says it does is that true?

I have turned down the sharpness and that has helped some.

Thanks in advance, Gary

The Mac mini can handle 1080p so make sure that the TV is set at full resolution in display settings. It might look fuzzy because pixels on a TV are usually bigger than on a HD monitor because the same amount of pixels are being stretched over a larger space.

Wcats said:

Is it because of the screen size? Are the pixels bigger on the TV vs monitor?

Click to expand...

Pixel density or pixels/inch.

- Nick

1080P means a resolution of 1920x1080. That resolution on a smaller screens usually yield better quality due to pixel density..on a larger screen, it will look fairly bad close up, but move far enough away and it'll be fine..

So just because you have a TV that's screen size is nearly twice as large as the iMac doesn't meant it'll be twice as good in quality..

If you look at the 40" TV from the required distance away, then it might be fine..

"Pixel density or pixels/inch."

I'm not sure of what the difference is, sorry to say.

Wcats said:

I'm not sure of what the difference is, sorry to say.

Click to expand...

Two ways of saying the same thing.

pixel density = pixel/inch (pixel density can be measured in pixels/inch)

- Nick

Well one thing led to another and I ended up at the apple support forums and ended up with a simple elegant fix. The improvements are day and night from what I initially had. apparently the issue was that my new Samsung 40" LED did not recognize the signal coming in was from a PC and assumed it was DVD etc.. All that need to happen was to rename a designated HDMI input to "PC" and presto. What a difference. Photos are no longer pixelated and are every bit as sharp as the 24" imac, very good color depth. My only problem now is that the white balance is just a tiny bit off toward the cool side. I went through the calibration tool on Lion but there were only a choice 4 presets, wish there was a way to custom calibrate. Any ideas?

surely it's the TV that needs the calibration?