Mac mini blurry screen

tiger-kai said:

Just an update. Thought I'd give the VGA route a go and bought a cheap thunderbolt to VGA cable and hey presto! image is super sharp now! so I'm all sorted. Thanks for all the advice.

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Good to hear thanks T-K and it just goes to show that the often recommended connection method may not always be the best — a big understatement in your case.

But then again many HDMI cables seem to crap out for some strange reason which is I gather what you were using.

Maybe try another one at some time just to see and/or compare to what you have working now.




- Patrick
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Some times those adapters go bad as well...

ferrarr said:

Some times those adapters go bad as well...

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Quite true Bob.

I was quite surprised in the resolution differences for that 2011 Mac mini according to what they show at:
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/specs/mac-mini-core-i5-2.3-mid-2011-specs.html#macspecs2

Video (Monitor): 2*
Details: *1 HDMI and 1 Thunderbolt port.

Supports dual simultaneous displays -- 1920x1200 on an HDMI display or a DVI display using the included HDMI-to-DVI adapter and 2560x1600 on a Thunderbolt or Mini DisplayPort display or even a VGA display (with adapter). Thunderbolt is backwards-compatible with Mini DisplayPort-equipped displays as well as adapters that are compatible with Mini DisplayPort (DVI, VGA, dual-link DVI and HDMI). It also can support other peripherals that use the Thunderbolt standard, which provides a maximum theoretical 10 Gbps of bandwidth in both directions.

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So I'm assuming that tiger-kai is now using and getting the higher and sharper resolution using the Thunderbolt (or Mini DisplayPort)-VGA adapter(s).

I guess I had my HDMI specs reversed, at least as far as resolution goes.

Anyway, glad to hear it's now all working properly for them.





- Patrick
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Yes I tried a few different hdmi cables and they all produced a bad image. I’m on a lower resolution now with the thunderbolt but the image is fine and it’s perfect for what I need now. I think it’s on 1366 x 768. With the hdmi cable I could go much higher. I think the problem is the signal.... it’s like using a scart or composite cable. Kind of like a crt tv.

I found this thread

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-mini-screen-blurry.1902129/

I was thinking perhaps this was the problem I had.
I blame the tv. It’s just a cheap one we bought a few years ago. We are living in this place temporary so this tv with the thunderbolt cable luckily will do the job for now
Thank you