Connecting the Mini to my digital TV

To download shows you will need extra equipment. I have a device from elgato called eyetv hybrid. It can download tv for you. If the mini is a powerpc instead of intell it will only do SD tv. Otherwise it can do HD too . Go to the elgato (www.elgato.com i Think) so see the spec.

Good luck. I have a macbook and love it.

My Mac Mini performs admirably as a media hub in my living room, connected to my TV. Originally I tried to connect it via HDMI, but after a week of constant tinkering with video settings, I gave up and connected it via the VGA connector. I also got a wireless keyboard and mouse to operate it from the couch (when I'm not using the apple remote).

I have an Eye TV device for watching live TV. The cool thing about that is that I can remotely schedule the Mini to record TV over my home network, or over the internet (even using my mobile phone). Since it is a full computer, any television or movies you can download, for example through iTunes or from elsewhere, can be watched on the TV.

I also have all of my music on a shared network drive, and use iTunes/Front Row to play that through my TV.

Intel Mac Mini, Macbook (Core Duo) Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Hello MediaXY,

I am planning on MacMini purchase to attach to Sony 40" LCD. What does VGA connection mean for screen resolution? I don't have open HDMI input (Satellite receiver and PS3 take both available)
And, how do I output audio (eg iTunes) to my stereo receiver that does not have optical inputs?
Thanks. You can e-mail me at aero97guy@comcast.net

RWMBoston,

Using VGA for your video connection, compared to HDMI, should not make any difference at all to the maximum possible resolution that you are able to display on your TV. Any particular LCD panel will only really have one optimum resolution, which will be listed as the maximum resolution in your TV's user manual. The difference between VGA and HDMI might only be the maximum refresh rate available, but depending on your TV, that might not even be an issue.

My Samsung TV is running at 1360 x 768 resolution. The maximum resolution of the screen is 1366 x 768 (with 6 rows of pixels presumably behind the screen surround, because I can't see them).

While not exactly a graphics power house, the Mini has more than enough grunt to support 1080p (True High Definition), if your screen is capable of accepting that input.

As I said previously, I spent two weeks tinkering with settings using DisplayConfigX, trying to get the Mini to work properly with the HDMI connection, thinking that this would be the best picture. I continually had problems with over-scan, or black borders on the screen. Sometimes if I got the settings wrong, I got no picture at all, and I had to plug in an old monitor, or restart the computer in a safe mode, to be able to reverse the problem.

Eventually I tried a VGA cable (using the DVI to VGA adaptor that comes with the Mini), and the Mini immediately detected the optimum settings and and produced a good, if a little bit washed out, picture. I then ran the colour calibration process (first on my TV, then on the Mini), and the image was perfect. Crisp and clear. The TV picture from Eye TV even looked better than the picture from my TV's internal HD receiver, but that is a subjective judgement.

The audio output on the Mini is both optical and analogue. If you don't have optical inputs on your stereo, just use a regular cable with a mini jack connector (the same connector as they have on iPod headphones, or just about every other computer in existence). I just plug my Mini into the analogue audio input on my TV. If I want a slightly better/louder output, I just plug the same cable into my stereo. iTunes works great in both configurations.




Intel Mac Mini, Macbook (Core Duo) Mac OS X (10.4.10)

"Eventually I tried a VGA cable (using the DVI to VGA adaptor that comes with the Mini), and the Mini immediately detected the optimum settings and and produced a good, if a little bit washed out, picture. I then ran the colour calibration process (first on my TV, then on the Mini), and the image was perfect. Crisp and clear."

How do I run this myself?

To run the colour calibration process on your Mini, go to the "Displays" menu in the system preferences, then click on the "color" tab. On the right you will see a button that says "calibrate...". Click on this to start the display calibration assistant, then just follow the instructions on screen.

As for your TV, I can't say, but generally there are options in the picture menu for you to tinker with the colour output. I have turned mine to a setting Samsung calls "cool", as this gives the best (subjectively) picture on my screen.

Intel Mac Mini, Macbook (Core Duo) Mac OS X (10.4.10)

As I said previously, I spent two weeks tinkering with settings using DisplayConfigX, trying to get the Mini to work properly with the HDMI connection, thinking that this would be the best picture. I continually had problems with over-scan, or black borders on the screen. Sometimes if I got the settings wrong, I got no picture at all, and I had to plug in an old monitor, or restart the computer in a safe mode, to be able to reverse the problem.

I have tried DisplayConfigX and SwitchResX on a Mac mini G4 with similar results to you. So far I have not tried this on an Intel Mac mini but I expect no better as it has a weedy Intel GMA 950 adapter.

Ultimately my plan is to connect to a 1080p screen and I hope and expect that in this case it will (via DVI to HDMI) fill the screen automatically since this is a supported resolution.

It is so-called 720p TVs that are the big problem because even though the standard is for 720 lines, all these TVs seem to be 768 lines (which computers normally do not do). I really cannot understand why they simply don't make the TVs 720 lines like the standard.

Higher spec ATI and Nvidia cards can be successfully tweaked to fill a 1366x768 screen, so a Mac Pro would probably have no problems (but is hardly suitable to use in the living room).

If Apple don't kill the Mini but do upgrade it, I suspect they will merely switch to a newer Intel GMA model rather than a full blown ATI or Nvidia adapter.

Note: I have tried connecting a G4 Mac mini to a Sony 40" Bravia (1366x768) and found that via VGA it did auto-fill the screen but that the image quality was poor, with the pixels 'crawling'. Via DVI to HDMI it did not fill the screen (it was 1280x720 with black borders) but was much better quality, however it was still far inferior to a 'real' computer LCD display.

"I have tried DisplayConfigX and SwitchResX on a Mac mini G4 with similar results to you. So far I have not tried this on an Intel Mac mini but I expect no better as it has a weedy Intel GMA 950 adapter."

The Intel GMA 950 may well be "weedy", by gaming standards, but it is still considerably faster than what was in the G4 Minis, which is why it can handle OS X Tiger in all of its Core Image glory, where the G4 Mini could not. Compared to the Radeon 9200 in the G4 Mini, the GMA 950 also has a higher fill rate, almost double the core speed, and access to a minimum of 64MB (and according to the Intel web site potentially up to 192MB, depending on how much system RAM is installed) of DDR2 677MHz RAM as opposed to 32MB of DDR 200MHz Video RAM in the G4. It is also optimised for video playback, and so is a pretty good fit for a lounge room/media computer.

It isn't the graphics chip-set that prevented me from using HDMI for my video output, but rather a lack of patience and skill on my part - There are reports in these discussions of people who have achieved this successfully, although I haven't figured out how they did it.

Perhaps the problem with the G4 Mini was not so much resolution, but refresh rate, which caused the "crawling" effect. I haven't found that to be the case with my Intel Mini. Of course, I have 2GB of RAM in my Mini, which makes a huge difference to overall video performance.

Like I said - my picture via VGA is stable and crisp. I could not see a visible difference between the VGA and the HDMI pictures.

It isn't the graphics chip-set that prevented me from using HDMI for my video output, but rather a lack of patience and skill on my part - There are reports in these discussions of people who have achieved this successfully, although I haven't figured out how they did it.

I did spend longer on the G4 Mini and did manage to tweak it to almost fill the horizontal resolution but could not get the vertical right. It is possible the range of settings available on the G4 Mini just do not make it possible.

On the Windows side, officially the GMA 950 cannot be tweaked, PowerStrip does not support it and obviously the ATI and Nvidia software will not work and Intel software does not seems to offer any options. However I did some brief testing on an Intel mini and the Mac software did allow some adjustment.

I still think that ATI and Nvidia cards give more scope for this. Anyway, for my main system I plan to get a 1080p TV and avoid the problem completely. I may get a second system for the bedroom which would be 1366x768 (aka. 720p) and then look at this again.

All of the above and your own comments do not change the fact that there seems no logic or benefit to a supposed 720p TV being actually 1366x768 pixels.

*"I still think that ATI and Nvidia cards give more scope for this. Anyway, for my main system I plan to get a 1080p TV and avoid the problem completely. I may get a second system for the bedroom which would be 1366x768 (aka. 720p) and then look at this again."*

I agree with you - obviously a current generation ATI or Nvidia non-integrated graphics solution is going to provide the best possibility of a perfect picture, but considering that some of these graphics cards, at the very high end, can cost almost as much as an entire Mac Mini, and can draw up to 4 times the power of an entire Mac Mini, I still think the the GMA 950 is a adequate solution for this particular problem.

*"All of the above and your own comments do not change the fact that there seems no logic or benefit to a supposed 720p TV being actually 1366x768 pixels."*

Not being a TV manufacturer, we can only speculate why most LCD TVs have 768 horizontal lines, rather than 720, although another thought that occurred to me was that the presence of 768 lines makes it simple to switch to a 4:3 aspect ratio picture (such as an old analogue TV show), since that would produce a 1024 x 768 image (with black sidebars), which is a standard resolution, and compatible with practically all analogue TV standards (NTSC/PAL/VHS).

After all, from a marketing perspective 1366 x 768 resolution LCD TVs are only designed as a less costly method to wean us all off analogue TV, and on to 1900 x 1080 high definition (1080p)...