How set up Mac Mini for 1080p at 50 Hz?

Since you already have SwitchRes X installed, try clicking on the "Export DDC" button and see if you can tell why 50Hz isn't working from the resulting text file created from the Samsung's display driver data. If you need help reading the display driver data, post it here for help.

This EDID looks to be well formed so most likely is not causing any problems with interfering to get 1920 x 1080 @ 50Hz working. The only strange thing I see is that the image size is several times refered to as 16 cm (or 160 mm) by 9 cm (or 90 mm) but clearly this is wrong. However, that shouldn't cause any real trouble, especially with respect to getting 50 Hz working.

As far as what vertical range the TV does support, it looks to be capable of operation at 24 Hz as well as 50 Hz and 60 Hz as indicated in Descriptor #2 where the range is listed as 23 Hz to 61 Hz. So that is also good.

I guess the next question would then be what timing values you entered to create the custom 50Hz timing in SRX? Probably the easiest and best way to go about it is to use the built-in calculator and let SRX fill in all the boxes except for the Vertical Scan rate, which you would enter as "50" and the Horizontal Active (1920) and Vertical Active (1080) and then you would select "Use simplified settings:" and select CVT or GTF (try CVT first and if it doesn't work try GTF). This should then set all the other parameters. If you find the Scan rate value changes from 50 after selecting CVT or GTF, you may have to enter it a second time. Hopefully that will result in a working 1920 x 1080 50 Hz timing. Good luck.

Nice job to get it working. I would definitely trust what is reported by the mini over what the Samsung thinks. The current timing can be confirmed within SRX. Click on the Active tab and find the timing that has a bullet next to it. Click once on that timing and a second window will open. Click on the Details button of that window and a third window will open with the exact timing parameters of the currently active timing.

Displays often use very unsophisticated methods and simple look up tables to inform the user what the timing is it thinks it is receiving. These detection circuits are very prone to error when they get unexpected timings. Trust the Mac.

Hi BSteely,

You have help me on many occasions with my mac mini HTPC (I Thank You) , but i am still having trouble getting 1080p @ 50hz to display.

Currently i have 1080p @ 30hz (Via SRX), but because i live in Australia (PAL Country) i would like to have it set to 50hz or even 25hz, what is better?

Another reason is that when i watch Eyetv and the picture is panning from right left t right (or vise versa) the picture is very jagged, not smooth flowing which is very annoying. iam not sure what is causing this but has it got anything to do with the 1080p 30hz, would making it 50 or 25hz fix this or make it better.

I was wonder if you could help me get a timming, like the one made on this thread, ( i did try the one made by Hoschi102, but no luck)

The Pixel Clock seems to only like being on 74.18 MHZ, anything else and i get a jumping picture or it wont display at all.

if This helps i will post my DDC Export (no idea what it all means)

Also i have a mac mini C2D 2.0gh 1GB RAM with leopard 10.5.2
and a Samsung LCD LA40M8BD 40 inch

It would be great if you could help me , thanks!


DDC block report generated by SwitchResX for display
SAMSUNG

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
-----------------------------------------------------
0 | 00 FF FF FF FF FF FF 00 4C 2D 9F 02 00 00 00 00
1 | 2D 10 01 03 80 10 09 78 0A AE A5 A6 54 4C 99 26
2 | 14 50 54 A1 08 00 81 80 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01
3 | 01 01 01 01 01 01 02 3A 80 18 71 38 2D 40 58 2C
4 | 45 00 A0 5A 00 00 00 1E 01 1D 00 72 51 D0 1E 20
5 | 6E 28 55 00 A0 5A 00 00 00 1E 00 00 00 FC 00 53
6 | 41 4D 53 55 4E 47 0A 20 20 20 20 20 00 00 00 FD
7 | 00 31 47 0F 46 17 00 0A 20 20 20 20 20 20 01 9B

-----------------------------------------------------
Valid DDC block: checksum passed

EDID Version........1.3
Manufacturer........SAM
Product Code........40706 (9F02) (029F)
Serial Number.......0

Manufactured........Week 45 of year 2006
Max H Size..........16 cm
Max V Size..........9 cm
Gamma...............2.20

DPMS Supported Features:
------------------------


Display type:
-------------
RGB color display


Input signal & sync:
--------------------
Digital

Color info:
------------
Red x = 0.650 Green x = 0.300 Blue x = 0.150 White x = 0.313
Red y = 0.330 Green y = 0.600 Blue y = 0.080 White y = 0.329

Established Timings:
--------------------
800 x 600 @ 60Hz
640 x 480 @ 60Hz
720 x 400 @ 70Hz
1024 x 768 @ 60Hz

Manufacturer Reserved Timings:
------------------------------

Standard Timing Identification:
-------------------------------
#0: 1280 x 1024 @ 60Hz (8180)

Monitor Description blocks:
---------------------------
Descriptor #0 is Timing definition:
Mode = 1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz
Pixel Clock.............148.50 MHz Non-Interlaced

Horizontal Vertical
Active..................1920 pixels 1080 lines
Front Porch............. 88 pixels 4 lines
Sync Width.............. 44 pixels 5 lines
Back Porch.............. 148 pixels 36 lines
Blanking................ 280 pixels 45 lines
Total...................2200 pixels 1125 lines
Scan Rate............... 67.50 kHz 60.00 Hz

Image Size.............. 160 mm 90 mm
Border.................. 0 pixels 0 lines

Sync: Digital separate with
* Positive vertical polarity
* Positive horizontal polarity

Descriptor #1 is Timing definition:
Mode = 1280 x 720 @ 60Hz
Pixel Clock.............74.25 MHz Non-Interlaced

Horizontal Vertical
Active..................1280 pixels 720 lines
Front Porch............. 110 pixels 5 lines
Sync Width.............. 40 pixels 5 lines
Back Porch.............. 220 pixels 20 lines
Blanking................ 370 pixels 30 lines
Total...................1650 pixels 750 lines
Scan Rate............... 45.00 kHz 60.00 Hz

Image Size.............. 160 mm 90 mm
Border.................. 0 pixels 0 lines

Sync: Digital separate with
* Positive vertical polarity
* Positive horizontal polarity

Descriptor #2 is Monitor name:
SAMSUNG
Descriptor #3 is Monitor limits:
Horizontal frequency range.......15-70 kHz
Vertical frequency range.........49-71 Hz
Maximum bandwidth unspecified

NWarner, it looks like your Samsung TV will run at 50 Hz but not at 25 Hz since in descriptor #3 it says the range for vertical is 49 to 71 Hz. I searched for some references to 1080p at 50 Hz and came up with this:

Pixel clock: 148.5 MHz
Horizontal Active: 1920 pixels
Horizontal Front porch: 528 pixels
Horizontal Sync width: 44 pixels
Horizontal Back porch: 148 pixels
Horizontal Scan rate: 56.25 kHz

Vertical Active: 1080 lines
Vertical Front porch: 36 lines
Vertical Sync width: 5 lines
Vertical Back porch: 4 lines
Vertical Scan rate: 50 Hz

Those numbers look kind of strange to me. Usually front porches are smaller than back porches. But you can try them out in SwitchRes X and see how it goes. Good luck.

That jaggedness you see when there is panning in EyeTV could have to do with the EyeTV encoder cutting corners to hold the data bandwidth in check since it may lack the necessary computational power to muscle through all those pixels changing at the same time. This is often called macroblocking, where individual pixels are averaged into larger groups or blocks to cut down on the peak data rates. If that's what you are seeing, 50 Hz vs. 60 Hz isn't going to help much if at all.