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Mac mini connected to HD TV problem

Well not really the end of the world, but basically I have it hooked up to a TV via an DVI to HDMI cable. It works but the screen is trimmed on all sides so you cannot see the menu bar or most of the dock. Now if I switch overscan off in the screen prefs then the picture is reduced so its about an inch off the edge of the screen leaving a black bar all round.

Surely there is some way to have it fit perfectly for the screen?

Intel iMac 24inch, macbook, mini intel, Mac OS X (10.5.2), Maxed up baby

Posted on Mar 4, 2009 12:58 PM

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18 replies

Mar 9, 2009 9:04 AM in response to Gary i

What you are seeing, where you can't see the edges of the image, is known as "overscan".
This is something TVs have done forever to avoid seeing weird stuff at the edges of the transmitted frames.

The display control in System Preferences lets you turn overscan on or off (it is a checkable item in the "Options" panel). You might need to have this checked to display video, but you sure don't want it checked to use the TV as a computer display.
Although I have overscan OFF on my older Mac Mini, I've had the problem where sometimes after a restart the display is in overscan mode. To fix this, I can "guess" where the apple menu is off the top left of the screen, get to system preferences, check overscan to be on and then uncheck it to turn it back off. If you can't guess where the apple menu is successfully, you might try accessing the Mini from another Mac by using screen sharing. The shared screen looks correct even if overscan is on.

Mar 12, 2009 7:24 PM in response to charlie_price

i'm not getting any video at all after the initial grey loading screen.

my 67" samsung 1080p DLP TV just displays 'mode not supported' after that.

my TV displays '1920x1080, 60hz' during the grey screen though.

i'm currently using the DVI-to-VGA adapter that came with my mac mini with a standard VGA cable connected to the VGA port on my TV.

gonna try a DVI-to-HDMI cable tomorrow.

can anyone shed some light on this one for me? 😟

Mar 15, 2009 3:04 AM in response to little brad

Tap into the computer via screen sharing and reduce the resolution. That should do it. I had the same problem on another TV. Sometimes the mac just cannot talk to the screen.

Another issue I have had is I used a DVI to HDMI adaptor then and hdmi lead to the TV. The screen displayed but again they could not talk to each other properly so basically the supported resolutions were wrong.

I got a proper dvi to hdmi lead in the end and it works fine (apart from this overscan thing)

Apr 23, 2009 2:07 PM in response to Badrakumar

HDMI transports both Audio and Video (and in theory has higher colour capacity in terms of Gamut and bit-rate), while DVI is Video only (10bits max if I recall right).
In reality, and with TODAYS Sources, the Video won't look any different - but again, you'll loose the Audio and will have to connect that seperately. HDMI also would be required - in theory - to handle handshakes for copy-protected material (including Blu-Ray - which isn't a problem with this gen Mini).

Dan

Apr 24, 2009 8:11 AM in response to Gary i

My samsung LCD overscans by default. When I turn off the "overscan" option, it also seems to reduce the size by half and put the picture in the middle of the screen. To turn off overscan, we have to select a different option.

There's another option in the display settings. I think it's in the first display menu near the bottom, maybe called "Detailed Settings." In that menu, I was able to select an option to change the resolution of the screen. It doesn't say something obvious like "screen resolution," so just try all settings.

I'll see if I can find the exact setting when I get to my TV later today...

May 2, 2009 12:03 PM in response to Gary i

There is a program out there that lets you change the optional resolution settings in the monitors CP so that you don't have this problem. My son got it work on his Sony HDTV, but we couldn't get it to work on my Samsung DLP 720p. I don't need even that with my Sharp 37 LCD, which has setting called just scan. No bars, no overscan.

May 4, 2009 5:50 AM in response to Hamish Morrison

YES! I love you 🙂

What worked for me, was just turning overscan off on the MacMini, and all is fine - been "playing" with this all morning!

BTW a MacMini, a Sony KDL-32W4000K TV and a Denon AVR-3808 receiver with 4 B&W + 1 sub speakers is a KICK BUTT Media Center, when using iTunes and the other iApps - I truly love this setup, if anyone is in the market for a Medie Center - go for something like this, a Mini can act as a Center just fine!

Anyhows,
THANK YOU for your tip in the right direction 🙂

Cheers,
Thomas

Mac mini connected to HD TV problem

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