Mac Mini HDMI output gives bad resolution on external 1920x1200 external monitor

Hi

I have mini server (mid 2011) and a Samsung TA24550. I have tried hdmi-hdmi (minimising sharpness helps) and dvi to hdmi. Neither solution is good. Belkin minidisplay port to hdmi in thunderbolt soved the problem to me.

Thanks a lot.

rgds

Pentti

Hey,

I've faced the same issue, exacly same: HDMI-HDMI, Mac mini & 245T. It would be great if you have any result on your investigation. HDMI -> DVI works fine for me but I'm looking for solution for HDMI-HDMI connection.

Thank you.

My MacMini i5 & Vizio 1920x1080 LED TV update to this is...

Still the same problem with pixelated HDMI->HDMI...

Reduced/changed all settings on LED TV (sharpness, noise reduction, etc) with no effect on pixelation...

Still looks good with RocketFish (RF-AP307) Mini DisplayPort to VGA adaptor...but recently my VGA connection went down...

Had to replace, but my RocketFish MiniDP to VGA works just fine (it lasted 6 months...recent lightning strikes/power outages may have killed it)...

Apple MiniDP to VGA would only connect at 800x600 and no higher...

RocketFish MiniDP to HDMI (thought I'd try that to see if HDMI->HDMI was the problem) gives me same pixelation as direct HDMI connection.

Find 2 solutions:

1. - Reset PRAM, unfortunatelly it isn't work for me.. but there sucessful cases

2. actually it isn't a solution, just found some facts that it works fine up to Mac OS X 10.5.7.

so if there are users of 10.5.6, could you please confirm that HDMI-HDMI works fine for resolution 1920*1200?

For what it is worth, I had trouble with grainy output on my retina MacBook Pro running Mountain Lion and a Dell U2410. The solution I found was to adjust the monitor's "Sharpness" setting. With Apple's mini-DisplayPort to DVI adapter it is looks best at a sharpness setting of 40-50 (50 is the default). With a mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable, it looks horribly grainy at the default sharpness setting. Decreacing the sharpness to 0 gave the best result, though honestly, I think it might look better if it were less sharp still.

The other thing that was interesting is that the monitor seemed to have trouble holding on to the sharpness setting. I turned the monitor off an on and when it came back, it looked grainy again. When I checked the sharpness setting, it said it was set to 0, but when I had to bump it up and take it back down again to make it take again.

Hi there guys,

I have had the same issue.. Brand new Mac mini with new Philips 239C. Anyhoo, also tried all different cables and settings and nothing worked. Text still looked blurry, then I came across a post and this has helped so much! Unfortunately I don't have the link, but all you need to do:

- Open a terminal

- Type in:

For medium font smoothing:

defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2

killall Finder

- Restart applications

Replace the 2 in the command with 1 for slight and 3 for hard smoothing.

This made a world of difference to the blurry text. Hope it helps!

Regards,

When I originally had this problem with my mid-2011 Mini and an HP 2311x, I didn't have time to do a lot of troubleshooting, so I went with the DVI solution, using a DVI cable, the Apple DVI<->HDMI adapter, and the DVI port on the monitor. That worked perfectly, so I left it alone.

However, I recently did some more reading and checked the settings on the monitor, and discovered that the problem was all related to the OVERSCAN setting being set to AUTO or ON. Once I turned overscan off, the problem was fixed. The monitor now works perfectly with HDMI<->HDMI and the factory defaults save but that one. No need to adjust the sharpness or anything, it was all related to overscan.

On the HP 2311x or other HP monitors, follow these menus:

Image Control -> Custom Scaling -> Overscan -> Off

Same solution here - hdmi to hdmi (on latest late 2012 mac mini) is fuzzy. From Mini - HDMI/DVI converter, DVI/HDMI cable to HP 2159m monitor. All clear!

With HDMI only, I tried messing with "resizing" the overscan. Never a satisfying solution.

I tried the latest solution on this thread, turning OFF overscan on my HP monitor - but the monitor won't allow me to access that option.

Guys, so sorry that we are at the end of Jan 2013 and they didn't solve it.

It's a huge deception buying this mac mini late 2012 although the bad reviews of the new graphic card, just because Apple it's suppose to be the best company producing computers...

Obviously it is good, but making the people think they make good products... I bought this mac mini late 2013 2.6 i7 to test how is having your own mac and it have been a huge disapointment. If mac doesn't make their machines work at least to the standards and also they try to look like they don't have idea of any of this issues... what do we have? Just a nice designed small box?

I have to say that working in a company with final cut pro x in an iMac 27'' that crash at least once every two days and a mac mini with a HDMI port that doesn't work as it should be, can make people think that it is not worth the money that is asked for. Also reading some comments of costumer saying that the costumer service said they didn't heard about the HDMI issue can make you think this company is not how they introduce itself; it's just another dodgy company who wants more money as possible and taking the least responsability for their actions.

Managing with this issue I really feel like I have an Ubuntu OS... (actually I never had such a problem with Ubuntu or Windows)

My setup mac mini 2.3 i7 with the Intel HD 4000 Graphics with HDMI output to 24" Viewsonic. It looked like crap out of the box with fuzzy text and washed-colors similar to the complaints previous. I went ahead and used the Display Calibration app and followed the instructions to gradually fix the contrast and gamma and color shifts. Now it looks awesome. Go ahead and choose the expert mode and follow through with the process. I have a 10x improvement in text anti-aliasing and color.

Overscan worked for me, too! Thank you so much!

I had the same issue with my Westinghouse 26" monitor (L2610NW). The display settings only went up to 1920x1080. (This is on my Jan 2013 27" iMac.)

Eventually, after switching to the DisplayPort -> VGA adapter, and randomly unplugging and plugging in the adapter several times, the iMac finally decided to start recognizing the correct setting.

I don't know if the DisplayPort -> HDMI connector is allowed to recognize this resolution, but in any case I was totally unable to make the HDMI connector connect at 1920x1200. So I am using the VGA connector for now.

This solution works.

Just to leave a not-so-related solution here if anyone searches for "hdmi problems with HP 2159m."

In case anyone has an overscan issue (blurry text, underscan adjustment doesn't help, etc.) using the Mac Mini HDMI port, the solution is weird but simple.

• Turn on your Mac and plug in the monitor and the image is crappy.
• Turn off the monitor.
• Press and hold the monitor's power button until the image shows up.
• Try it a few times if it doesn't work. It works like a charm for me.

Thanks Apple for removing the "disable overscan" option from the display panel for PC monitors.

This is a solution for one HDMI cable connecting a Mac Mini Intel Core i7 to a Samsung television: 1920 x 1080 (ie 1080p or 1080i).

As I discovered:

Mac mini HDMI output → DVI convertor → TV DVI input

works fine, but

Mac mini HDMI output → TV HDMI input

produces a badly pixilated output and the vertical resolution was wrong with the top & bottom chopped off screen.

Using the Samsung TV remote, I pressed the TV menu button, selected picture settings and scrolled down to Screen Adjustment. I selected the "selected screen size" option which fixed the resolution problem: all the screen was viewable and the pixels were in the right place.

Still, the pixels looked wrong: for example, black text was "etched" and surrounded by a bright outline.

From picture settings, I selected the sharpness and reduced it to zero. Before my eyes, the image returned to the HDMI → DVI clarity I had enjoyed earlier.

Hope this works for you too (it took me 6 months to solve it!).