New Macbook Pro - external monitor blurry on OSX

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New Macbook Pro - external monitor blurry on OSX

Hello,

I am the happy new owner of a 15 inch Macbook Pro with the HD display and 6750m graphics. My one major issue at this point is the quality of the external display when plugged into my monitor. The monitor is a HP w2207h and it is connected via HDMI. The native resolution (1680x1050) is being used.

For some reason, the quality on my external monitor is very poor. It initially displays as too large for the screen (overscan?) with marginal quality, and sliding the underscan control to size the display makes it much worse. I've set the monitor to size itself and it seems to have no effect. I've tried the terminal command to force font smoothing and that doesn't seem to help much either. The remains poor regardless of whether I have display mirroring (my preference) on or not.

Interestingly, when I run Win 7 from Bootcamp with the same setup the text and images are very crisp, leading me to think that it's a video driver issue within OSX, but no newer updates seem to be available. Anyone have any suggestions? I plan to often run the machine at my desk connected to an external display so this is something of a showstopper for me and so far nothing seems to help.

Thanks in advance,

- Chris

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on May 13, 2011 6:41 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

chrisfromhopewell

Level 4

1,085 points

May 13, 2011 7:06 AM in response to bchris

Make sure that nothing is zoomed in.

Also go to the Universal Access prefernces and make sure that the contrast is on normal

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Answer 2

bchris Author

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May 13, 2011 4:26 PM in response to chrisfromhopewell

Thanks Chris. Good ideas (I hadn't thought about zoom or known about the contrast setting), but it didn't solve the issue. The resolution is still fuzzy.

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Answer 3

araphael

Level 1

1 points

Jun 11, 2011 3:31 PM in response to bchris

I am having the exact same issue. I just switched from pc to Mac where this monitor rocks. Right now it's completely unusable. Is this something that can be fixed?

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Answer 4

Jun 11, 2011 4:54 PM in response to bchris

Have you tried other resolutions?

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Answer 5

Jun 30, 2011 5:59 PM in response to bchris

I am having the same problem. Any solutions?

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Answer 6

bchris Author

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Jun 30, 2011 6:38 PM in response to Aerocaust

I ended up buying another monitor with a different interface cable and it solved the problem. I never did narrow it down to determine if it was the monitor, the HDMI adapter, drivers, or what. I bought a HP ZR24w and have it connected via a DisplayPort->mini DisplayPort cable and it's as sharp and crisp as it should be. Annoying that I ended up buying new hardware to solve the issue but on the bright side I love the new monitor 🙂.

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Answer 7

Dec 3, 2012 3:03 PM in response to bchris

I am having the same issue. Please apple fix this!!

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Answer 8

stian.s

Level 1

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Nov 4, 2013 11:12 AM in response to bchris

I also have the same issue. I guess the solution would be to purchase a $999 Mac-compatible monitor... Or return my Macbook within the store's return policy and go back to use Windows 7 which just works.

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Answer 9

stian.s

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Nov 5, 2013 1:24 PM in response to stian.s

Ouch, just saw that this thread was 2 1/1 years old. I would expect Apple to be working hard on fixing such a bug, where normal hardware is not supported by their OS. Would Microsoft be satisfied with not supporting a standard monitor? I don't think so...

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Answer 10

Nov 11, 2013 5:08 PM in response to bchris

Horray! I found a solution.

I bought the Apple Mini DisplayPort to DVI converter cable adapter instead of using HDMI, and my picture is much more crisp and clear.

http://goo.gl/aFQsPb

My Retina display is still better, but it's a better screen. my HP monitor is now performing to is ability. For some reason, HDMI must degrade the video quality.

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Answer 11

stian.s

Level 1

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Nov 11, 2013 11:16 PM in response to WallabyWeb

Nice! Unfortunately, I have been using DVI all the time. I am quite confident it's not the cable that degrades the quality, but OS X. I tested this by partially dragging Safari to my external monitor, and as soon as the pointer got to the external monitor, Safari's resolution lowered on both displays.

Why is OS X programmed to decrease quality on non-Apple monitors?

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Answer 12

amthenia

Level 1

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Mar 7, 2014 5:33 AM in response to bchris

I wrote a blog post about the two solutions we tried at our company to fix this, you could try them, they should help:

Fix-Blurry-weird-text-and-picture-quality-when-connecting-Mac-to-external-Monito r-via-external-Displayport-HDMI-forcing-RGB-mode-instead-of-YCbCr-Override-Edid - Dell-U2713H-Dell-U2713HM

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