Q: Mac Pro ATI 5770: HDMI to Panasonic plasma TV

Michael-

On further research, I am flummoxed to find that you are indeed correct.

There is NO provision for Audio in standard DVI. I was so focused on the direct interchange of Video, and talk of being able to freely convert from DVI to HDMI, I missed the concept that Audio is not present.

I stand corrected. Most DVI ports do not produce Audio.

You will need some other device to combine the DVI and the Audio onto HDMI, if that is how you want to proceed. Now the second device you linked to looks better than ever.

DVI does not carry audio, so if you want to go from the DVI port to HDMI, you will need the adapter that adds the optical audio to the DVI to generate HDMI with audio. That adapter also has optical audio out so you can still send the audio to your existing audio system.

If you want audio from a Mini DisplayPort you need a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter, not a Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter followed by a DVI to HDMI adapter.  Unfortunately there don't seem to be any active Mini DisplayPort tp HDMI adapters, so the DVI signal may not be the same strength as that from the DVI port,  That may cause a problem with long HDMI cables.  Try it, though, before getting the more expensive optical audio plus DVI adapter.

The Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter may work with the long cable even if its signal might be weaker than that from the DVI port.  It depends on the sensitivity of the TV's HDMI port.

The passive Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter should be fine with any DVI display.

If you want to use all three ports on the card at once, all adapters must be active.

I think we have finally run this to ground

Not until you have tried it and reported back with your findings.

Inquiring readers want to know!

That wonderful picture of the Andromeda galaxy tells you it is working as designed. The default mode combines the two displays into an extended desktop. The mouse is free to move off the edge of the home screen onto the second screen, and if you drag a window over to the second display and resize it, you can work over there or on both screens.

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If that is not to your liking, you can select [√] Mirror displays, and they will collapse into one, BUT -- the resolutions available will be severely limited, and reduce to "lowest common resolution" achievable by BOTH displays.

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When Mirroring, the resolution used must be available to BOTH displays, or a lower resolution will be used. The Hardware sends the data stream out ONCE to both displays in unison, so this is not bendable.

To get the higher resolution, you may have to experiment to see whether 1080p can be accomodated. If not, you will have to split the mirror to get the higher resolution on the better monitor, or get a better second display.

If the TV can handle 1080p, set the computer to 1080p.  Some TVs only support 1080p on certain input ports.  Check the manual for the correct ports.  1080i is used only for broadcast TV where there isn't enough bandwidth available for 1080p.

If your monitor and TV are both 1920 x 1080 there SHOULD be no loss of resolution, but with many TVs it is not that simple.  In a word: OVERSCAN.  The TV screen is 1920 x 1080.  You feed it a video signal of 1920 x 1080.  Many TV makers see this as a problem.  If they were to display the 1920 x 1080 pixels on the 1920 x 1080 dots on the screen you would see the entire image.  Who would ever want to do that?  There is nothing worth watching at the edges of the picture; the middle is the interesting part.

This nonsense started in the early days of TV.  TV sets had unregulated power supplies and used vacuum tubes in the scanning circuitry.  Changes in line voltage, aging of the tubes and other components (accelerated by heat from the vacuum tubes) could make the picture shrink.  To stop this from leaving black areas around the picture they used overscan to make the picture bigger (up to about 20%) than the screen.  To allow for this, important content, faces, and titles were kept in the center of the picture.

Later transistorized TV sets with regulated power supplies did not have picture shrinkage problems but kept the overscan anyway, probably so their pictures wouldn't look small compared to other sets.  LCD TVs, with no possibility of picture shrinkage, have continued the overscan tradition.

Some TVs have a setting to disable overscan.  It may be called pixel-to-pixel or fit-to-screen, and may be available on only some input ports.  If you can't disable overscan, in addition to losing picture edges, such as the menu bar and dock, the rest of the picture will be blurred because the enlarged image's pixels will no longer match the dots on the screen,  There may be a setting for over or under scan in Displays system preference when the TV is connected, but it is much better to disable it in the TV if possible.