Mac Mini 2012 video blinking out

Remove from the sales of your defective piece of iron. Internet is full of shame

@ --A--C--

"But it's another illustration of the difficulties involved in implementing the HDMI specs properly."

I respectfully disagree. I would simply counter with this:

- 5 million HDMI devices were sold in 2004

- 17 million in 2005

- 63 million in 2006

143 million in 2007

I'll stop there because I'll make my point here:

This isn't ground breaking, needs some tweaking, technology. This is "plug and play." Or it should be.

Apple had over 500 days between MM evolutions to make this work - out of the box - every time. Period. There is no excuse. This isn't a super high end gaming machine built from scratch. It's consumer electronics that consumers expect to work - every time - RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX.

I'm a huge Apple fan. I have numerous Apple laptops, iPhones, iPads - and a MM.

I'm hugely disappointed here. Yeah, as I wrote WAY BACK in this forum, the MDP to DVI adapter is the answer for now, but that this HDMI port/HD-4000 issue wasn't nailed down tight before release speaks poorly of Apple's degree of respect for MM owners.

I respectfully disagree.

You have the right to have your opinion, of course.

But you have to realize the main part of these HDMI devices are BluRay players, TV's, and gaming devices.

Even with these, DHCP handshake problems are quite common, visit some video / hifi forums, and you'll see.

You can't deny that the video that is processed in a computer is way more complex. The Intel HD4000 isn't a very powerful GPU, and probably suffers from badly written drivers or worse, bad hardware design. I'm convinced the likelyness of seeing troubles like this, would have been less, if they had chosen a better quality GPU for the MM.

This isn't ground breaking, needs some tweaking, technology. This is "plug and play." Or it should be.

You are probably not a technician. To the enduser it might seem simple. (Software forums are flooded with people asking feature requests that "can't be so hard to implement". They all think it must be easy, because the GUI isn't very complex) The technology behind it is not simple. Troubleshooting a problem that is random, non-frequent, unreproducable is very hard.

Finally: I'm not defending Apple in any way, they should have noticed this before they shipped the first unit.

But I have difficulties with people who always oversimplify things.

I am as disappointed as you, so I returned the thing, as I have a strong suspicion this is a hardware problem. Hope they release a new MM version with a better GPU in 2013. The Intel junk is the only weak spot of this otherwise perfect machine. They probably used it to reduce the price.

You can't deny that the video that is processed in a computer is way more complex. The Intel HD4000 isn't a very powerful GPU, and probably suffers from badly written drivers or worse, bad hardware design. I'm convinced the likelyness of seeing troubles like this, would have been less, if they had chosen a better quality GPU for the MM.

Who was responsibile for picking up HD4000 and mac mini integration, mac osx driver quality and overall product testing and why we did not get any official explanation for this yet ?

http://communities.intel.com/thread/30096

A well established issue. Apple ran with it anyway. Disrespect to the consumer.

Forget technicians and engineers. This is a $1,000 desktop that's not directed towards them. It can do a lot of things wonderfully. But the legacy that Apple has developed - it works great, has a great OS, essentially free from worm/virus risk, falls on it's butt when grandpa plugs that HDMI cable in to his MM and his HP2711x and gets the HD-4000 bug. Now there's a problem - one that apparently plenty of Apple Genius' deny or aren't aware of, and one that Apple won't live up to publicly.

That's a problem that doesn't take a degree in double-E to understand...............

why we did not get any official explanation for this yet ?

this has been discussed over and over again. you might want to read some pages back.

1) They haven't fully figured it out yet

2) now is a very bad timing to admit anything before they are sure what the problem is technically.

I didn't mean to offend you, apologies if I did.

I'm not happy with the general evolution of Apple either, I don't need any of the "new" features of their latest two operating systems, Snow Leopard is their best OS imo. I dislike iTunes 11, and the move of OSX towards iOS.

I'm not denying any problem. I just want to say you can't simplify it by stating the number of HDMI devices sold. This number has nothing to do with it. This doesn't automatically mean that implementing HDMI in a computer is easy with a weak GPU.

Indeed, a hardware responsable @ apple is to blame for that.

---A----C--

MM owners are like brothers and sisters to me. I run into someone at my Apple Store who's a MM owner and I'm like - let's go get coffee, or even better: let's go get wine.

No one needs to apologize to anyone here - we're all frustrated and impatient.

Philip,

Any update on the status of your recently replaced Mini? ....any signs of flickering or other video problems with it?

You've been great in providing detailed feedback on you experience and I was wondering how the replacement has been behaving. I'm considering buying the mini but have held back since discovering this forum.

Cheers

I agree with AC. Perhaps a little HDMI background is needed to understand. HDMI is not as simple as most people seem to think it is. To the end user you just flick a switch, or plug something in and the magic “just happens” but what’s behind that magic is much more complicated than you can imagine. That’s why the technology wasn’t here sooner.

All HDMI is not the same. There are many versions of HDMI; including versions 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.2a, 1.3, 1.3a, 1.3b, 1.3c, 1.4, 1.4a and soon 2.0 and each of these need to work with each other and yet contains its own set of features like HDMI Ethernet Channel, Audio Return Channel (ARC), 4Kx2K Resolution Support, 3D Over HDMI, even Automotive Connection System. There are 19 separate connectors such as DDC/CEC/HEC Ground, TMDS Data2+, and SCL (PC Serial Clock for DDC) to name just a few. Starting to sound technical? It should because it is. That's the point. Any kind of problem with any of these signals and HDMI simply stops working. You can begin to see how HDMI quickly becomes a soup of technologies that have to all get along and work perfectly with each other or there will quickly be problems. Thankfully most of the time it does work fine, and this gives consumers the false illusion that it’s a simple technology, but the fact is that intermixing manufactures increases the odds of HDMI problems happening.

I’m not trying to make excuses for Apple, but instead just trying to get some here to understand that HDMI is much more complicated than a simple wall outlet where you just plug something in and it magically works. Add to this mix the common misconception that HDMI cables carry digital data in the form of a stream of 0s and 1s, so it must be easy for them to function flawlessly all the time, regardless of cost of the cables or construction. In fact as stated when you mix-and-match HDMI source devices, cables, displays, accessories, etc, from many different manufacturers, it's almost a certainty that you'll run into trouble. Add to this soup of technologies the fact that there are many versions of DisplayPort that have to get along with HDMI, and you can see that problems with HDMI is not just black and white as some think. Just because a product passes HDMI compliance testing doesn’t mean what you think it means, because a high percentage of displays, cables, and devices are usually at the lower end of the performance scale. With HDMI your video signal could be absolutley perfect but if the DDC line has any rise-time issues, the unit simply will not pass HDCP(High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) and when HDCP has issues of any kind - no picture will be produced. This is why Apple has been consistently asking people to send them captured data, so that they can find a common link to this issue and have a starting point to resolve it.

Yes everyone knows this issue is an annoying problem. Yes Apple is working on it. Yes people are frustrated. Yes the developers are working on the seeded 10.8.3. Realistically this all takes time to sort out. If anyone isn’t comfortable with waiting for this matter to get resolved, then you should probably just return your mini. Eventually this will get resolved and they can decide what’s best for them at that time. Apples biggest mistake IMHO is deciding to use the Intel HD4000, but guess what? Its been written about that Apple is now in talks to have Intel produce all of their chips (even for the iPad) so this matter with Apple products could go downhill fast. Why Apple thinks that Intel is Casanova I couldn't tell you. Hopefully what has happened to the mini and other Macs with all these HDMI issues will be a wakeup call for them. Please Apple, at least give your customers the option to use something else other than Intel graphics. Let your customers vote with their wallet (just like they do with other options like the Fusion drive) and you'll soon see that they'd rather pay for non-Intel graphics. If you don't offer customers that option then they may be forced to vote with their wallets by staying away from your products altogeter, and nobody wants that.

I'm grateful to have found this forum. I was enjoying my brand-spanking-new Mac Mini configured and shipped directly from China, and I was annoyed by the video blinking issue. I swapped the display to another computer and would likely have spend many more hours trouble shooting what I thought was a unique problem. I anticipate a fix from Intel will solve the problem, but will call Apple Care as suggested by many to log the issue.

A bit of history, my last computer was a HP workstation, custom configured with a RAID array. It was a powerhouse that lasted me nearly 5 years - and out of the box it had problems with the hard drive array. The problem was so bad that a hard drive failed (or so I thought) requiring me to return the unit to HP and live without a computer for several days. Then they claimed the hard drive I returned was damaged BY ME and they returned it and charged me. When it arrived it was NOT in the same condition when I shipped it--IT WAS BENT IN HALF WITH TIRE MARKS ON THE PLASTIC WRAPPING. I finally got it all straightened out but it was a customer service nightmare. The root cause of the problem: An Intel array driver. It was updated FINALLY and my computer was fine ever since.

My point in telling this story: The grass isn't always greener on the other side of the fence. At least this issue is NOT making me lose use of my spiffy new computer, like my last one was.

t0mi wrote:

why we did not get any official explanation for this yet ?

Ahh… in a perfect world things would be so simple.

However the fact is that Apple cannot simply make the announcement that you crave. They cannot even publicly say that there will, or will not, be a fix. This is for many reasons, one of which is that Apple is in fact a publicly traded corporation. There are a whole bunch of laws that would kick in if Apple made any public notice of the issue, even if it in the end it turns out that it’s not Apple's fault. I’m sure they’d love to say something to put your mind at ease, but in this day and age when people sue corporations just because their coffee is too hot, don’t expect Apple to release anything anytime soon 😉

An update from me. I return mine and got a new one. 6 days of medium use and no flickering issue. Weird...

The first one began flickering on the fourth day on it's minidisplayport (not the hdmi). Swapped cables en used the hdmi en again the flickering en even snow.

No word from Apple yet, but at the store they where shure that there was a fix coming.

I have the exact same problem.

It happens 2-3 times a day.

Sometimes the monitor just turns off (no signal) and sometimes I get a grey screen like back in times when you had analogue TVs with no signal.

Think this could have something to do with the hdcp encryption.

Hope apple will fix that soon..

Bigbabaloo

So far it has behaved itself, I did think I saw one or two very short blackouts the other morning but I think it was actually 'Console' updating its window. When I am just running Safari and Mail I have Activity Monitor and Console on my second screen connected via HDMI to DVI, just so there is something there. Otherwise I would have windows associated with either Photoshop or Audition on the second screen.

There have been no instances of the shash / snow like interference as yet.

At this moment in time I would say I am happy with the setup as there have so far been no blackouts or any other display problems.

I don't know if the one I have has anything different about it?

While typing this on my MBP I have CCC cloning the HD to an external USB3 drive and all has been well.

Slightly off topic, the USB3 hard drive I am cloning to is the Hitachi Touro and it is fair zipping along, 26 minutes in and 95.75GB copied!

My dilemma, as I think I mentioned before, is if it continues in this fashion and an update is brought out to 'fix' the blackout problem do I dare apply it? 🙂

At this moment of time I would have to say its a keeper!