light colors are gone for Mac Mini (late 2012)

I'm in the same boat. Just purchased a new Mac Mini 2.6 i7 for work and I just plugged in my second screen for the 1st time. I'm having the same issues with the white/colours on the HDMI output.

I'm going to try different things to see if it helps but I'm holding out for a fix in 10.8.3 or at least a patch or something.

HDMI > DVI cable

HDMI > DVI adapter cable - DVI cable

HDMI > VGA cable (probably need a converter or something)

If I have any luck with the above, I'll let you know.

I bought a Mac Mini (late 2012) that showed the same issues. They peristed after I got a replacement Mac Mini.

Today I ran some tests with various screens and the results were interesting: Display issues extisted with some LG monitors, but Dell and HP monitors I tested had no issues with HDMI>DVI. Everything was fine on all screens with TB(miniDP)>DVI.

What surprised me was following: I installed a Bootcamp partition with Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 on the Mac Mini. And surprise! Display quality was good with both ports, HDMI and TB. At least, I couldn't see a difference in quality between HDMI>DVI and TB>DVI on Win7, even on the monitors that the Mini had issues with in Mac OS X.

This and with the information that the problems do not appear in Mac OS X 10.8.3beta - as it was written in earlier postings - make it very certain, that it's a driver and not a firmware or hardware issue... Kind of good news. So it's just sit and wait, I guess.

I hope we're not sitting and waiting too much longer.

I just bought my new Mini 2.3 i7 yesterday. I also picked up a used monitor to use with it from a guy on Craigslist. I get everything home and set up. UGH! The guy sold me a junk monitor (so I thought)! Same exact issues listed here. This setup was HDMI>DVI.

So, today, I ran to Best Buy and bought a new Acer LED monitor S230HL Abii with HDMI. Better, but basically still the same problems...

If I use a Mini Displayport to HDMI adapter, it seems a little better, but still nothing to brag about. I'm not about to go out and buy a VGA adapter that I shouldn't need, so I guess I'll be sitting and waiting for 10.8.3 like everyone else. This new monitor is HDMI and VGA only, no DVI.

I held off a little longer thinking this issue was recently fixed. I see it wasn't, yet...

I'm almost wishing I would've kept my mid-2010 iMac Core i3 a little longer. It's bad enough this only has 4GB versus the 12GB my iMac had (for now). So far, this mini isn't impressing me for being a quad-core i7.

Interesting, I have an Eizo and Formac monitor and connected by HDMI or MDP they are both fine.

If you check in display preferences under colour, ot color depending on which side of the pond you are, what is the display profile that is loaded?

Both my Eizo or Formac get a monitor specific profile loaded.

I have carried out a colour profile for my Eizo as I do photo editing and it was pretty close without the calibration.

Phil

After some tests with various cables / adapters I got my HDMI port to output a normal, balanced and correct color output using the following:

HDMI > HDMI - DVI-I adapter (bundled one in Mac Mini box) > DVI-I - DVI-I cable > Monitor (DVI-D socket)

That gives me a normal output and my Mac Mini knows its plugged into a DVI-I monitor, not an HDMI TV or anything.

My current set up is miniDisplayport > VGA & HDMI > DVI-I. I will move my main miniDisplayport output over to DVI-I this week when I get another adapter (miniDisplayport > DVI-D). Both connections are connected to LG IPS224 22" inch monitors for reference.

RedGeminiPA wrote:

I'm almost wishing I would've kept my mid-2010 iMac Core i3 a little longer. It's bad enough this only has 4GB versus the 12GB my iMac had (for now). So far, this mini isn't impressing me for being a quad-core i7.

I have a i7. Bought it as 4GB configuration and expanded it to 16GB from a third party provider - much cheaper than Apple RAM and since Apple is not using any high-quality RAM, probably even same quality. I am really happy with the machine, except for the video issues.

Philip Tyler wrote:

Interesting, I have an Eizo and Formac monitor and connected by HDMI or MDP they are both fine.

If you check in display preferences under colour, ot color depending on which side of the pond you are, what is the display profile that is loaded?

In my case a monitor-specfic profile is - sometimes but not always - loaded. The problem appears on a couple but not an all monitor models. That's probably also why Apple chose to fix the problem with the next OS release and not earlier.

I noticed, that the screens, that the Mini has issues with, black out a bit longer in the startup process (at least in the first time). It's probably an indicator, that the Mac tries to identifiy the correct settings and fails.

Following thread for news while I sit here with my thumb up my *** until Mac OS X 10.8.3 arrives with a fix.

I am also facing the exact same issue. Tones of gray and all light colors are washed out and white color shows up instead. Tried on a brand new Dell and AOC monitor, but nothing worked 😟

There is an EFI update for Mac mini which fixes some flickering issue when using HDMI - I got it over the App Store updates, but that doesn't address the problem either.

did anyone try TB -> TB-HDMI convertor -> HDMI input to LED?

Yes. It does seem to be much better.

TB > TB to HDMI adapter

I got my Mac Mini a week ago and am running two monitors: a 26" Vizio (has HDMI and DVI) and a View Sonic 24" (has DVI). I'm having all the same problems that everyone else is, and the solution that works is the HDMI to DVI adpator (Vizio) and TB to DVI (Viewsonic). However, the TB to HDMI adaptor does not work.

BUT!!!

In dealing with the problem with Apple Support, nobody that I talked with could find anything at their end that this problem with the HDMI had ever been reported. WHAT? I told them I was reading posts all over their own Apple Support Communities website, which they found and read themselves. But, they insisted that they could find nothing in their databases that indicated this was being worked on, let alone resolved. VERY frustrating.

While the solution I've come upon is a workable bandaid, it's NOT a fix to the problem. The HDMI to HDMI interface on the Mac Mini simply doesn't work. Perhaps this is an example of the right hand having no idea what the left hand is doing, but it didn't leave me feeling very confident. I hope that 10.8.3 fixes things. It would be nice to have a computer that worked as it is supposed to.

It's been confirmed by just about EVERYONE running 10.8.3 beta... the HDMI issue IS fixed. We're all just waiting for Apple to finally give us the update.

ENOUGH WITH THE BETAS ALREADY!

bobpdx wrote:

In dealing with the problem with Apple Support, nobody that I talked with could find anything at their end that this problem with the HDMI had ever been reported. WHAT? I told them I was reading posts all over their own Apple Support Communities website, which they found and read themselves. But, they insisted that they could find nothing in their databases that indicated this was being worked on, let alone resolved. VERY frustrating.

Apple must know about it - but they didn't document it yet in their callcenter support DB. In my case AppleCare replaced my Mac Mini with a new one. As the problem existed also on the replacement, the AppleCare employee told me, that he would document the case in detail and report it.

Anyway. Let's hope 10.8.3 get released soon... so we can close this issue once and for all...

i have the same problem with washed out light gray colors on a 2012 mac mini 2.3GHz quad. i ended up returning a monitor to best buy because i thought it was the monitor. guess they get an open box courtesy of apple this time.

these are the configurations i have tried:

BAD

hdmi to hdmi

mini dp to hdmi (with rocketfish mini dp to hdmi adapter)

BETTER

hdmi to dvi (with included apple adapter)

mini dp to dvi (with rocketfish mini dp to dvi adapter)

looking at the website below that shows a gradient for testing, the bad configurations (hdmi to monitor) have 224 - 255 completely washed out, whereas with the better configurations (dvi to monitor) the gradient is visible throughout.

http://www.pbase.com/jackcnd/image/75285378/original

for now i'm just going to use the included hdmi to dvi adapter and input to the monitor with DVI. hopefully the 10.8.3 release will fix this.