Text looks blurred on Samsung display

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Level 1

4 points

Text looks blurred on Samsung display

Hi,

So, I have just gotten a Samsung SyncMaster TA550 for Christmas. I have it connected to my MBP13 mid-2012 (2,5GHz i5, 8GB of RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000) with a HDMI cable and a Dr. Bott HDMI & DVI to Mini Displayport adapter.

The display looks absolutely fabulous as long as watch videos, but text looks like crap, all blurry, and gives me headaches, not matter if it's text I'm currently writing (in pages or online) or the song list in iTunes for example. The problem is: I mainly wanted to use this display for writing. Also the bars in pretty much every programme I've used so far have this strange grey blur to them.

I'll attach screencaps of both text and video on the screen. You'll see the grey blur in the safari window.

I toyed around with resolutions and practically all the display settings in OS X and the display itself - nothing worked. It looks slightly better when I change to 720p instead of 1080p or 1080i using underscan to fill the display, but that's not what we want, right? 😉

Currently it's set back to "Best for display" and a 60 hertz refresh rate.

I thought that maybe the adapter (which wasn't a particularly expensive one) might be the problem, so I have now ordered a HDMI to Mini Displayport cable that had good reviews online. It might take a few days for that one to arrive though, and I was hoping that maybe I could solve the problem without having to use that one.

I hope you'll be able to help me, cause honestly, this is getting annoying.

Thanks in advance,

Sabrina

Strangely the screencap looks good on my MBP's LCD...

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Dec 27, 2012 3:54 AM

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Answer 1

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MissKillALot Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 3, 2013 9:57 AM in response to MissKillALot

Before I ultimately forget about this: The solution to my problem was to set the source of the display (in my case: HDMI 1) to "DVI PC" mode. This is done by going to the source list, selecting HDMI 1 and click "Tools". There you select DVI PC. Works perfectly fine now.

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Answer 2

WagnerLD

Level 1

0 points

Dec 18, 2013 8:35 AM in response to MissKillALot

I have been switching from PC to MAC for the last couple years. One of the last bones was my desktop computer which had a SAMSUNG 29'' HD monitor.

Last friday I bought a MAC MINI and connected it to the Samsung thru HDMI. I had almost a breakdown when I realized the blurry text from the OS X against the crisp and bright text from the Windows machine. I started to investigate without any luck until I came across this post. Thank you MissKillALot, you save my day! Finally now I have a monitor working like it should, and no more PCs at home!!!

P.S. No wonder people keep ditching Samsung equipment: For the HDMI - DVI PC port to work properly you have to "RENAME" the port from HDMI to DVI PC. Rename? Who thinks that by "renaming" some port it will actually change its properties? Is this on purpose to annoy the user?

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Answer 3

Oct 16, 2015 3:13 AM in response to MissKillALot

I was just a thought away of 1 buying a very expensive cdmi cable and 2 returning the monitor back when i decided to search if theres any solution online. Thanks so much killalot for the solution! Samsung you suck @@ big time! How on earth i can imagine that renaming the output will change the properties!!! Anyway all good now and its like having a completely new monitor!

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