Mirroring imac (g4 flat) on a large lcd tv - will it scale up?

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Level 1

25 points

Mirroring imac (g4 flat) on a large lcd tv - will it scale up?

recently bought a new 32" lcd tv and as it has a vga port have ambitions to mirror my imac through it. However, before i buy the mini vga->vga adaptor i'd like to know if it will literally mirror the imac, that is, it will display it at exactly the same size, or whether it will scale it up to fit the 32" tv.
I have a 800MHz imac g4 15" flat panel.
If it will simplay display the same 15" within the tv and not fill the screen i suspect i won't bother as it will require a lot of cabling t go round the room, but if it will expand it, and the screen will fit the new 32" i can't wait! wireless keyboard & mouse, sitting on the sofa ahoy!

apologies if this depends on the tv, and not the mac, but i've researched both these forums and those for the tv but can't find the answer.
In case anyone knows about the tv, it is a Hyundai Imagequest Q321 32" flat panel LCD tv.

thankyou to anyone who can help 🙂

iMac G4 15" flat panel 800MHz, Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Jul 20, 2006 6:56 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

85,296 points

Jul 20, 2006 7:06 AM in response to Kieran Hood

Welcome to Apple Discussions!

I have a Samsung CRT 30" HD-TV and a Powerbook G4 1.5 Ghz which hook up via the digital DVI port.

It has been my finding that you get the same maximum resolution as the card supports if the set supports it. The only thing you most likely will run into, because I do too, is something called overscan. This means the four sides are cropped off when viewed on the set. If that happens, you will need a scan converter with horizontal and vertical adjustment (links to an example of a scan converter which I found with Google, haven't yet gotten), or DisplayConfigX or SwitchResX to fix that issue.
I've tried the software packages and they don't work in my case, but may in yours.

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Answer 2

mrtotes

Level 6

11,836 points

Jul 20, 2006 1:05 PM in response to Kieran Hood

Without a firmware hack the iMac G4s can only use the same reoslutions as the internal display which for a 15" iMac is VGA, SVGA and XGA (1024x768).

According to Dealtime your TV has a resolution of 1344 x 768. This means, of course, being widescreen, you will get two black bars down either side - perhaps giving you a display of about 28"(?) It's never going to fill the screen as natively the iMac 15" video card doesn't support widescreen resolutions - but it will fill the screen as much as you can see. I think you need to check the TV manual that it will take an XGA input ( and given it has a VGA connector I'm sure it will...)

Here's the Mini-VGA to VGA connector you'll need (Amazon $14).

regards

mrtotes

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Answer 3

a brody

Level 10

85,296 points

Jul 21, 2006 4:51 PM in response to Kieran Hood

Just called Samsung. They told me my Dynaflat TXP3064W does not support progressive at higher than 480p. Of course it supports interlaced at 1080i. The lack of progressive means sharp fonts at 12 point will only be possible at 720 x 480 or lower resolutions. A scan converter though will get rid of the overscan issues. So check your model TV and find out if it supports progressive at at least 720p. If it does, then 1024 x 768 will be sharp. Otherwise it will be blurry when it comes to text, but not photos.

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Answer 4

Kieran Hood Author

Level 1

25 points

Jul 26, 2006 10:35 AM in response to Kieran Hood

thanks for the help with this, i've looked into both sets of comments & suggestions and so now pretty confident it will work - i'll post back once all the cabling has arrived (got to find a good price 7-8metre vga cable to put round the room first!)

thanks again

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