Mac Mini G4 and Sony 20" HDTV

Question

Mac Mini G4 and Sony 20" HDTV

I'm looking for the best way to configure my Mini to talk to a new Sony television - KDL20S2030. The television apparently has a native resolution of 1366x720, but this is not offered by the display system preference on the Mac. The Mac's best offers are 1280x720 or 1920x1080 (interlaced), neither of which seem ideal. The Mac also offers me the choice of two refresh rates: 50Hz ("PAL") or 60Hz ("NTSC") though there's no obvious difference.

The television is connected to the Mac with a high quality DVI/HDMI cable.

I've seen SwitchResX and DisplayConfigX, but both of these seem to be tailored mainly to adjusting the finer points of timing that you need for CRT displays. I had (perhaps naively) assumed that a digital connection to a digitcal LCD television would avoid all these problems.

What's the best solution? Clearly I'd like to drive the television at its native resolution since I'm assuming that this will give the best results.

Any suggestions?

G5 2.3 / Mini G4 1.5 / iBook G3 700 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

PowerMac G5, Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Posted on Nov 22, 2006 3:00 AM

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Answer 1

BSteely

Level 5

7,643 points

Nov 22, 2006 7:52 PM in response to Andrew Ormsby

You might try building a custom timing in SwitchRes X of 1366 x 768 and see what happens. It is pretty easy to do so. Just click on the Custom tab and then the + sign to add a new timing. Enter 1366 for Horizontal Active and 768 for Vertical Active. Then go down near the bottom of the window and click on the check box for "Use simplified settings" and use CVT in the associated pop-up adjacent to the checkbox. SRX will then fill in all the rest of the blanks. From there you just save the timing and reboot to test it. Good luck.

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Answer 2

Nov 26, 2006 6:31 AM in response to BSteely

Thanks for the pointer. I've tried this with no joy.

Whether with CVT, CVT-RB and finally GTF but with no luck. I'm able to install 1360x768 (1368x768 is impossible - though it's not clear why), but when I reboot to apply the new settings, the Mac reverts to 1280x720. If I then try to manually select the new resolution from the Display system preference pane, I get a black screen on the Sony.

I've tried using what Sony call the "PC input" using a D connector and I'm offered a wider range of resolutions, but still not the 1366x768 that is supposed to be the native resolution of the display. Again, installing a new resolution with SwitchResX is possible but does not have the desired result.

The Sony docs list a set of supported resolutions for the "PC" input. These are:
VGA 640x480 31.5kHz horizontal, 60Hz vertical.
SVGA 800x600 37.9kHz horizontal, 60Hz vertical.
XGA 1024x768 48.4 kHz horizontal, 60Hz vertical.
WXGA 1280x768 47.4kHz horizontal, 60Hz vertical.
WXGA 1280x768 47.8kHz horizontal, 60Hz vertical.

Annoyingly, none of the above match the native resolution of the display. Worse, they don't even match the display's aspect ratio, which is roughly 16:9 as you would expect.

Suggestions or pointers welcome.

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Answer 3

Boece

Level 5

6,264 points

Nov 26, 2006 6:43 AM in response to Andrew Ormsby

The Gefen DVI Detective:

http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=1378

might be the missing piece you need, or not.

Gefen has a forum:

http://forum.gefen.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=938

No personal experience with it, but apparently it has done the trick for others.

MacIntel Mini 1.83, 2 Gig, OSX 10.4.7; iBook G4 800, 640 Meg, OSX 10.3.9

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Answer 4

Nov 26, 2006 8:16 AM in response to Boece

Thanks Boece. I suspect the Gefen products are trying so solve another problem. My problem isn't that my Mac fails to see the Sony TV, but that the TV appears not to support its own native resolution when connected to a computer.

Reading the docs for DisplayConfigX http://www.3dexpress.de/index.html, another bit of software that allows display settings to be tweaked, it sems that 1280*720@60Hz is what I should expect for a 720p television.

I'd hoped and suspected that I might be able to drive the TV at its native resolution - perhaps this is a fundamental limitation of the Sony hardware.

For what it's worth, the Mac is a late G4 mini with the ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card.

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Answer 5

BSteely

Level 5

7,643 points

Nov 26, 2006 9:35 PM in response to Andrew Ormsby

I'd hoped and suspected that I might be able to drive
the TV at its native resolution - perhaps this is a
fundamental limitation of the Sony hardware.

Unfortunately, you are probably right about that. It's not so unusual, especially among sets with native 1366 x 768 panels, that the video processor doesn't accept and pass a native resolution input. Really sad.

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Answer 6

Nov 27, 2006 12:16 PM in response to BSteely

Summary: http://www.onandoffthe.net/2006/11/27/sony-bravia-televisions-are-crippled/

If anyone knows better, please let me know!

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