New 27" iMac designed to also work as a display - Page 4

The primary advantage of what I'm talking about is the ability to disconnect the computer from the monitor/keyboard and take it with you.

Its true it costs more but with the MBP + ACD you get to have it both ways.

Roxio Toast has BR support.

So does this mean I could use a new iMac as a TV replacement in my bedroom? I would need the ability to connect my TiVo HD via HDMI to the iMac. I know there are HDMI -> Mini Displayport adapters. Is there anything that would prevent this setup from working properly?

Does mini displayport carry audio as well like HDMI or only video? Would there be any DRM issues?

I want to keep the TiVo instead of using something like an El Gato because I need the cable-card functionality built into the TiVo.

If anyone knows, your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Given the costs you're better off with the uber iMac and a MBP than the 30" ACD. $1800 for the ACD vs $2200 for the iMac? For $400 that's a no brainer.

The only thing that argues against a slate tablet killing notebooks is the lack of a keyboard when mobile. Hard to work on a document at the local Starbucks with just your finger for input on the display surface.

You would need both these devices, and until someone tests that out on the iMac there is no way to know.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=801855

And what is the percentage of iMac users/households? \

One of the best things about the new iMac is its back. Gone is the fugly Dell-looking,black, plasticy look that used to make us all cringe whenever we saw it in a store. Now its a gorgeous metal. Why would anybody want to hide that beautiful back mounted up against a wall?

For burning or watching or both?

500,00 iMacs vs how many Blu-rays sold?

"Tail wags dog"

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I'm not talking about the current 30" ACD, I would not recommend that rip off to anyone. I'm talking about a hypothetical 30" LED ACD made to connect with the MBP.

I'm essentially saying their is no technological reason Apple could not develop such a monitor. Its about business strategy and getting a little further life out of the iMac.

I don't know, no one is saying specifically the number of BR players sold in the last quarter. That may be because it wouldn't be anything to brag about.

Nonsense. You're just using the 30" Cinema HD Display as somekind of basis. But anyone can play that game and say that the 30" Cinema HD Display is small compared to Product XYZ and that they are against smaller displays.

The 160x2560 "missing" pixels would be fun to have but definitely not if you consider that you're going to pay 100 dollars more for them but you're foregoing an entire computer that goes with it.

The iMac isn't attempting to dominate the consumer home video market. Nor does it need to in order to survive.

I literally did not know there was an ignore list setting. Thank you.

Thanks Dave and all the others for your replies. I am very excited to make the change from PC to Mac. I plan on ordering tomorrow. Any other advice would be appreciated.

Bird24

Great info! Thanks. And if the system design DOES allow for the main computing portion of the MOBO to access the stream of unmolested HD video that is streaming into the monitor connection then things are certainly going to get very very INTERESTING... There are a number of group of people becoming VERY proficient in the ways of Apples EFI implementation and the GUID partition.

Shhhh... mums the word...

Oh you're so absolutely right as usual-I forgot the AppleTV is attempting that and is a complete and utter FAILURE.
But the imac is marketed with 16:9 - what do you think that s for ? To view pictures? play GarageBand?

Literally?

And you really think it'll cost less than the current 30" ACD? I assume an updated 30" ACD.

Even for the $1,699 retail price for the Dell 30" it's still a no brainer to get the iMac. You could downgrade to the 3.06Ghz C2D 27" iMac and have a zero cost differential.

Even at $1,299 (really unlikely) the iMac is still a great deal since it gives you a uber mini for $400 and a bit of screen real-estate.

In comparison the lower rez PVA 27" Dell UltraSharp 2709 is $929.00. It's real unlikely any new Apple 27" ACD will be less than $1199.

yes, and they are all clamouring for blue-ray drives to be included in apple's imac - in addition to the player that they have already purchased.

Yes they could easily sell it for less than the current 30" ACD.

I see the Dell 30" at $1,399.

Be careful if Ireland hears you he'll get wood....

What you really want is a laptop with a Solid State Drive (SSD). To the average user, the difference between a quad core 2.8 or a 3.33 dual core won't be noticeable. But a solid state drive makes MASSIVE improvements in application and data loading times.

You can download the 1080p Blu-ray rips from Torrent sites if that's your answer! I think that's why Apple don't want that overpriced licensing crap with weak copy protection in their Macs because they seen over 5,248 1080p Blu-Ray rips on torrent sites including G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Star Trek and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs! These studios will realize how stupid they really are then breaking their necks to put HD Movies in iTunes because Apple's DRM on their movies really works! One thing for sure when studios realize their folly cost them billions! This will end in tears!

DisplayPort as a standard is compatible with DVI/HDMI. We don’t know how the video in on the 27” iMac works. If it’s just the video input going to the monitor then it should pass along HDMI signaling to the display. This should bypass all other Mac computer parts and anything dealing with OS X. Will this work with the speakers? I doubt it, but we just don’t know it.


We don’t know that yet. Apple states that the video input is compatible with DisplayPort. Since all Macs have mini-DisplayPort this statement is vague, but we can deduce that Apple’s use of DP over mini-DP here means that they are marketing this feature to be used with non-Mac devices.


The DP spec was designed to understand HDMI. That doesn’t mean that Apple has included it, but it was designed to. You have no idea what this iMac was designed to do by looking at the 24” monitor that was clearly designed to connect of other Macs. The 27” iMac doesn’t have a mDP port, but a DP port, which means even if one oddly wanted to use it as a 2nd display for their notebook, they would still need an adapter. There is something else going on here that is outside the Mac bubble.

Blu-Ray fanboys need to Google 1080p torrents of their Blu-ray ripped movies! I'm saying this because these studios need to realize they need to put their movies in HD on iTunes because Apple DRM works on their movies! That Copy protection obviously isn't working! Yes I'm email this same info to George Lucas hopefully Star Wars Saga be in HD on iTunes next year!

First of all, don’t encourage him? Secondly, he’s comparing Blu-ray appliances to IMacs, but not all Macs, just 1/6 of all Macs. Third, iSuppli states that B-R sales in PCs are lackluster and will account for as much as 3.6% this year while speculating that by 2013 16.3% will all that will be had by B-R in PCs. That is over 4 years before the end of 2013 and over a year after the Mayan calendar ends.

With Apple already 10% of the market in the US that is pretty awful for B-R. Finally, I’ve read that half the number of B-R sales are for PS3s, which may or may not be even using the B-R player for movies as the primary focus.

B-R sales are way up, but they coming from pretty low numbers so it’s nothing but marketing spin at this point. When YoY the price of a player cuts in half but the increase in customers is only a fraction of that YoY then you can’t help but think there is a problem. We’ll have to see many quarters of severe upward trend to see that it’s a viable AND desirable optical drive for PCs. Even for home theater it’ll likely be bought as prices fall, but the convenience of digital downloads, streaming and cable/sat on demand services will cut into the optical media rental and purchase business that DVD was master of.

Use ClickToFlash to get rid of the advertising.

Given the new models still have glossy screens, I spent a big chunk of the day persuading people not to buy the new iMacs, just by demonstrating how bad the display reflection is.

I was able to discourage the purchase of 13 units for sure, including an order for 10 kebashed when the purchaser saw the situation.

Watching the 7 min video introducing the new iMacs, you can see of how much effort had to be put into photographing the displays in the limited way needed to downplay the screen reflections.

Can't shoot it head on, in the way people will use the display, because then people will see the camera doing the filming; always have to be off at and angle.

The narrator intones (as a selling point) the uniform brightness of the screen -- even as a bright line of room reflection sweeps across the screen, washing out half.

They even aligned everything so the room reflection would match the screen wallpaper lines and so be less obvious. But you can still see this on the stock photos; half the screen washed out, reflecting the white room background specially set up for the shot.

The narrator intones how the edge-to-edge screen puts the emphasis on "your content and nothing else" ... as more room reflections wash across the screen, obscuring its content.

Targeted for people who don't use computers as computers but instead over-priced media players, its unusable screen makes this another upgrade to skip for people who use computers as computers -- and Apple knows it since they had to work around it so hard to film their advertisement.

Spot-on!

Here is iFixit’s 27” teardown. Maybe we can see how the DP video input connects to the monitor and if it connects to the speakers, too.

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http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac-...27-Inch/1236/1

That's sad. I'm sure they will thank you later on.
In the mean time, I'am waiting for my 27inch iMac ...

Bad news. iFixits teardown of the 27 iMac doesnt show a separate DP video in as it could be interpreted on the Tech Specs page. It only has mDP, so maybe a special adapter must be used. One that isnt yet available. Worse possible scenario is that its expensive, you cant use the mDP out to a monitor at the same time, and it wont show OS X while plugged in. Hopefully none of those are the case.

nah mate this would be the second monitor - sweet

My friends and I have been doing this for a long time. HD specific torrent sites have been around for quite some time.

I mostly download 720p because true 720 looks frikkin' sexy. A hell of a lot better than "Apple 720p". All audio specs included as well. You can choose torrents with either DTs or AC3.

I'll probably start downloading 1080p though since I do have a 40" Sharp Aquos flat screen + PS3. Aquos and Bravia are the best here in Japan.

The reason I haven't been using 1080 is because my PS3 is only 40GB and my 2007 C2D Macbook fails miserably when playing 1080p out to the TV. Sometimes it hiccups even with 720p but rarely.

p.s. The new 27" is gorgeous in person. [And new MacBook]. MB is VERY solid.

Yeah, ClickToFlash is great for getting rid of irritating Flam. Especially, since many sites have multiple Flam windows competing for your displeasure.

Most YouTube videos look better in the full screen QuickTime (desktop) option than full screen Flash HD and all its downsides.

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Ok, I don't know why this is so difficult to understand....

There is a type of video signal, called DISPLAYPORT. This is a physical/electrical standard AND a standard by which information travels, out of a device and into a display. Then, you have DVI/HDMI which is another totally different standard by which information is sent to a display. They are like english and french. They are similar in some ways but not the same. If your display ONLY accepts DisplayPort as input then it wont understand DVI/HDMI signals.

DisplayPort was never designed to understand DVI signals. It was designed to pass them through so that you can connect device with a displayport connector, to a DVI display. When you connect a PC with displayport to a DVI display, the computer is sending a DVI signal though the displayport connector. This is because the connector was designed to do this, but only as a passthrough. DisplayPort was designed to passthrough all kinds of signals, but that doesn't make those signals part of the standard.

The source device, regardless of its physical connections, determines what type of signal it sends because its generating the signal. The device on the receiving end has to be able to support whatever type of signal you are sending to it. If the receiving device ONLY accepts displayport (like the 24 inch apple cinema display, and most likely the new iMac), then it does not accept HDMI, DVI, or VGA.

This is why you cant connect a DVI source to a displayport display. A device won't accept DVI signals, just because it supports displayport. They are completely different standards, both physically and electrically. The only reason that HDMI and DVI are cross compatible is because they use the same basic standard to send information, and they are electrically compatible.

Now, of course you could build a display that accepts DVI and DisplayPort, but it would require hardware to decode each different standard, just like displays with DVI and VGA plugs on them. TV's require even more hardware to convert all the different signal standards its expected to understand.

Apple displays, as far as I know have never had hardware like this in them.

Your C2D macbook should be able to play 1080p. What kinds of codecs are you using? Sounds like a hardware acceleration problem to me.

jeezzz dude... get some anti-glare film... or a life.

I think a few places sell anti-glare film for iMacs now.
http://www.photodon.com/c/LCD-Protective-Films.html

I mean, everybody is freaking out about this when we have been staring into glass CRT's for the past 50 f**king years with no problem.