PowerBook to HDTV via DVI>HDMI

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Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I have a PowerBook G4 with a DVI port and I'm trying to hook it up to an LCD HDTV with no DVI input. I asked around and was told that a DVI>HDMI cable would work best, so I ordered one.



In the meantime, I tried hooking up using a simple VGA cable. After a bit of toying with the picture on the TV, it looked excellent, save for some vertical ghostlines in areas of great contrast. The Mac set the TV's resolution to 1360*768 (as it should) and I had no overscan problems.



Well, I got my DVI>HDMI cable today and cheerfully hooked it up, expecting an even better picture. Instead, the TV was set to 1280*1080 (which it can't handle), and I had to quickly change it because the picture got jittery and weird. My only options, however, were a bunch of interlaced modes (all of which looked bad) and 1280*720. This is not the TV's native resolution, but it was the only one that worked well. Every time I disconnect and reconnect the cable it defaults to 1280*1080 and I have to change the mode manually.



When I said the picture at 1280*720 wasn't bad, I meant that it was solid and clear, but now there's color fringing everywhere - the type looks terrible.



The VGA picture looked better - and that's using a DVI>VGA converter, and an old, cheapo VGA cable. What gives?



Is this a software issue, or a hardware issue? Is it the Mac or the TV? Did I buy a crappy cable?



I'd appreciate feedback from anyone who's dealt with this before.



P.S. Yes, I can just use VGA for now, but the picture is still far from ideal and I only have a 3' cable.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    What TV do you have?
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  • Reply 2 of 4
    I have a 32" Westinghouse LCD HDTV. Here it is:



    http://www.westinghousedigital.com/d...emnum=52#VALUE



    I'm very pleased with the TV's performance. By the way, TV picture adjustments did nothing to fix the DVI>HDMI problems. Even with the sharpness control on the TV turned off, the type still looks significantly worse than over VGA.



    It's harder to judge video performance visually, but I'd say that movies looked slightly worse over DVI>HDMI too.



    My biggest beef, though, is the bad resolution defaulting - I don't want to have to change the res manually every time I hook up the TV.
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  • Reply 3 of 4
    Bumpy-bump... Any ideas, anyone?
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  • Reply 4 of 4
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Nope. HDMI carries some info that DVI is not equipped to handle. I'm guessing this is where the problem is. I think you'll either need to find a more complicated DVI-HDMI transceiver of sorts or just deal with it.



    For the record, I HATE HDMI. Thankfully, it's supposed to go away soon in favor of a universal format that should supplant DVI and HDMI.
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