Using my HDTV as a Second Monitor

Not sure about the 1080i, but the "positioning" of the monitors is easily changed in System Preferences -> Displays, Arrangement tab. One issue with doing as you propose, is that you kill Fitts' Law with regard to your menu bar. But, if you can live with that, it will work just fine. Best, Glen

I guess the arrangements tab doesn't show up unless you have the secondary display plugged in. I'll try that next time I have the HDTV hooked up. My experiment only used a 1' HDMI cable (the one that came with my cable box) so I couldn't really test what I wanted. I think I"ll go get a 15' and see if this actually makes my life easier, or is just a waste of power.

Yes, it's a limitation of HDMI. It doesn't do more unless you have HDCP and I'm not sure the Mac will have that. In any case, the problem with HDMI is that it only has a couple of resolutions (1080/720 etc.) which often don't correspond to the pixels in the monitor. So there's some form of upscalaing on the TV which looks worse generally than the Apple rendering engine.

In fact, you'll get a better quality using VGA if you have that into your TV than will DVI, since VGA will correctly recognise the size informed by the TV which is usually a 1-1 mapping with the pixels. I get better refresh rate and a closer resolution to pixel perfect with my VGA connector.

I now have a Mac Mini hooked up to my Samsung which uses VGA, and I get a better resolution with a native pixel count (1920x1080). Plus, it's not interlaced either.

Note that whilst HDMI can support this, the DVI that Apple uses is DVI-D. You can get DVI-A (analogy) or DVI-I (integrated/both) but often the TV manufacturers are too cheap to do anything other than the basic 720p/1080i that might come from Blu-Ray disks and so won't support DVI-A, or expose the other resolutions via the DVI-D interface.

Bottom line is if you're thinking about running a TV as a monitor for anything other than watching movies, you're probably better off hooking it up via VGA instead of HDMI or DVI-x

Alex

Check online; you can get good DVI/HDMI cables for relatively cheap. I have a 3m DVI cable for my Westinghouse HDTV that was about $20 from SFCable.

That's awesome advice... My HDTV does indeed have a VGA input on the back... I'll have to give that a try once I find a big enough VGA extension... and of course, the VGA cable will run me about 10% the cost of some overpriced HDMI cable.

Actually, there's no such thing as an "apple rendering engine".

If your TV is full-HD (most tv sets above 42") as opposed to HD-Ready it will support 1080, otherwise it will support 720. Normally adapters that translate DVI-D to HDMI transmit the DCC signal properly and notifies the windows display subsystem of which resolutions are available.

A couple of things to consider: First, if you're using bootcamp 2 released with leopard and are on a MBP C2D with an nvidia chipset, the nvidia driver doesn't support any high resolution on the external port. You can upgrade to bootcamp 2.1 that's downloadable from the apple web site.

Second, you need to check your tv set actually supports 1080 as opposed to 720.

Finally, if the tv supports it and your driver supports it, but the resolutio doens't display, you'll need a tool like powerstrip to try and tweak your settings and enable those resolutions. It's not a nice experience though.

HDCP has not much to do with it. In an unsecured environment (no hdcp), high def dvd playback will be deactivated, but not normal windows use.

As for upscale / downscale, it depends on the type of tv you have, which you haven't mentioned. If it's plasma / lcd, you're much better off with HDMI, as the only supported resolutins are the ones instructed by the tv to your computer, no random upscaling involved (although 720 is upscaled to 1080 if your tv supports it, which in intself is not an issue). If it's an analog TV, there is no such thing as a pixel for the tv anyway, so depending on your settings you won't see much of a difference, as long as you blast the correct resolution supported by your tv (thats where some good documentation on the capabilities of your set really shine).

Refresh rate is the same issue, but most analog tv sets are refreshing under 50Hz anyway and render in interlaced mode by default, while digital ones go to 60hz and will trigger the best result in progressive mode (the p in 720p).

Hoep it helps

I have a 42" Samsung HDTV that supports all of the progressive resolutions up to 720, and it supports 1080i. When playing the Xbox 360 (most games, not all) and when watching cable TV channels, I'm using 1080i. I am not using Bootcamp, I'm using OS X Leopard and the DVI port on the Macbook Pro 17".

My brother got a 40" TV and threw out his old monitor, using the HDTV as his only monitor. It's freakin' awesome. He doesn't even play movies in fullscreen anymore; since he sits a meter from the monitor, the picture's just too big that way ;)

I have an MBP 15" and I have no problems showing 1080i from it to my 40" Samsung HDTV.

Also: I find it impossible to write code at all without at least two monitors :P Been that way since I got my first 800x600 14" CRT from the school's admin who was going to throw it away :P