Macs to HDTV via HDMI?

Saturday, November 01, 2008 by Dave Winer.

Getting ready for election night when I'm going to have a few friends over to watch the returns, and either celebrate or... 

I have two Macs hooked up to HDTVs, one a Samsung the other a Sony Bravia, and until recently they had been connected via VGA. I was barely aware you could do it any other way. I thought the picture was great until I hooked up a Toshiba HDTV to the second video display on my G5 tower and the picture so much better! Much more color. The Toshiba is a smaller, cheaper and older TV than the Sony that's connected into the other video output, but it looks much better. So, of course, I wanted to do the same with the Sony. 

I tried connecting the HDMI output to the Sony, but the picture looked terrible. I don't know how to describe it, but the colors were all washed out, text was blurry. I might try to take a picture so y'all can see what the deal is. 

I tried hooking up a Mac Mini in the living room to the Samsung TV via HDMI, and got the same lousy picture.  

I unhooked the Mac Mini and connected my MacBook Pro to the Samsung, and got the same lousy picture.  

I've fiddled with the Displays section of the Preferences in every way I could and it makes no difference. I've turned everything off and on, still no difference.  

I can get more data. I might try to take a picture of the crummy image to post.  

Any advice would be much appreciated. 

PS: I'm using Belkin DVI to HDMI adapters.