Mac Mini SwitchResX Settings for Panasonic TH-50PX80U plasma
I recently purchased a Panasonic plasma tv, the TH-50PX80U. It’s a great looking screen, and I’m quite happy with it so far (see the reviews at Amazon).
One of the first things I did was connect my Mac mini so we can watch iTunes and other videos, DVDs using Front Row, Hulu, and so forth. However, right away we noticed the overscan of the Mac’s video on the plasma. Most of the menu bar was cut off, and at least half of the dock. For most video sources this was OK, but the missing menu and dock made things difficult.
I took to searching the net and had a tough time finding settings specific to my display. I discovered SwitchResX, a program that lets you make custom resolutions for your Mac in order to fix this type of issue. There is a good tutorial over at AV Science forum. It was still a confusing process though, and I was really hoping to find someone else with this same Panasonic so I could try their settings.
I finally discovered a user with a similar plasma using a custom 1224 x 688 resolution with DisplayConfigX (similar to SwitchResX). Based on his settings, I came up with the following:
The main difference between my settings and his are the vertical front and back porch settings. The 1224 x 688 resolution was correct, but I was still getting a bit of the menu bar cut off on the top. I played with these settings a bit and got it to where I have full view of my menu bar (just the tip of the Apple leaf is cut off) and full view of the dock.
I do have a bit of horizontal shift problem, where the image shifts back and forth a pixel or two, once in a while, but it is something I’m still working on. It was mentioned in the thread at AV Science forums, so once I get that sorted I’ll post an update here.
My current settings:
- Horizontal (H) active – 1224
- H front porch – 136
- H Sync – 80
- H Back porch – 208
- Vertical (V) active – 688
- V front porch – 22
- V sync – 5
- V back porch – 36
This post has 11 comments
January 4th, 2009
i used to following settings for my Panasonic TH-42PX80U hooked up via DVI->HDMI to a headless macbook.
TIMING:
* Horizontal (H) active – 1208
* H front porch – 144
* H Sync – 80
* H Back porch – 216
* Vertical (V) active – 680
* V front porch – 30
* V sync – 5
* V back porch – 36
This gives me nearly perfect resolution. I am cutting off about 1 or 2 pixels at the top, but its gooed enough. Thanks for the post, it helps lots!
February 25th, 2009
Hey guys will this work with macbook pros also? I dont know what a headless mac or mac mini is. Thanks.
February 25th, 2009
Also, that pixel shifting is anti burnin technology, I think its normal.
April 10th, 2009
William J Sisti, thanks for posting your settings for the TH-42PX80U. The only problem I’m having with those settings are thin bright lines running down each side of the screen. One line is yellow and the other is blue. Sometimes both lines jump to the same side of the screen. I think it has something to do with the TV’s pixel shifting technology that prevents image burn in, but I would rather not see the lines, they’re a little distracting. I do have overscanning turned in in my display prefs.
Any ideas?
April 10th, 2009
EDIT: I instead tried using the original settings posted above for the TH-50PX80U and the lines are gone now. Problem solved. Again, I don’t have the TH-50PX80U, I have the TH-42PX80U. The same settings seem to work though. There may be some SLIGHT clipping on each side of the screen, like maybe one or two pixels, but I’ll take that over the distracting lines I was getting before.
June 9th, 2009
Maybe I am being stupid, but why do you need to set the resolution so low? The actual resolution for this television is 1,366 x 768. Wouldn’t setting the resolution at 1224 x 688 result in diminished picture quality?
July 9th, 2009
I used the settings and it worked with my TH-50PX80U
@Clayton i would like to know that too, are we wasting resolution? Why aren’t this TVs working properly to begin with?
Thx for the settings
July 9th, 2009
JFYI, i had a apple TV before and it worked just fine with the TH-50PX80U. What’s the difference (its all DVI/HDMI anyways)?
December 12th, 2009
I’m actually revisiting this because I would like to use a higher resolution.
@Clayton – I get conflicting information on the web about the TH-50PX80U’s native resolution. Some sources say it’s 1024×768, and others say it’s 1366×768. Not sure what to believe.
It would be nice if the OS would auto-detect your display’s supported resolutions, even if your display is a TV.
December 21st, 2009
Hi,
According to the TH-42PX80U manual:
Plasma Display Panel – 786,432 ( 1024(W) x 768(H) ) [3072 x 768 dots ]
I have a Mac Pro with this Plasma monitor as a secondary monitor. Still trying to find a proper resolution setup as well as a gamma setup for this monitor.
Creating a profile with the native panel resolution of 1024×768 only results in a 4:3 image in OSX. Trying the 3072×768 number, and it doesn’t seem to be of any difference. I am new to this SwitchResX program, only hours into playing around…. So perhaps I’m not doing this correctly as of yet.
December 21st, 2009
For further reference, the TH-50PX80U specs are also listed in this manual.
TH-50PX80U Plasma Display Panel:
1049088 ( 1366(W) x 768(H) ) [ 4098x768 dots ]