New Nehalem + TV = FAIL

[Sean Russell]

We just replaced a G5 (June '04 2x2Ghz / 4.5 GB / 7 drive / 8 drive - 10.5.5) with a new 2.66 Nehalem (6GB/ 10.5.6). The displays are a 22" ACD (primary) and a 40" Samsung LCD TV.

The G5, with it's whopping 64 MB of RAM on the video card had NO problems putting clear images to the TV either via DVI-HDMI or even DVI-VGA. Everything looked great, and I got A&R off my shoulder by putting the edit window up on the TV. We swap CPU's and everything gets, well, bad. From the new mac (with 512MB on the video card) gives shaky image, with bad color. The ACD is hooked up with the large ACD-DVI brick and is plugged into the actual DVI on the Mac. The other video out from the mac is a Mini Display port (ugh). With the $30 minidisplay to DVI cable, I've tried two dvi-hdmi cables with lousy results. Driving out of the DVI to the TV gives better results - but the ACD won't play nice out of the mini display to DVI cable adapter.

After trying every combination of display settings in Sys Prefs (which now have a whole bunch of 'interlaced' settings and a 'TV out' button as wells as an 'Over Scan' button - the first of which is greyed out) I finally called Apple.

Guess what? I'm not alone. 'Engineering is working on it'. He suggested I combo up to 10.5.7 but then told
Me 10.5.7 was mostly for Apple software fixes. (for Apple apps).

Tweaking the TV menu setting made it better - but I never needed to do that before - I could switch inputs on the TV for whatever else and the picture has always looked good in PT. No weird shading, no noise on the screen, no color/contrast issues. Right now the waveforms 'dance' slightly.

Anybody else? I'm trying to get a newer aluminum ACD to try replacing the 22" older - hoping that the new one will act right on the mini-dvi adapter.