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Q: How can I ensure good resolution when using an LCD projector?

Courtesy of our friend Dave in Audio Visual Services

Context

What really gets us AV geeks down is when someone gets in our face over a flaky image on a projector screen but refuses to go into his/her display preferences and fix the problem. We have enough real problems with equipment—this is a people problem, I think.

In most auditorium settings the circuitry from laptop to projector ignores or simply loses plug and play information. A direct connection from computer to display will allow the computer to know exactly what resolutions the display is capable of, but in a multi input system the computer only sees three 75 ohm loads across its RGB outputs, and resolution gets kind of random. Some Macs simply default to 800 by 600, but other Macs can offer a resolution that is too high, particularly in vertical refresh. Projectors tend to start to scramble the image above 75 hertz, but I have failure (from my Mac) in 10-250 (at 1152 by 870) at 75Hz as well. Results differ by both platform and by OS version.

Answer

So, next time, allow the tech to lower (or raise) the resolution on your computer or try it yourself. There is no blame here: it is neither the 'fault' of the computer nor of the projector. Try using a resolution of 1024 by 768. This seems to work on every projector we have.

90% of all trouble calls are from folks who have their computers set to an odd resolution or from people who did not know how to enable the external output on their laptops. We prefer to concentrate on (truly) broken equipment. Plenty of work for us there.

Trying our best

Dave B

Community

Documentation and information provided by the MIT Community


Last Modified:

April 28, 2010

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