Considering a move to Mac. Multimedia/external display questions.

[AudibleNectar]

Yet another lifelong Windows user thinking of making the move to Mac. Considering 27" Mac.

I have recently lost a Windows based computer to failure. It owes me nothing, after 6 1/2 years of service it's had enough. However, over those 6 1/2 years I have grown very accustomed to watching video online, both streaming and live, and am in need of a new multimedia center to run the show. Sufficiently important that I have been without my main comp for several weeks, in an attempt to get a solution I can live with for the next five years....and get it right.

There's lots of reasons I am considering a move from Windows, all of which you are familiar: Blue screen of death, as well as the plethora of complaints from reviews regarding stability of new systems in Win 10. Wayyyyyy too many people saying "I want my Win 7 back!" Add to this the fact that my wife won't touch a Windows system, which is a problem as our cable line will likely be cut in favor of online offerings. I also loathe the annual scraping of the hard drive and reformatting/rebuilding the machine, a week long pain in the rear but necessary to keep those running optimally and smoothly. I did just that with my prior Windows systems, extending their useful life, but I hated it.

We also recently got iPhones, and having many of the same complaints with Android as Windows, which Apple seems to have antidotes for.

So here we are, investigating the possibility of taking the leap to Apple as a full time concern.

HOW WE INTEND TO USE:

A HUGE consideration is the use of external monitor as a display in a home theater system. I wish to send my online video and sound to my Sony 55" TV (1080, HDMI input) from the computer and watch online video. Once I get the HDMI signal to the 55", that unit's digital out goes to my audio system automatically as a pass through feature of the TV. From what I've read this is not an issue in Mac... however, I want to get into detailed function/options for how I could implement this.

Could I have a window on the external monitor (playing video) and have a different window on my Mac doing say email or chat? Would the full screen video in that external monitor scale properly (in other words, fit the external monitors borders properly), especially in a situation where I were not using screen mirroring?

Could I have a video on my external monitor playing and my Mac monitor be black/off? If watching my big monitor I usually want the computer monitor shut off so I'm not distracted by the computer monitor's screen.

In either scenario, could I have the sound off on the Mac, since the sound would be playing through my big, beautiful audio system? This means I need a fixed output level on the audio signal to my TV via HDMI while the Mac speakers are quiet.

I am also curious if the video card (GPU) plays any role in this, or if that GPU's benefits only pertain to what we see on the Mac's monitor. IOW is there a reason to have the 580 v the 575 with these kind of uses? I'm not a gamer, and doubt I'll do any editing (although who knows, I might dabble), but I'm coming from a multimedia perspective, wanting to incorporate this Mac into a home theater setup, as well as being an iPhone owner doing the usual email, forum posting, Web browsing, and video streaming.

I also traditionally use outboard computer speakers for times when I use the computer normally, and this kit uses a mini plug input, so I'm curious if the Mac gets along OK here as well. Would I just plug the speaker kit's mini plug into the headphone jack, thus canceling the Mac's internal speakers?

Started out looking at 27" Mac's since they seemed to have some future proof horsepower and a monitor size I like, starting with the mid version i5 7600 with 575, doing something different with the hard drive and possibly more memory later. If they made a mini with similar horsepower and capabilities as the full Mac I would go that route. To load one up costs $1500, at that point a full blown Mac just seems to make more sense, at least in a "computer for the money" sense.

I have done quite a few searches, and watched a lot of hours of YouTube video, all from a small tablet or iPhone, but could not find the kind of specificity I need here. Some solutions and clarity here would go a long way towards making the Mac leap, as it seems most other tasks I do can be adequately translated between operating systems in some fashion.

Thanks much in advance.

 

[mroy16]

The iMac should work just fine for your purposes.

You'll need an adapter to go from one of the iMac's Thunderbolt 3 ports to HDMI, but that's no problem. The iMac supports HDMI output via an adapter. Any graphics card in the 27" iMac will be plenty powerful to drive the internal monitor and a 1080 external display. The iMac will also recognize the screen dimensions of the TV and fit the display window to match, so you won't have any issues there. The only time you would experience issues is if you mirrored the screens, as they have different resolutions and aspect ratios.

If you connect the TV as an external display, the HDMI output will show up as a sound output option. If you have something plugged into the 3.5mm headphone jack, that will show up as another option. When there is something in the headphone jack, the internal speakers are disabled automatically. You can easily switch between audio output options from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

The only thing that seems to be an issue would be turning the internal monitor off. I don't own an iMac, but I don't think you can turn off the internal monitor while leaving an external monitor (your TV) running. Your best bet would probably to just turn the brightness all the way down (which might go all the way to black - again, not sure).

 

[AudibleNectar]

Mroy, appreciate the response.

I thought a great deal about the iMac monitor shutoff maybe being an issue. Figured if nothing else I use an image as black as possible in a window on that screen as a workaround, if nothing else is a solution. With a Windows box I would just power off the monitor. Hmmmm.

It's also good to know those kind of sound controls are built within the OS, so I can have sound only where I want it. That's a big deal.

Curious from any others who work their machines this way have to share. At least there seems to be a possibility this can work....

Regarding the GPU card, if the 55" is replaced with a 4K I assume we're still OK? I'm curious how far the boundaries go, on the GPU as well as the machine overall in this area.. If I weren't three hours from an Apple store I would go there, nobody who sells locally knows much about what you can do with these....

 

[AFEPPL]

In my experience MacOS is now less stable than window.
In terms of the GPU, as long as you don't want to be playing top AAA games at the highest setting and 100FPS you'll be ok.

I'm not sure there is such as thing as future proofing and with macs it is buy it now or buy another one later - upgrading is not really an option, so buy what you need.

You can alway still run windows over Mac either with bootcamp or something like VirtualBox.

 

[mroy16]

Regarding the GPU card, if the 55" is replaced with a 4K I assume we're still OK? I'm curious how far the boundaries go, on the GPU as well as the machine overall in this area.. If I weren't three hours from an Apple store I would go there, nobody who sells locally knows much about what you can do with these....

According to the tech specs, all three GPU options for the 27" iMac support the same display configurations. In addition to the built-in display, they can support up to:

One 5120‑by‑2880 (5K) external display at 60Hz with support for 1 billion colors, or
Two 3840-by-2160 (4K UHD) external displays at 60Hz with support for 1 billion colors, or
Two 4096‑by‑2304 (4K) external displays at 60Hz with support for millions of colors

The 27" iMac has excellent hardware, well beyond your minimum requirements, even if you wanted to drive a 4K TV with it. Aside from learning to navigate the new OS, I'd guess that you'll be really happy with the device.

 

[AudibleNectar]

In my experience MacOS is now less stable than window.
In terms of the GPU, as long as you don't want to be playing top AAA games at the highest setting and 100FPS you'll be ok.

I'm not sure there is such as thing as future proofing and with macs it is buy it now or buy another one later - upgrading is not really an option, so buy what you need.

You can alway still run windows over Mac either with bootcamp or something like VirtualBox.

In my eyes, "future proofing" in this sense means not buying a machine that won't be viable in three years, or foreseeing common consumer technologies that would necessitate having a more robust machine. It seems 5-7 years is typical viable time before an upgrade or replacement is due, then the landscape is such that a new setup is better anyway.

According to the tech specs, all three GPU options for the 27" iMac support the same display configurations. In addition to the built-in display, they can support up to:

One 5120‑by‑2880 (5K) external display at 60Hz with support for 1 billion colors, or
Two 3840-by-2160 (4K UHD) external displays at 60Hz with support for 1 billion colors, or
Two 4096‑by‑2304 (4K) external displays at 60Hz with support for millions of colors

The 27" iMac has excellent hardware, well beyond your minimum requirements, even if you wanted to drive a 4K TV with it. Aside from learning to navigate the new OS, I'd guess that you'll be really happy with the device.

Definitely looking like it has possibilities. I don't expect going beyond a future swap of the 55" to a 4K so it should be viable for a while.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

In my eyes, "future proofing" in this sense means not buying a machine that won't be viable in three years, or foreseeing common consumer technologies that would necessitate having a more robust machine. It seems 5-7 years is typical viable time before an upgrade or replacement is due, then the landscape is such that a new setup is better anyway.



Definitely looking like it has possibilities. I don't expect going beyond a future swap of the 55" to a 4K so it should be viable for a while.

You can also use an Apple TV and just stream everything from your Mac to the tv wirelessly for watching video etc without having to have the iMac within cable distance or even in the same room.

 

[elf69]

I am using a old iMac but similar use to the OP, so here is my input:

I use a 20" 2007 iMac plus a 20" apple cinema screen, granted screen has no sounds options but I'll get to that.
I run facebook/imessage/forum etc on the iMac screen and youtube full screen on the Cinema Display.

Now sound I have BOTH 3.5mm DJ headphones and bluetooth headphones.
As said above on the menu bar the speaker icon is clicked with mouse while holding the alt key it will allow you to swap between connected output and input devices for sound.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

You can also use an Apple TV and just stream everything from your Mac to the tv wirelessly for watching video etc without having to have the iMac within cable distance or even in the same room.

Definitely do this. I haven't physically had a Mac connected to my TV for years - since I got my first Apple TV 2nd Generation, so maybe 2011 or so? You can stream to it as though it were connected, using AirPlay, but you can also just use the Apple TV by itself and not fiddle with the computer.

You could get a 4th generation, if you are thinking of upgrading the TV then you could go ahead and get an Apple TV 4k now, or move the 4th gen Apple TV to a 2nd television when you get the 4k.

 

[AudibleNectar]

Interesting. So in effect, a Mac plus Apple TV unit gives another form of "screen mirroring" to the TV? That's VERY interesting, yet another way to get comp screen to TV.

But I am still interested in the two screen at once with two different windows usage, as well as finding a way to have comp on TV with Mac screen black while otherwise operational. Make the TV the main computer screen with the Mac monitor as extended and black/shut off.

The computer is in the multimedia room so in those cases where the Mac is better off shut off cannot be solved by it being in another room.

I'm thinking I just might make that three hour drive to Apple. I need to get this gear and a knowledgeable person in one place. I've been given enough info here to sense there's a way to do this.....or at least most of it.

 

[elf69]

you can make the external screen primary and iMac one secondary in settings.
then set the desktop to say a black background, you can have different backgrounds on each screen.

it would not be off but could be blank black, would still have back light so not fully black though.
and menu bar along tot of screen but it would be greyed out slightly.

then in setting can switch primary back to iMac when need arises.

 

[mroy16]

Interesting. So in effect, a Mac plus Apple TV unit gives another form of "screen mirroring" to the TV? That's VERY interesting, yet another way to get comp screen to TV.

But I am still interested in the two screen at once with two different windows usage, as well as finding a way to have comp on TV with Mac screen black while otherwise operational. Make the TV the main computer screen with the Mac monitor as extended and black/shut off.

The computer is in the multimedia room so in those cases where the Mac is better off shut off cannot be solved by it being in another room.

I'm thinking I just might make that three hour drive to Apple. I need to get this gear and a knowledgeable person in one place. I've been given enough info here to sense there's a way to do this.....or at least most of it.

With Apple TV, you can use the TV as an extended display, not just mirroring. And I just tested with my laptop and second monitor - if I turn the brightness all the way down on my laptop, the screen turns off but leaves the second monitor running normally. With this behavior, you could use an Apple TV or direct USB-C to HDMI cable to achieve your desired results.

The Apple TV will cost a bit more than a cable, but you also have the option of using it without your computer if you want.

 

[AudibleNectar]

you can make the external screen primary and iMac one secondary in settings.
then set the desktop to say a black background, you can have different backgrounds on each screen.

it would not be off but could be blank black, would still have back light so not fully black though.
and menu bar along tot of screen but it would be greyed out slightly.

then in setting can switch primary back to iMac when need arises.

That definitely could be a solution, and would likely be good enough to solve the issue for the small percentage of time the system would operate under this scenario. If I had a TV streaming service like Apple TV, stuff like YouTube or Netflix could be run from that and hence no issue from a glowing comp screen, but for specific viewing from certain websites I need to run comp based video not offered through the TV streaming setups.

Also too, a bit of selective use of the dimmer/brightness control in that situation would be simple enough, I generally have it somewhat dim anyway, as it's not normally a very bright room and I sit rather close to it. If that's all that gets in the way of this I think we're good here.
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With Apple TV, you can use the TV as an extended display, not just mirroring. And I just tested with my laptop and second monitor - if I turn the brightness all the way down on my laptop, the screen turns off but leaves the second monitor running normally. With this behavior, you could use an Apple TV or direct USB-C to HDMI cable to achieve your desired results.

The Apple TV will cost a bit more than a cable, but you also have the option of using it without your computer if you want.

Excellent.

 

[AudibleNectar]

Resurrecting this old thread as it was not for waste - I purchased a new Mac mini earlier this month - it seems the separate monitor was the better way to do this here, so we bought a new Mac mini (16GB, i7 six core 3.2, 1TB SSD) and a new LG 4K monitor.

We've done the initial setup and seems to be going OK for the first couple of days in, we have the LG and the Sony 55" talking to the Mac and passing audio. The Apple TV looks to be the ticket out of a the cable box, which will be gone with the current contract negotiation period.

So I have a couple of weeks to play and make sure all is well and happy with the new setup before the return period expires. So far, so good.....