mac mini two monitors

[jortymor]

About ready to purchase a mac mini and had been debating weather to use my 40 inch Samsung LCD or get a nice 23 inch monitor. My setup is all in the same man cave and I like to sit at my desk at times but the ideal of a 40 inch monitor is attractive. Can I have both connected to the mini and just use one at a time?

 

[canes960]

You can but you must buy an adapter.

 

[goldenpiggy]

To further expand on canes' post: The Mini includes a mini-DVI to DVI adaptor, so you can buy a DVI-to-HDMI cable and hook that to your TV for 1920 x 1080 res (but no audio through HDMI with this setup). Then you can get a mini display port to DVI adaptor and hook up your 23 inch monitor for 1920 x 1200 res at the same time. This assumes you are buying a current generation Mini, or at least one that came out in Spring '09. Previous ones did not have mini display port; only single DVI.

If you've never tried using a TV as monitor before, don't get your hopes up too high. While the image is huge, the text is nowhere near the sharpness you get with real computer monitors. The dot or pixel pitch on TVs are huge, and you really see that. On my 50" plasma, I have to sit about 3 or 4 feet from it just to be able to read the text. And there is perceived flicker (might be different with LCD TVs though.) But it is cool nevertheless.

The Mac Mini makes a good media and music server, except that its optical digital audio out sucks -- there's so much jitter that it renders music lifeless. If you're into high end audio, get a Firewire audio interface that has JetPLL chip (TC Electronic Impact Twin, M Audio Pro 610, and several Presonus units). Use the S/PDIF outs of these units to feed a good DAC and you'll be in audio heaven. The Mac Mini playing back WAV, AIFF, or FLAC tracks in such a setup will outdo most $5K audiophile CD players, and can play back 96KHz/24 bit tracks too.