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I have a new 15" MacBook Pro running Lion. My client has a new 60" Panasonic (P60GT30) in their conference room.

They have a Windows laptop plugged in to the PC input, and it works fine.

However, when I try to connect like ...

MacBookProThunderboltPort -> Apple MiniDisplayPort-to-VGA dongle -> VGA cable -> TV's PC input

... the MacBook simply will not recognize the TV.

(Note: The TV actually has a little VGA-to-weirdPanasonicMiniConnector dongle that's needed to connect the TV; but Windows worked fine with it, why not the MacBook?)

Is there something I need to do for the MacBook to recognize and output to this TV? Maybe a new driver or something?

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I don't know if this will help, but I have heard about issues with HDMI adapters and Lion, so the same may effect the Mini DisplayPort. The solution to the HDMI issue is resetting the PRAM at boot. Instructions are at docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/26871.html (it says Snow Leopard, but the same applies for Lion). – Nathan Aug 12 '11 at 21:20

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

You may require a TV that has a native HDMI input. VGA is becoming unsupported in many configurations, such as with the iPad 2, and all through the industry, not just with Apple products.

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You have never worked in a corporate environment. VGA is everywhere in projectors, and is the reason most "professional" laptops still support it. Since projectors don't really get old anywhere near as fast as computers, it will likely continue to be supported in the professional realm for many years. – Fake Name Aug 13 '11 at 9:03
That's not my point. I know for a fact that the iPad can reliably work with VGA but the iPad 2 cannot. You gotta have HDMI. Similarly, I suspect that the Thunderbolt interface for the new generation of Macs cannot reliably sync with VGA, and you need HDMI on the other end. Just last month I was helping to teach classes in conference rooms in a major convention center in Nashville, and we encountered these problems. We could not get 2011 Apple equipment to interface with 60-inch plasma TV screens that only had VGA, composite, component and S-Video inputs (which are all analog) – Wheat Williams Aug 13 '11 at 16:07
So while VGA is still everywhere, it is rapidly getting to the point that if you have the latest computer equipment, it cannot be made to work with VGA reliably, no matter what kind of converter dongles you are carrying around. This may be "planned obsolescence" but the reality throughout the world is that people need to budget to eliminate all the legacy VGA equipment and replace it with equipment that natively supports DVI, DisplayPort, HDMI, and Thunderbolt. I know it's an expensive proposition, but this is what I have observed. – Wheat Williams Aug 13 '11 at 16:10
And I do work in a corporate environment frequently. I'm a consultant to an event planning and corporate presentation company, and I've been advising them for the last year to get rid of their VGA equipment and replace it with newer digital video equipment as they can afford it. – Wheat Williams Aug 13 '11 at 16:12
"Intel and AMD Sign Death Warrant for VGA", December 2010. forums.malwarebytes.org/index.php?showtopic=69904 – Wheat Williams Aug 13 '11 at 16:14
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up vote 1 down vote accepted

There appears to be no way to do what I need. I'm adding this and marking it 'correct' because I don't want to look like a douche who doesn't mark answers as correct. :(

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Thanks for putting a resolution on this. From my time here, the goal for acceptance is 75% to 80% and not 100% for several reasons. Primarily, it's OK to have a few questions that are really hard and unanswered. When you mark it as unanswered, you do remove things from the unanswered queue and make it less likely someone will offer a bounty or find this if they ever get an answer. It's totally your call, just wanted to chime in in case you thought the goal was 100% acceptance. – bmike♦ Feb 20 '12 at 14:49

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