MacOS – Retina MacBook Pro – External display resolution issues

displaymacbook promacosresolution

I am not sure if this is a problem with my TV or my Retina MBP. I've had an early 2011 MBP before my rMBP and this was never an issue.

It seems that when I connect up my TV, it 'detects' the screen orientation as portrait. The resolutions shown are all portrait (eg. 1140 x 2560) – but this does get shown on my TV as a landscape resolution…

While the screen orientation being weird is one issue, the other issue is that I cannot find a resolution that is supported by my TV, for example 1080p or 720p isn't even listed.

Has anyone else run into this problem? Do I have an issue with my TV or rMBP?

I am connecting via HDMI and have also tried mini display port to HDMI. I am on Yosemite.

Best Answer

While this might not provide a direct answer to your question, I would be interested in the EDID (Extended display identification data) of that display.

Run ioreg -l | grep EDID on terminal to get all the EDIDs listed. Your output then includes one line for each display connected, such as "IODisplayEDID" =<00ffffffffffff000...>. Take the part in between <and >, that is your edid. Note that the short EDID/the first one is probably the one of your internal display, which has no resolution information on it.

Now you need something to read out the EDID, I used the http://www.edidreader.com website. Unfortunately they require the hex to be split and prefixed with 0x. Ruby to the rescue! ruby -e 'puts "0x" + ARGV[0].scan(/.{2}|.+/).join(" 0x")' 'YOUR EDID HERE'.

The EDID contains multiple blocks of possible resolutions, called timings. They can be found in

  • Timing Bitmap
  • Video Data Block
  • Detailed Timing Descriptor #

Does the display offer proper resolutions? Can you try with a different cable or a different machine?

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