Will a new LCD monitor or projector connect to my Mac?

Tekserve carries LCD monitors that use DVI, VGA, or Mini DisplayPort. To figure which type of display your computer can use, the first thing you need to understand is that there are digital (DVI/DisplayPort) and analog ways (VGA) of sending video to a display or projector. All Intel Macs are capable of sending a digital video signal and will have a variation of DVI or DisplayPort. You can downgrade the digital video signal to work on analog displays with a VGA adapter. So if you have a digital video port (DVI/DisplayPort), you can use almost any display or projector out there with adapters. If your Mac was made before 2006 it may have an analog VGA port. These computers will only work on displays and projectors with analog VGA inputs. You cannot upgrade an analog video signal (VGA) to a digital video signal (DVI).

To figure out which video port your computer has, you can check its specifications at http://support.apple.com/specs/ or bring your computer’s serial number into Tekserve. Apple’s own displays have additional requirements. The LED Cinema Display, released in October 2008, will only work with Macs with a Mini DisplayPort. Another exception is Apple’s 30-inch Cinema HD Display. This monster requires a unique video card (with dual link DVI) that works only with the Power Mac G5, Mac Pro, certain PowerBooks, certain MacBooks, later MacBook Air models, and MacBook Pro models with Dual-Link Support and enough VRAM.

Published March 24, 2009 12:00 PM
Last modified on June 16, 2009 6:13 PM