This one is pretty short and simple once you get down to it.
I recently set up a client’s boardroom with a really sweet 75″ Sony 4K Android TV, a Logitech Group video conferencing webcam, a Mac mini and a Sonos Playbar. Everything was really sweet, except that the Mac mini refused to treat the TV as a Retina or HiDPI screen.
The result of this was that the Mac mini would use the TV at it’s native resolution – it saw the TV as a monitor running at 3840 x 2160. What I wanted it to do was treat it as a 1920 x 1080 display, but in Retina mode, so UI elements would be a reasonable size from across the room but text and graphical elements would still be sharp.
I was able to enable HiDPI modes by first running the following command in Terminal:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist DisplayResolutionEnabled -bool true
Once this had been applied, I rebooted and logged in again. Then, when I went into my Displays preferences, instead of selecting Resolution: Best for built-in display, I held down the Option key and clicked on Scaled.
Scrolling down to the bottom of the list revealed the HiDPI modes – I selected 1920 x 1080 (HiDPI) and voila! I was running in Retina mode and could comfortably use the Mac mini from across the other side of the room.
Tried this on my hackintosh plugged in to my 48″ Samsung UHD tv, this unlocked a complete new set of available resolutions and has made a huge difference to my viewing experience when sitting on the sofa at a distance of 10 feet. Photos and video are much crisper but i can still have the text at a readable size and very crisp. I use 3200×1800 hidpi which appears as 1600×900 Perfect, many thanks for this tip which i suspected was possible but did not know how to do.
I’m glad to hear it worked, even on a hackintosh! When running at the native resolution, you need to be sitting right up close to the TV, when running at a scaled resolution, everything is soft (even if it’s an exact 2:1 ratio). With the proper HiDPI scaling in place, everything is exactly as it should be.