Quick Solution to Some HTPC and Macmini display issues

Last weekend I took the brave, some may say reckless step, of updating my Plex based home theater macmini to Mountain Lion. The last few releases of Plex had introduced significant stuttering for me on HD content and I was forced to watch it outside of the Plex media Client. Not an option for the rest of my family.

I had been following the various threads on the Plex Forums diligently and there seemed to be a growing group of people who were getting much better performance and being able to play even higher definition video than I could previously on exactly the same mini as mine.

So I took the plunge and upgraded. At first everything was great. Instantly the problem was resolved and I had perfectly flawless HD playback at 1080p.

It wasn't until the next day when I get a text from my wife. The macmini is displaying only snow. What should they do?

I may have fixed my Plex issues but Mountain Lion had regressed its display support and was no longer doing proper EDID synching after the display was switched.

I was faced with 2 options. Downgrade and live with the HD playback issues or wait till Apple addressed in a Mountain Lion update. The latter option may not happen for weeks, months or even at all.

That is when I was pointed to an expensive but foolproof solution. The Gefen HDMI Detective Plus. It literally took my 2 minutes to install and never even needed the power supply to be attached. It basically stores the EDID information and pretends to be your device, in this case my macmini, after switching. It worked immediately and as a plus it improved the switching time.

$89 it was a little expensive but one thing that swung it for me was that we would occasionally have the no signal/snow issue even on the previous Mac OS versions and although it was easily fixed by switching to another source and back again, it was more than my family or friends should have to deal with. For that reason alone is was an easy purchase. I highly recommend it!