Stalking Venus

I’m trying to pipe the picture from my MacBook Pro 17 ” to my Panasonic Viera 50″ television, because I do most of everything in my lounge.

I’m a stay-home dad, writer and photographer, and my coffee table is pretty much where I do all my work, so I was wondering if there wasn’t some way I could hook up a keyboard and use my TV as my main screen. Why? Because it’s fucking huge, that’s why. Oh, and because I’m a bit of an IT geek and thought it’d be fun to try.

The basic idea is that I can do my close-up work like writing and photo editing on my MacBook screen, but leave a web browser window open permanently on the TV so I can do my research and surf porn from there.

The output from my Mac is HDMI, and the input on the TV is DVI, so I have a straightforward HDMI to DVI cable plugged in between the two.

So far, so good.

Getting the resolution right is pretty straightforward. Once the cable is plugged in and the TV is switched on, the Mac automatically detects the full 1920 x 1080 pixel HD display. Woo! But…

There’s a flicker. Not much of a flicker, but for someone like me (pedantic, obsessive, neurotic and easily irritated, but also cool and kinda sexy) it’s enough of a flicker to make it unusable. I go do all the basic IT stuff, and see that the maximum output for the TV display is 60hz. The TV itself has a 600hz sub drive so, like what the hell, dude, right? That image should be as steady as a master surgeon’s hands over Angelina Jolie’s tits.

So, does anyone know why this is? I’ve Googled and Wikipediophiled, but can’t find a single bit of information (that I can understand) as to why my MacBook LCD running at 60hz should look steadier than my Plasma running at 60hz.

Answers in the comments please (or alternatively on the Wikipedia discussion page).