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PostPosted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 7:02 am 
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I'm about to try this utility at home, but I have some questions forewards:

1. Does this utility work with Mac OS X Tiger? (10.4.1)

2. I'm using an iMac G5 with a Video Adapter plugged in, mirroring the internal display to a TV (composite out). When I watch DVDs on the external display (TV) the internal display (LCD) won't go to sleep (i.e. wouldn't turn off the backlight/power completely). I can only decrease the brightness manually, but still the backlight is on.
Can I use this Brightness Control to turn off backlighting of my iMac G5 internal LCD display?
What i mean is that on apple laptops, when draging the brightness slider in system prefs (or using functional keys) to bring the brightness all the way down, it turns off the backlight. This however doesn't work this way on iMac G5: the slider would let me dim the backlight (i.e. adjust the brighness intensity), but doesn't turn off completely when brought all the way down to minimum.

Just a note: I'm not looking for so many times suggested solution of setting my display sleep time to one minute in Energy Saver prefs. That would only work when computer is inactive; and while playing DVD it IS active. So no solution here. Furthermore, when energy saver turns of internal display, it also turns off external signal, so the TV says "No signal".

Any ideas? Or any suggestions of other utilities, please?
Thx in advance


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PostPosted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 7:15 am 
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1. Brightness Control does work with Mac OS X 10.4.1.

2. Brightness Control does not actually affect the amount of light coming from your display's backlight, so it won't do for your particular application.

Brightness Control manipulates the gamma tables for each display so that each pixel's apparent brightness is scaled up or down based on the position of the Brightness Control slider. The amount of light from the backlight remains constant.

I think the fact that you're mirroring is most of the issue - in the normal scheme of things, in order for the screen image to be mirrored both displays probably have to be active. That's not to say it can't be put to sleep somehow, but even if it could, in general any activity on your Mac will wake all screens. It sounds like viewing DVD's short circuits the Mac's ability to sleep, which may interfere with any attempt to keep any one display in a sleep state.

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PostPosted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 11:14 am 
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Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 6:36 am
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Quote:
the fact that you're mirroring is most of the issue


OK, I have to mention that I used the Screen Spanning Doctor (http://macparts.de/ibook) to enable Dual Head (spanning) mode. It is not a system hack, nor it is system-dependent, rather it is a utility that changes one variable in the OpenFirmware from "false" to "true" (this explanation is simplified).
Apple has disabled spanning on consumer macs on its own will, even though the graphics cards are capable of it (they are in no way crippled). It is just a marketing move to differentiate between imac/ibook as consumer line and powerbook/powermac as pro line - nothing to do with hardware capabilities.
So I use my iMac G5 in dual-head mode. Internal display at native res (17" LCD) and TV at 1024x768 (not much readable, but best for video in my case, don't know why).

What I'm trying to say is that I have tried things I described above also in Dual-head mode with the same result (even with different DVD player apps). When DVD is playing, the computer doesn't go to sleep (what's logical). Yet there is a difference between computer sleep and display sleep; display can sleep without computer being asleep (but not vice versa, obviously).
In any case I agree that playing DVD short curcuits the ability of the computer to sleep, but it is illogical that it also prevents display from sleeping (which could sleep independently, especially when in dual-head mode).
Even if I couldn't put the whole display to sleep, I would be completely satisfied with just the backlighting off - i.e. the display would be on, you could read from it under a certain angle where the light reflects the best, but the backlight would be off.
Independent display sleep would be amazing, but I seem to get unlucky in both cases.

Anyways, thanks for the help. In case you come around something that could help, don't forget to post here....


PS: stand-alone LCD displays have a power button - case solved. But the built-in ones like the iMac's don't :(


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 7:13 pm 
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Brightness Control certainly works nicely, BUT
ON/OFF control of the backlight on this iMac 27" is very, very desirable.
I dearly hope you can add this to the next version of Brightness Control.
Thanks for the excellent tool.


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