I have noticed a quality difference when outputting using these methods. Does not matter if its a plasma or projection unit - dvi/hdmi looks slightly smeared especially on letters. VGA seems to present an all around clerer picture. Is this unique to mini macs or is it the same for other Mac video cards?
Is there some hidden setting that will improve this - I am not talking about the overscan option as that is a whole other situation.

Which displays, exactly, have you noticed this on?

And which mini do you have?

Toshiba 27" theaterwide LCD - 1st gen mac mini
Pioneer 503cmx plasma 1st gen mac mini
Panasonic 1000 projector (demo at dealer with intel mac mini)

Actually, the overscan issue could be very closely related to what you are seeing with text. If over a VGA interface you are able to drive a display pixel-for-pixel so that there is no scaling and you are driving the display at its native resolution, then text and everything else will look quite good. If by switching to DVI/HDMI, the Mac is no longer able to drive pixel-for-pixel because the TV is forcing overscan, then this scaling effect will also cause text to distort as you describe.

A digital connection by DVI/HDMI will always outperform a VGA connection, all other things being equal.

BSteely has probably nailed it.

Are any of these native 1080p displays? A large number (perhaps even the majority) of HDMI sets out there can't be driven with their native resolution over HDMI-- it's a hardware limitation of the HDMI receiver chipset. If native is 720p or 1080p, you probably won't see the problem, but if native is 1360x768 or 1680x1050 there's probably some scaling going on and things will look sub-optimal.

well, his plasma is like 4-5 years old and is probably 1280 x 768 native, and I was around here when the first gen G4 minis were released, plenty of folks had their problems with plasmas--it may be he's only getting 800 x 600 when going DVI. (hgmobile: a "desktop" and "letters" usually aren't going to look good on plasmas, anyway, whether you go DVI or VGA, versus a good LCD.) His LCD is probably 720p native, not sure why he's having a problem with that--out of the box the G4 mini should be able to do 1280 x 720, mine did with several 720p native displays, including a Samsung DLP.

hgmobile, your sets might be applying some internal processing and enhancement as well, not all of that is a good idea--so make sure you familiarize yourself with what your particular models do--and adjust accordingly.

But I'm in agreement with BSteely as well--you have to start by knowing what the native res for your displays is--and then report what you're actually getting over DVI and over VGA, to really start understanding why you think you see the disparity that you do.

Thanks for pointing those things out. Will look into it. I no longer have the Pioneer but still have the G4 mini connected to the Toshiba. Thanks all.

I'm about to get a Mac mini, and from searching through the threads it seem that most prefer VGA connections to avoid overscan or a letter and pillar boxed image that some experience using a DVI-HDMI cable.

I'm using a 2 year old Pioneer PDP 505 HDE (1280x768 pixles), can I use DVI-HDMI or even a DVI-component cable? Or do I need to go VGA for an undistorted image?

(also, the Pioneer comes with a box where you're supposed to connect all cables, so there will only be a single cable to the TV - the problem is that the VGA slot is on the FRONT... not very good looking. So I really hope I can go HDMI or component ;))

Problem with these TVs is that the HDMI input on the TV won't take 1280x768: it refuses, or scales that resolution. So you're forced to use a rez which it will accept (1080i/720p), and the TV's internal scaler will do the rest. Which means overscan, unfortunately. You can correct for that in W*nd*ws, but I don't know how to do it in OS X.x

Problem with these TVs is that the HDMI input on the TV won't take 1280x768: it refuses, or scales that resolution. So you're forced to use a rez which it will accept (1080i/720p), and the TV's internal scaler will do the rest. Which means overscan, unfortunately. You can correct for that in W*nd*ws, but I don't know how to do it in OS X.x

Okay, I see. But what if I use the VGA input?

At the top of this page, you should see a sticky called "Guide to Mac-compatible displays". This guide includes all displays that will accept a Mac over HDMI without resolution problems.

Okay, I see. But what if I use the VGA input?

VGA is usually (but not always) better-- in terms of what resolutions a TV will accept.