What is “Television” in System Information report for an external monitor (that is not actually a TV)?

Question

The System Information report for Graphics/Displays on my MacBook Pro Retina (Late 2013) shows the following info for the internal screen and for an external Acer monitor.

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M:

  Chipset Model:    NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M
  Type: GPU
  Bus:  PCIe
  PCIe Lane Width:  x8
  VRAM (Total): 2048 MB
  Vendor:   NVIDIA (0x10de)
  Device ID:    0x0fe9
  Revision ID:  0x00a2
  ROM Revision: 3776
  gMux Version: 4.0.8 [3.2.8]
  Displays:
Color LCD:
  Display Type: Retina LCD
  Resolution:   2880 x 1800 Retina
  Retina:   Yes
  Pixel Depth:  32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
  Main Display: Yes
  Mirror:   Off
  Online:   Yes
  Built-In: Yes
Acer H236HL:
  Resolution:   1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz (1080p)
  Pixel Depth:  32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
  Display Serial Number:    LX1AA0034210
  Mirror:   Off
  Online:   Yes
  Rotation: Supported
  Television:   Yes

What is the meaning of that last item, Television: Yes? This hardware is not actually a TV, just a display with HDMI, DVI, and VGA inputs.

I understand that modern TVs are indeed just monitors with an OTA tuner and speakers implanted. But I wonder, given the lack of a tuner, what the meaning of that item in the report specifically means.

Answer 1

1.What does Television:Yes mean?

It means your macbook is sending the color to your display not in RGB but in YCbCr space instead of RGB,which could lead to poor picture quality.

2.Solution:

Override an EDID (Extended_Display_Identification_Data) setting to force the RGB colour space

Threads about forcing RGB mode instead of YCbCr

You can force RGB mode by following Turtorial on how to force RGB mode

This is long standing bug that Apple refuses to fix and that is not simple to work around.