My old desktop monitor has gone for a repair,I was planning to buy a new LCD Monitor( 19 or 20 inch monitor preferably).I find that many LCD brands are Wide ones.My friend has cautioned me from buying Wide monitors ,saying that some models of Wide screens make pictures and videos look too stretched. What are specifications of Wide LCD monitor(i.e Aspect ratio,resolution,Hort/Vert. viewing angle) that i can look to buy so that the display looks correct? Thanks , Raakii
What's that nonsense? Just set the correct resolution and images/videos/whatever will look as they should. Especially since movies are now rolled out in anamorphic formats with aspects of up to 2.40:1. My recommendation for monitors goes to ViewSonic. A bit expensive but damn worth it.
I was also wondering about the same.Do the problems of wide screen occur due to incorrect resolution rather than the "width " of monitor itself?I would like to know the relation between resolution quoted on the specifications page with the screen resolution found on operating systems like Xp,win7 etc. Thanks for the advice.
In my experience, exclusively due to incorrectly set resolution. Whether you'll use wide monitor or not depends on your personal preferences/needs, i.e. how do you want your desktop space to look like. IMO, there's nothing more to it. Operating system does not impose any limitation on screen resolutions. The driver/software that came from the hardware vendor (monitor drivers, usually an inf file that contains all supported monitor resolutions) controls the resolution. You're welcome. I was recommending ViewSonic simply because of the natural feel of it's colors. I work as a graphics designer and I would never use anything else than ViewSonic. The end result on the paper is verbatim to that on the screen (if the system is properly calibrated, of course).
Every major video file player has the option to show the video in original proportions (and usually that's the default setting), and almost all the high quality videos come in widescreen format now so that they are usually too wide for regular monitors. I recently bought a 26" monitor for about $300 and there's no way I could ever go back now that I've experienced 1920 by 1080 pixels screen resolution. And it's not just about watching videos, but also for working. I'm now able to display twice as much content on screen as before, so it's easier to use multiple programs simultaneously, there's much less flipping and scrolling through windows, word and pdf documents are nicer to display; 2 pages up (side to side) reads great, web surfing is better too because you see so much more per screen, and everything else just looks better. My advice: Buy big!
I just happen to have bought a new 23" lcd monitor. Of course the picture is stretched, so things like spheres are elongated. After some experimenting with the monitor controls and resolution, I stumbled on the solution. Right click your desktop>properties>desktop tab, and see the label "position". Under position you will see "stretch". Click the drop down menu and select "Center" to replace Stretch. Click Apply>OK and your desktop display will be OK again. Your monitor resolution might be like 1920x1080. Your computer might not be able to display that, but a resolution slightly lower. You can use that with no problem. There may be a suggestion to upgrade the video driver. Chances are your driver is already current and downloading what might seem like a newer driver could screw things up as it did me. Trust me a resolution close to the monitors resolution will be fine.
Nice one. My friend was saying the same,--that the problem with wide screen recurs when the Operating system / Drivers are changed..Is there any resolution which does not require any tweaking of display settings i.e something like optimal resolution for a monitor(Is this even possible ) ? Thanks, Raakii
Like I said the monitor asks for 1920x1080. I moved the resolution bar back and forth in the Display window of the computer and set it on 1280x768 where it works fine. Forget about the driver, it doesn't fit into the setup.
The problem here is that most of you guys are running your monitors with "Plug'n'Play Monitor", a Windows native driver which does not allow you to fully utilize all resolutions supported by your monitor. As I said above, try installing hardware vendor's driver (monitor driver, not video driver), and you will have no problems setting whichever resolution. No need for various workarounds.
Thank you seer..Do these monitors work well with Linux ?Also is the newer "LED backlit" LCD monitor really worth their cost?
TBH raakii, I have no clue. My interest in Linux waned over time, as this OS did not fulfill my needs, neither professionally nor personally (for home use). I haven't looked at any distro in almost a year. But whether ViewSonic (or any other monitor) work well with Linux would depend on hardware vendor's support for different OSes, as in do they roll out monitor drivers for Linux. Check that on vendor's site. To save myself from typing, I found this page (and subsequent ones) to be rather informative without getting into too much technicalities. Also, this guy shows advantages of LED backlit monitors in practice - -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQHcpF7wY8c- My advice - go for the new technology, the advantages of LED fully justify the price overhead, which is not that high IMO. Cheers,
I had a 21" CRT before and a 20" CRT before that and Now I have LCD samsung Syncmaster226 BW, 69 lbs for the 21" CRT vs 18 lbs For the 22" wide screen LCD Monitor.
Some infos as I understand it. When speaking of LCD monitors, thier maxium resolution is thier "native" resolution, and to gain top performance, you should run them at that resolution. I do not know if this applies only to gaming and movies, or to anything. All I know is that I have read that many times over and over. My wife has an Acer 19" widescreen. I think the resolution maximum was like 1440x900 or something. The desktop looks fine, but it does cause a bit of stretch to some things. When browsing or doing spreadsheets, the extra width does help. Watching movies in letterbox is about the same. A widescreen monitor, IMO, seems smaller than normal ones. For example, my 19" Samsung normal is as big as my 22" Samsung widescreen, only narrower. My wifes 19" widescreen is more like a 17" monitor with extra width. I would not personally go with anything less than a 22" widescreen. I currently have a Samsung 2693 widescreen and Samsung 226bw widescreen. I love this combination. The 22" typically is limited to 1680x1050 which is a pretty nice size. The 2693, being 26.5" uses 1920x1200. It is a lot of desktop real estate, and oh so worth it. I used to use 19" and 21" CRTs, and that was nice, but the larger widescreens really do make a huge difference if you want to have multiple windows open at the same time and be able to utilize them. I have had a number of CRTs over the years. The old Sony Trinitrons were my favorite. I have used other brands, and viewsonic was a good CRT as well. LCDs in my experience (or from those whom I know) breaks down like this: Viewsonic - good, but not particuarily better than others. Hyundai - some friends have them, they seem ok enough. Acer - a little on the cheap-ish side, but so far none have died or bad pixels, just not quite as crisp. LG - the few I know who had them have all had issues with them. What that means I don't know. Gateway - my bud has a 24" fancy one. A super monitor in my opinion. I seriously thought about buying one. Looks good and has been reliable for him for 3 years now. Samsung - my choise strictly because I have myself or know others who have them with no dead pixels and some are now roughly 7 years old. They are very bright (like many others are) so you need to turn it down a bit on brightness. I can't say they are better than others, but they are one of the largest brands and have a great track record of dependability for me anyway. HannsG or HannSpree - they make a good 27 or 28" monitor. I know lots of people who have bought that one particular model, and some who bought smaller ones. I was also thinking about these because of size/price ratio. They are not quite as crisp as better models, but quite adequate for most people I would imagine. Sceptre - I know some people who bought these. Quality is not so hot. They seem to be lasting long enough though, 3+ years without problems on the few I know of. This is obviously just my opinion based on my knowledge of how long they last or if they develop issues. My personal opinion is, like with most electronics, if the hardware lives past 2 weeks, you will get the average lifespan out of it. If you require very sharp images, go with a better monitor. If you don't require that, or budget says you can't have it, Acer would be my choise, simply because there are lots of them around and while a little on the average side of quality, they seem to hold up as well as any do. Sul.
Yes, thank you, Sully I've had pretty good luck with Acer, FWIW. Also, FWIW, I'm currently using 24" (1920 x 1080) plus 19" (1024 x 1280). The rotated 19" is just right for a single Firefox or Word window, and the 24" is great for Excel or MPlayer.
Just to clarify, my 26" monitor (HP 2510i) came with an installation cd that had the drivers for it. 1920x1080 was the recommended resolution, which I selected from display properties -> settings. That way everything looks fine, no distortional stretch. Whichever monitor a person buys, I think s/he should install the intended drivers for it and use the recommended resolution unless s/he has a very good reason to not do so. If the icons or text is too small at the recommended resolution, you can just move the monitor closer to your face (or vice versa if too big), but chances are you'll get used to it. In my experience driver conflicts with new hardware are certainly possible, but rare. And one more thing about the videos: Chances are a given video file's width and height proportions will not exactly match a monitor's default resolution proportions, so you generally lose some of the monitor's height or width while watching, but the bigger the monitor is overall, the less that will bother you.
