Widescreen Monitor!?

[Shibathedog]

I need a new monitor, not that there is anything wrong with the one i have now, besides the fact that its HUGE. Its a giant 19 inch CRT taking up almost my whole desk.

 

So i've picked out two nice monitors, With specs that are good enough One is widescreen, one isnt.

 

Widescreen:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16824001094

 

Standard:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16824116375

 

Obviously response time is important to me as i'll be playing alot of games on it. What happens if i want to run a game that doesn't support widescreen resolutions on it? I get black bars on the side right? But since the widescreen is 1440x900 am i going to have to go all the way back down to 1024X768?! or would it be some weird non standard resolution? It seems like there would have to be some weird stretching or something involved.

[Alpha]

No, you won't get any black bars. The monitor will just adjust to the resolution. You just don't want to run your desktop at 1024x768 on a widescreen because it will look stretched up. However, for video games, it doesn't look too shabby. Just put the resolution (if you can) for the video game at 1440x900 and you'll be happy.

 

Also, most monitors sold nowadays are migrating to widescreen. Therefore, grab the widescreen version.

[Shibathedog]

yeah i was thinking that, FEAR is pretty crappy to play unless you have a widescreen monitor (doesnt let you crank the res very much before going into widescreen modes only)

 

How can it just adjust to the resolution though? They arent CRT but LCD so they cant just change the amount of pixels on screen. There has to be some stretching somewhere.

[ken_cinder]

Any monitor worth a **** should have a semi-decent scaler in it anyway, and stretch a 4:3 input to 16:9 cleanly.

My LCD HDTV does, and it's not some uber expensive model either.

[Shibathedog]

yeah but its simply not possible to stretch an image in 4:3 to 16:9 format without stretching it and having it look stretched unless its cropped in which case some of it gets cut off which isnt really any better.

 

maybe im misunderstanding something because i haven't ever had a widescreen monitor to fool around with and i only know what ive read.

[Robert]

I have a normal 21 inch CRT here, and at work we have up to 30 inch widescreens. If you try to display something normal it get stretched horizontally to fill in the space. Look a bit odd until you get used to it.

[ken_cinder]

I have a normal 21 inch CRT here, and at work we have up 30 inch widescreens. If you try to display something normal it get stretched horizontally to fill in the space. Look a bit odd until you get used to it.

 

Poor scaler in them, it all comes down to math, if the scaler is good enough and can calculate the px-px ratios close enough, you'll get a better scaled image. I don't know how to explain it any simpler, and to get really technical, I don't know THAT much about the process either.

[Shibathedog]

i understand what your saying, and i take your word for it that its possible. But i can't figure out how it works or how its possible, and to be honest ive never even seen it done, Its always been like Robert said.

 

I guess ill just go for the widescreen because hey, Most if not all modern games support widescreen so i'll really only have to deal with it on the few older games i still play. Theres probably an option in the monitor to keep the original aspect ratio and just have black bars on the sides if it really becomes that much of a bother.

[GodPigeon]

i understand what your saying, and i take your word for it that its possible. But i can't figure out how it works or how its possible, and to be honest ive never even seen it done, Its always been like Robert said.

 

I guess ill just go for the widescreen because hey, Most if not all modern games support widescreen so i'll really only have to deal with it on the few older games i still play. Theres probably an option in the monitor to keep the original aspect ratio and just have black bars on the sides if it really becomes that much of a bother.

Of course there is. At 19 inches, it wont really stretch much out. Everything will look normal but the sides of Webpages will just be extended a bit. Its a Win-Win Situation if you get the Wide Screen Monitor. You can watch Widescreen movies nicely and play games in widescreen, while still being able to do everything else normally

[Haldrie]

My laptop has a 17" widescreen display and the video card has the option to maintain aspect ratio which actually does put black bars on the sides of the screen for 4:3 resolutions but it really doesn't bother me any to see them as I don't really like to see a streched image. Of course as mostly everyone has been saying here, widescreen is the way to go for both movies and games and it also gives you a lot more desktop space to work with when you use the max desktop resolution. My max resolution is 1920x1200 so I can do a lot of things at once without running out of room on the screen.

[Rawrthness]

widescreen man that's the exact same monitor i have now and it looks amazing on games and just overall web surfing