Windows + Plasma + Widescreen + Resolution = :(

Heofz

Heofz

Heofz

Soldato
Joined
20 Oct 2002
Posts
3,467
Location
London, UK
Hey all,

I have my 42" plasma hooked up as my main monitor for my PC however it takes a maximum resolution of 1024x768.

As my plasma sees 1024x768 as a widescreen resolution (16:9) and windows sees it as normal (4:3), everything looks squashed.

Playing certain games such as Rome: Total War, BF2 etc seem to be fine as you can change the in-game aspect to cater for widescreen or not, however windows obviously does not have such a feature.

What I'd like to do (if possible) is obtain some sort of program (or driver?) which will fool windows into thinking it is running a 16:9 resolution but still output @ 1024x768.

I've googled everywhere and cannot find such a program, so was kind of hoping one of you guys might be able to help :)
 
nah its perfectly crisp :)

non-plasma telly's only run at 720x576 and you can get 33" ones and they look perfect

I think the reason it looks ok is because with a plasma tv you have to sit quite far back in order to see it all, but with PC monitors you sit at your desk only about 18" from the screen.

But anyways... any solutions to my problem??? ;):p
 
Not a lot you can do about this, you are up against the physical shape of each pixel being oblong, not square.

If you want a pixel-by-pixel match between the PC and the panel then it will be crisp, but never will you see a round circle again :)

Check if your panel can handle other PC resolutions as if it scales them you'll get back to the round circles again but lose a little of the crispness.

No other way to get around the fact that your pixels are not square.
 
whoops, forgot to put the picture up and now I'm at work.

Teal: yeah I was just hoping that I could somehow run my pc at a widescreen resolution, but then somehow get its output to be a "squeezed" image @ 1024x768, so that when its displayed on the widescreen, the wide pixels stretch out the image again so the ratios are right.

There must be a program/drivers out there that can do this :E
 
As far as I know you won't ever be able to get your desktop, the web and apps to display as you want them too, they'll always be squashed. As far as windows is concerned, widescreen isn't anything special, it's just a subset of resolutions that happen to have a 16:9 ratio, but to windows all resolutions still have square pixels. A 3d game though can cope with any shaped pixels if it's programmed to, since it's just a case of altering the horizontal and vertical FOV (in particular just increasing the horizontal FOV for widescreen modes). The pixels are still square though.

Seems bizarre that the native res of a widescreen TV could be 1024*768 :(
 
Not as unusual as you might think, most plasmas don't have square pixels, but most not quite as bad as that one.

The trick is to let the plasma scale it, but if it does not accept PC signals over 1024x768 it can't be done unleass you use an external scaler.
 
Here is the pic by the way :) (rome total war)
charlie25ky.jpg


as for "external scaler", where would one be able to find one of these? :)
 
The external scaler isn't going to be even vaguely worth considering as the cost is prohibitive, they are designed to work with various AV sources in high-end set-ups with a view to getting the best image on screen which often involves scaling different inputs to match the native resolution of the screen.

Your plasma already does a similar job but in a less sophisticated way.

What is the make and model of your plasma btw?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom