Are there any 17-19" non-WS (5:4) LCD monitors that support 1:1 pixel mapping or fixed aspect ratio scaling?

[PingSpike]

Anyone know of such a beast? It would show small black bars on the top and bottom when running 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions.

 

[PingSpike]

I'm guessing this doesn't exist...

 

[Auric]

Any resolution with the maximum horizontal is displayed correctly by my ol' VP171b. So, 1280x960 is no problemo. However any lesser horizontal will simply fill sans regard for aspect ratio -which would be fine for Windows but obviously not games. There are no settings to change and I have never heard of any such 17-19" displays having them. The way around this is to use an Nvidia GPU since driver options allow for maintaing the AR whether centered or scaled up.

 

[PingSpike]

I can't get the GPU thing to work on my 8800gts and viewsonic vx2235wm. Frankly, I've given up on that solution.

So you're saying that if you set the resolution to 1280x960 that it would display a black bar on the top and bottom? Thats strange that it would only work for that resolution.

I was pretty sure that such a monitor didn't exist...but I found a post on a forum through google (dated in 2003 no less) where a user said in pretty clear terms that his monitor with a resolution of 1280x1024 had options within the monitor to do fill, scale while maintaining aspect ratio and 1:1/no scale/fixed timings. Unfortunately, he hasn't posted on that forum since 2005 and didn't say what brand even that the monitor was.

 

[kmmatney]

The Soyo 24" widescreen in my sig supports hardware 4:3 scaling. It puts the black bars on the side, and you can run all of the normal 4:3 resolutions: 1024 x 768, 1280 x 960, 1600 x 1200, 800 x 600, etc...

You can also, just get a 4:3 LCD monitor, and not worry about scaling! I have a 4:3 Viewsonic that runs at 1400 x 1050 (4:3) and it is a great monitor for the price. I don't see it anymore, but you can get one like this:

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/vie....hmx?scriteria=AA71454

or any of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...tion=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=


Also, for about the same price, the 20" 4:3 LCDs give you 1.47M pixels of real estate, versus 1.31M pixels for a 19" LCD. It's an extra 120 pixels in width and 26 pixels in height, doesn't seem like much, but it makes a big difference.

 

[PingSpike]

Auric, I just looked up your viewsonic...which seems to be discontinued. Under the OnView controls section of the specs, it lists Manual Image Adjust, and then a sub option "scaling". I have not seen this on any other monitor specs in that size anyway. Are you sure it didn't have any options?

kkmatney: Yeah, I've noticed that there is finally a 4:3 native option in the new 20" monitors. I may end up snagging one of those, but I'm being picky and wanted something a little bit smaller. There's a fair amount of options for the 24"+ monitors that have scaling options, but below that there's almost nothing. I'm pretty sure that sceptre makes the only 22" panel with scaling, and they aren't really to high of a tier as far as quality. There might be a few 20" WS ones thats I don't know about though.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Anyone know of such a beast? It would show small black bars on the top and bottom when running 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions.

Any samsung with DVI connection..and many others.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Anyone know of such a beast? It would show small black bars on the top and bottom when running 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions.

Any samsung with DVI connection..and many others.

Any examples? Any currently for sale? How does samsung's implementation work? Details man! Details!

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Anyone know of such a beast? It would show small black bars on the top and bottom when running 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions.

Any samsung with DVI connection..and many others.

Any examples? Any currently for sale? How does samsung's implementation work? Details man! Details!

it works well with nvidia drivers.. you can even run 1280x800 widescreen resolution with black bars. there's no magic in it, just adjust flat panel scaling to "Use nvidia scaling with fixed-aspect ratio" or "Do not scale"

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Anyone know of such a beast? It would show small black bars on the top and bottom when running 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions.

Any samsung with DVI connection..and many others.

Any examples? Any currently for sale? How does samsung's implementation work? Details man! Details!

it works well with nvidia drivers.. you can even run 1280x800 widescreen resolution with black bars. there's no magic in it, just adjust flat panel scaling to "Use nvidia scaling with fixed-aspect ratio" or "Do not scale"

Oh dear. :roll: PingSpike already said the Nvidia driver feature wasn't working for some reason and needs a display that has the options. Besides, even if it was working and then the card is replaced with an ATI then that ability is lost.

My Viewsonic is four years old. Availability carried on with newer panels but that can be considered ye olden days now

It will work (black bars) for any 1280 resolution (x960, x768, x720, ...). 1152x864, 1024x768, and 800x600 always fill max in lieu of said driver feature. Presumably the designers reckon that wanting to use less than the maximum horizontal is not likely as it becomes too small but why they failed to make it maintain the AR with the scaling is anyone's guess.

It does have the Manual Image Adjust menu option but it's grayed out along with Auto Image Adjust so is presumably for VGA input only. Perhaps that is what the old forum post was referring to.

I guess if you can compromise with the lesser relative vertical area of a 4:3 then that may be the only practical option.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Auric

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Anyone know of such a beast? It would show small black bars on the top and bottom when running 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions.

Any samsung with DVI connection..and many others.

Any examples? Any currently for sale? How does samsung's implementation work? Details man! Details!

it works well with nvidia drivers.. you can even run 1280x800 widescreen resolution with black bars. there's no magic in it, just adjust flat panel scaling to "Use nvidia scaling with fixed-aspect ratio" or "Do not scale"

Oh dear. :roll: PingSpike already said the Nvidia driver feature wasn't working for some reason and needs a display that has the options. Besides, even if it was working and then the card is replaced with an ATI then that ability is lost.

My Viewsonic is four years old. Availability carried on with newer panels but that can be considered ye olden days now

It will work (black bars) for any 1280 resolution (x960, x768, x720, ...). 1152x864, 1024x768, and 800x600 always fill max in lieu of said driver feature. Presumably the designers reckon that wanting to use less than the maximum horizontal is not likely as it becomes too small but why they failed to make it maintain the AR with the scaling is anyone's guess.

It does have the Manual Image Adjust menu option but it's grayed out along with Auto Image Adjust so is presumably for VGA input only. Perhaps that is what the old forum post was referring to.

I guess if you can compromise with the lesser relative vertical area of a 4:3 then that may be the only practical option.

Well only few monitors have option to set up 1:1 mapping manually, usually those are high end, most of them that can do 1:1 do it with help of nvidia/ati driver... some cheap monitors just can't do it either way...

I know that Samsungs that I had - 20" 204B, and 19" 930B could do it with nvidia driver's help... but there's no scaling options in monitors setup

The Gateway 24" I have now has Wide, Zoom, 1:1, Panoramic options in its menu, and they work well - even for analog inputs.

I have 8800GTS as well, and scaling works in all OS-es.

 

[Auric]

I don't see why the monitor would matter given the Nvidia feature working. What it does, essentially, is output the maximum resolution with matting as necessary so as to preclude alteration by the monitor's default.

There have been plenty o' so-called high-end monitors over the years lacking the options. Indeed, even half a decade ago there was no such thing as an el-cheapo LCD monitor. My 17" was a hot deal and still cost almost $500 in today's dollars. Fortunately, I was able to take advantage of a price mistake on another model around the same time and sell it for a beeg profit and so effectively only paid half that.

Last xmas I bought a 19" for around $100. It still doesn't have the option and I don't know that cost can be blamed. The fact is that 5:4 monitors have just rarely had it but I still :brokenheart: 'em and detest short so-called WS ones as being the epitome of form over function thanks to a fad/successful marketing. And while I'm at detesting... ATI has had at least five years to add this function to their desktop drivers and have failed miserably. God knows what Nvidia is up to if they have broken theirs for the latest models.

 

[kmmatney]

I've had various results with scaling through the NVidia driver. The last card where it truly worked was my old Ti4200. I upgraded to a 6600GT, and then that feature stopped working. Even on my Ti4200, it worked fine on my old 19" BenQ, but not on another ViewSonic LCD I had. With my Current ATI card, 4:3 scaling only works if I keep the height the same, so all I can scale to is 1600 x 1200 if I go the driver route. Bets to have this feature in the LCD, if possible.

btw - the 20" LCD I have is this one:

http://www.viewsonic.com/produ...graphicseries/vg2021m/

I've had it for 2 years and it is used everyday and still looks great with no degradation in picture quality.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Auric
I don't see why the monitor would matter given the Nvidia feature working. What it does, essentially, is output the maximum resolution with matting as necessary so as to preclude alteration by the monitor's default.

Because monitor has its firmware, which has to support this explicitly, and firmware ultimately controls what is shown.

There were various issues with firmware, for example Acer 26" won't work in DVI mode on native resolution for a bit until they fixed it with new firmware.

today every piece of electronics has its firmware.

 

[PingSpike]

Yeah, nvidia scaling options just don't work. I think its the monitor combo. Viewsonic vx2235wm connected over dvi.

Here's basically what happens:
Use nvidia scaling: With native resolution, it looks like shit but has the correct aspect ratio. Why it does any scaling (it must, because of the image degradation) is beyond me.
Scale while maintaining aspect ratio: I don't know what this is doing, with this setting and native resolution, black bars are on top and bottom and the image is cut off on the left and right after being squished vertically to fill the remaining space.
Do not scale: Same as fixed aspect ratio.

What perplexes me is that everyone said this was broken in the 8800 series...then there was a thread about 2 months ago where a new driver came out. Half the people said scaling options now worked for them...I tried the driver and it was the same as it ever was! So now I'm left to guess that either nvidia is incompetent, or that more like some monitors
I guess I could try a samsung LCD...it does seem like my monitor is blocking/screwing up this operations somehow.

I still just wish there were a few more monitor options that had this built in.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Auric
I don't see why the monitor would matter given the Nvidia feature working. What it does, essentially, is output the maximum resolution with matting as necessary so as to preclude alteration by the monitor's default.

This is what I think! Thats why I don't understand why it seems so hard for nvidia and ATI to get this working for everyone. I don't know what they're actually doing behind the scenes...but all they should be doing is making the said image, scale it as appropriate and stick some black space in where necessary to fill it out to the native resolution...then just hand that off to the monitor. As far as the monitor is concerned it will be getting a regular image and will just display it as such.

But thats obviously not what nvidia is doing...because that wouldn't require DVI or even an LCD monitor at all which they seem to need.

I'm surprised some one hasn't made a utility to do this. Wouldn't they need no more then access to the frame buffer or something?