Half native resolution on LCD monitors

[LCD123]

I bought my mom a used 22" AOC LCD. I planned to run 840x525. I used powerstrip to make a custom resolution and it works but 840x525 does not display properly. I tried to resize the image which helped a little but then the arrow grayed out before I could fully resize. If I can do it right, 840x525 should look as good as native resolution with larger text so my mom can read it easily. 1680x1050 is way too high. The only other resolution I got successful(besides the standard resolutions) was 640x400 and 640x384 which are too low.

How many of you have been successful running half native resolution and how did you do it? Does it depend on the monitor? Right now shes using a 26" LCD TV as a monitor but still says 1360x768 is too small. That monitor, just like the 22" won't properly display any custom resolutions other than 680x384 which again is too low.

A good option would be half native on a 22" to 26" monitor. There's lots of 1920x1080 monitors now, anyone know which of those can do 960x540? For those of you with LCD monitors, either download powerstrip or access your custom resolution panel in your video card drivers. Let me know the results of your attempt at half native resolution and how well does it display?

 

[Schmide]

It's 16:10?

standards

Try the 1152x760.

Enable large fonts and icons. Try Firefox with mouse zoom or better add on.

 

[BassBomb]

22" already have pretty high dot pitch

How close can you move the monitor?

When I am not using my PC my monitor is about 3-4ft away, but when I am using it it is <1ft away at the edge of my desk. 20" 1680x1050

 

[SlowSpyder]

That'd be 1/4 resolution, just fyi. You'll probably want to go higher.

 

[ilkhan]

1680x1050 makes 840x525 the proper 2:1 resolution. It's 1/4 the area, but 2 wide and 2 tall pixels for each resolution pixel. I skipped the issue with my grandparent by using the built in DPI scaling with vista.

 

[LCD123]

Yes I want help in setting it to 840x525. Most other resolutions don't work, please read my first post. Also have you guys tried half native resolution on your monitor? I want to know if I need to trade/sell my monitor for a different one. Large text messes everything up. I need half native resolution.

 

[TheInfernal]

Use the default resolution and increase the dpi. This way text will be less blurry and easier to read.

 

[0roo0roo]

why? dpi settings in modern os make this totally unecessary
esp in vista and win7/osx where everything in the os gui is scaled perfectly. xp also has some dpi settings, somethings might got a little ugly but for the most part it works. running odd resolutions isn't the answer.

 

[LCD123]

I tried 125% size(120 dpi) on my windows xp computer and all it does is make the text larger on my desktop. It doesn't help at all for the internet nor does anything else change. Lowering the resolution makes everything larger. I went to Bestbuy yesterday and tested a bunch of monitors. I found that the Asus monitors were able to handle the largest number of resolutions. I tested a 20" with custom resolutions and 800x450 works! The quality is either identical or very close to that of 1600x900. 800x480(WVGA) works as well and looks decent. 960x540 also works with slight blur. I plan to buy her a ~23" asus monitor and run 960x540 perfect.

Id like to give her this Dynex 32" but she says it's too big and she wants a monitor up to 26" She's currently using an RCA LCD TV as a monitor but wants a lower resolution than even 1360x768. She says the text on that monitor is no larger than her old 17" CRT at 800x600 and she doesn't need a high resolution, just something similar to 800x600 but with much larger text. Have any of you guys ran half native resolutions yet on your monitor to test?

 

[Malak]

She wants a big monitor with a tiny GUI? That's backwards. You can zoom in on the internet, and increase the size of the GUI in windows, so why bother with such a low resolution? Getting a big monitor defeats the point if you want a low resolution. You will do her infinitely more good by explaining this to her rather than wasting time on this. Either get a smaller monitor, or increase the resolution.

I have always been behind the times on resolution, and I remember how slow I was to increase from 800x600. My parents had a hard time at first too, but they moved on pretty quick.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: LCD123
I tried 125% size(120 dpi) on my windows xp computer and all it does is make the text larger on my desktop. It doesn't help at all for the internet nor does anything else change. Lowering the resolution makes everything larger. I went to Bestbuy yesterday and tested a bunch of monitors. I found that the Asus monitors were able to handle the largest number of resolutions. I tested a 20" with custom resolutions and 800x450 works! The quality is either identical or very close to that of 1600x900. 800x480(WVGA) works as well and looks decent. 960x540 also works with slight blur. I plan to buy her a ~23" asus monitor and run 960x540 perfect.

Id like to give her this Dynex 32" but she says it's too big and she wants a monitor up to 26" She's currently using an RCA LCD TV as a monitor but wants a lower resolution than even 1360x768. She says the text on that monitor is no larger than her old 17" CRT at 800x600 and she doesn't need a high resolution, just something similar to 800x600 but with much larger text. Have any of you guys ran half native resolutions yet on your monitor to test?

xp's setting only makes the gui larger. font size settings in browsers are also pretty standard. but as said scaling of everything works far better in 3d os like osx/win7/vista.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: LCD123
I tried 125% size(120 dpi) on my windows xp computer and all it does is make the text larger on my desktop. It doesn't help at all for the internet nor does anything else change. Lowering the resolution makes everything larger. I went to Bestbuy yesterday and tested a bunch of monitors. I found that the Asus monitors were able to handle the largest number of resolutions. I tested a 20" with custom resolutions and 800x450 works! The quality is either identical or very close to that of 1600x900. 800x480(WVGA) works as well and looks decent. 960x540 also works with slight blur. I plan to buy her a ~23" asus monitor and run 960x540 perfect.

Id like to give her this Dynex 32" but she says it's too big and she wants a monitor up to 26" She's currently using an RCA LCD TV as a monitor but wants a lower resolution than even 1360x768. She says the text on that monitor is no larger than her old 17" CRT at 800x600 and she doesn't need a high resolution, just something similar to 800x600 but with much larger text. Have any of you guys ran half native resolutions yet on your monitor to test?

xp's setting only makes the gui larger. font size settings in browsers are also pretty standard. but as said scaling of everything works far better in 3d os like osx/win7/vista.

Not completely true - starting with internet explorer 8, it zooms itself based on the dpi setting. Firefox does ignore the setting

Additionally, there's zoom setting on internet explorer on the right bottom corner that gets remembered.

Firefox has extensions like Default FullZoom Level that allow you to increase text and image size just in browser.

These two things I have done for my dad, and he enjoys the native resolution just fine.

 

[LCD123]

I tried the zoom on opera and there's too much horizontal scrolling. Lower resolution is the best solution, better than the other solutions you propose. For me, I am on a 32" LCD TV that's used as a monitor so text is large enough at 1360x768. I know of no smaller monitors with a native resolution of 960x540, only 1920x1080 so ill have to run half native resolution to achieve the best solution for my mother.

I do not want larger fonts or DPI settings, I want a real solution to make my mom happy and that is lower resolution while keeping the quality excellent. I have no idea why the LCD manufactors ignore those who can't read tiny text at such high native resolutions. That's why I didn't buy a LCD monitor to upgrade my 21" CRT till LCD TVs became cheap enough. That's the only option for a lower native resolution and at a large enough size to easily read text from more than a few inches away.

Maybe larger DPI or text size works for some, that's good for you. But it does not work right for me. 800x600 on a CRT worked much better. My mom wants to go back to her 17" CRT if we can't find her a proper LCD. She's not happy with her 26" LCD TV saying the font size is no larger than her 17" monitor at 800x600. She doesn't want high resolution, just wants big text at a low resolution. Scaling the DPI/text size does not address the fact she wants a lower resolution.

I was hoping the experts here could help me and my mom. By the way, my mom uses AOL and prefers that. All I asked was to test your own LCD at half native resolution. Use powerstrip or Nvidia custom resolution in your settings. Some of you may have the correct brand/model LCD that can do just that. I then want to buy the exact same LCD you guys have.

 

[LCD123]

We went to Best Buy and got mom a 23" Asus monitor. It was the best brand from our testing of how well it handles different resolutions. I took it home and from the hours of testing, came up with two acceptable choices: 848x480 and 1280x720. Those two non native resolutions are the best looking. Most other resolutions don't look good, dont size/center correctly. Native resolution of 1920x1080 is way too small for most people, not just me and my parents. 1280x720 appeared pretty good on most other brands of monitors, this may be a good choice for you guys to try. It's a standard resolution as well.

848x480 was nice and big but doesn't give very much viewable space, especially on the vertical. 1280x720 gives plenty of room but text is a little on the small size(0.4 dot pitch equivalant), although way better than 1920x1080 which was impossible to see. Not only that, websites aren't even optimized for such high resolutions and you get alot of blank areas. On Google, only the right third contained text with 2/3 blank. Most other websites were like that. They are best viewed in 800x600 to 1024x768.

I wish LCD manufactors would have the foresight to properly support half native resolutions. They do for the 20" 1600x1200, 24" 2048x1525, 24" 1920x1200 and 30" 2560x1600. People have gotten those to properly display half native resolution in many cases. The choices are limited now. I offered to get her a 32" LCD TV at 1360x768 which gives easily readable text at native resolution but mom doesn't want such a big monitor. Her choice. However she's happy with the 23" and will have to accept 848x480 or 1280x720 as the best two choices of resolutions. Anyone know what other resolutions I could try that's in between those two? I did try 1024x576, text is blurry/wavy.

 

[0roo0roo]

egads man take the advice, just set minimum font sizes in browsers and up the dpi in the os, if thats not enough in xp get vista or win7 which have much better settings for the visually impaired. what you are doing with the extremely low resolutions on big monitors is rather nuts. you are destroying image quality and sharpness by running non native resolutions which defeats the whole purpose of making things big to be easily read. is she legally blind or are you dicking around.