Widescreen resolutions on a 4:3 monitor?

[Davez621]

Just wondering if there is any way to get a normal 4:3 (CRT) screen to display 16:10 or 16:9 resolutions, for things like gaming? I really don't want to give up my CRT, yet it sucks missing out on the extra field of view of widescreen games. I wouldn't mind putting up with slight bars at the top and bottom of the screen at all.

 

[Syntax Error]

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2175284&enterthread=y

Yes, you can go to Nvidia control panel (obviously if you have an Nvidia card) and set the aspect ratio to remain constant, so you can have the letterboxing to maintain the aspect ratio.

 

[Davez621]

Are you sure? I believe the flat panel scaling options only apply to ... flat panels over DVI? When you hook up a VGA CRT monitor, I think the options disappear. I could be wrong.

 

[nitromullet]

I used to play games on my 21" CRT at 1600x900... I didn't have to do anything except select 1600x900 as the resolution in the game (or modify a cfg file), and it just letterboxed the image. This was before LCDs were popular, and I don't think the NVIDIA scaling option even existed yet.

 

[PingSpike]

Yeah, those are DVI only options.

I suppose if you had an option on your CRT to change the vertical display width, AND you could get the monitor to accept a widescreen resolution you could just manually adjust the screen. The people/stuff in the game would all be stretched to be tall and skinny instead of fat and short like most of us have problems with when playing games that don't support WS.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

You should be able to force the new WS res and then manually adjust the screen to a proper aspect ratio. If your monitor is at all decent it should remember the settings so you don't have to change things every time you switch resolutions, I know my old POS 19" CRT could do it for stuff like 1280x720 or 1600x900 or even 16:10 resolutions and even some even more obscure ones...