Hi,
My CRT 21" monitor died on me yesterday so I'm looking to replace it by a nice flatscreen to save some energy. (that beast was getting 150Watts when it was on)

Problem is, I can't find any flatscreen that isn't widescreen and I'm scared that games will look awefull on them.

So my question is: will LFS and other games be stretched out on widescreens? Or does LFS just cuts off the top and the bottom of the screen? Or how is a normal resolution fit into a widescreen resolution?

Is it possible to position a fullscreen window manual? Like give it position in the middle of the widescreen and make it less wide than widescreen? Or is this totaly unnecessairy?

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com

If you've got the cash, get an NEC 2490WUXi.

Panel types
- TN is fast and cheap but absolute garbage to look at
- PVA/MVA is slow but decent-looking and still fairly cheap
- IPS is nearly as fast as TN and even better-looking than PVA/MVA (with the possible exception of black depth) but costs significantly more.

Well, my dad picked 3 screens from the e-net shop he can buy from:

Acer H233HAbmid: http://www.execute.be/ficheprod_en.asp?idprod=1667055
HP 2159m: http://www.shopping.hp.com/pro ... orefronts/FV585AA%2523ABA
HP 2229H: http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc ... 5012-3251357-3948356.html

Important for me is that I can connect 2 pc's on it, so it needs 2 input channels.

Thnx for the website on widescreengaming btw!

you should avoid all of these for their tnness

this one should be roughly the same price range at a bit over 200€ and judging by the (usually reliable test) on prad.de completely worth it
http://accessories.euro.dell.c ... ;cs=dedhs1&sku=198653

judging by the test if you calibrate it a little it should be able to reproduce srgb colours almost perfectly making it the ideal choice comming from a crt
anything else will have rubbish colours compared to what you had

Quote from koolby :

Well, my dad picked 3 screens from the e-net shop he can buy from:

Acer H233HAbmid: http://www.execute.be/ficheprod_en.asp?idprod=1667055

Im looking this text trough this monitor atm. Got it few weeks ago and i love it. Really nice product from Acer

If you choose this one by any way then drop me a PM and ill some stuff about this monitor. Im a bit busy right now so i cant write them down here.

Edit: Shotglass, im not sure sure if H233H is TN but i can tell that there is nothing wrong with it. Its like any other monitor, picture is crisp. View angle, cant say any bad words - i can see true colors even when looking from the side. I dont see any problems here o,O

Quote from koolby :

Hi,
My CRT 21" monitor died on me yesterday so I'm looking to replace it by a nice flatscreen to save some energy. (that beast was getting 150Watts when it was on)

Problem is, I can't find any flatscreen that isn't widescreen and I'm scared that games will look awefull on them.

So my question is: will LFS and other games be stretched out on widescreens? Or does LFS just cuts off the top and the bottom of the screen? Or how is a normal resolution fit into a widescreen resolution?

Is it possible to position a fullscreen window manual? Like give it position in the middle of the widescreen and make it less wide than widescreen? Or is this totaly unnecessairy?

The operating system or game engine will just produce the image in a 16:10 or 16:9 aspect ratio instead of 4:3 for your CRT. nothing will be streched unless you're playing an older game like warcraft 3 or simcity. Some older games won't strech and there will be black bars on the LEFT and RIGHT sides. Some moves will have a wider aspect ratio and there will be black bars on the top and bottom.

TN panels are the cheapest, but as long as you don't have a career in graphics art or rely on exact color reproduction, a TN will be fine, and is A LOT cheaper. I'd say go for a samsung if you can get one. All samsungs I've personally seen have been better than my brother's Hanns-G.

Quote from MijnWraak :

TN panels are the cheapest, but as long as you don't have a career in graphics art or rely on exact color reproduction, a TN will be fine, and is A LOT cheaper.

TN still looks like ass for general use to me.

Quote from Forbin :

TN still looks like ass for general use to me.

Most people (back in the day now) were used to cheap CRTs, which looked even worse, so to them it's an improvement. Trouble is there are no decent CRTs about any more, as fabulous as my Compaq's were at £750 each when new, after 7 years they don't have anywhere the same visual quality anymore. Eventually I'll have to upgrade to TFTs too as these will pack up and all the once good CRTs will be worn out.

On the plus side, I'll save on electric, have a cooler room, and be able to open a small fair on the backside of my desk.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Most people (back in the day now) were used to cheap CRTs, which looked even worse

they all were at the very least able to display single colours across the whole screen homogeneously
not to mention theres a whole lot of people who used relatively high quality aperture grille crts or eizos both of which can easily compete with the most expensive tfts and even burnt out at 10€ a piece will look a whole lot better than any tn out there

The CRT that I used was an Eizo. I destroyed 2 in about 4 months now.
Don't know why, the screen just starts flashing and I hear little bangs or flashes. Don't really know how to call the sound.

I'm gonna try some games on a friends widescreen tft and see what I think of it.

Quote from Shotglass :

they all were at the very least able to display single colours across the whole screen homogeneously
not to mention theres a whole lot of people who used relatively high quality aperture grille crts or eizos both of which can easily compete with the most expensive tfts and even burnt out at 10€ a piece will look a whole lot better than any tn out there

There are pros and cons to both screens, so please don't go around yelling CRTs are the best.

I'm fine with my LG W2261V 22"
It's not expensive, has good reviews, fullHD, HDMI, DVI and VGA

http://azerty.nl/2-1055-201432 ... 61v-pf-lcd-scherm-tf.html

Its really self preference. I love 2 CRTs in front of my face. I actually upgraded from a Samsung 230BW or something, which was a good old 19" widescreen. However, I live the fact that I have 2 fine CRTs that do the job. I have loads of space in the basement too.

Suit yourself. There will always be pros and cons. Probably however, you'd want to stick to newer technologies. 2 CRTs are great, but I'd prefer 2 LCDs.

Quote from koolby :

Hi,
My CRT 21" monitor died on me yesterday so I'm looking to replace it by a nice flatscreen to save some energy. (that beast was getting 150Watts when it was on)

What do you expect from a monitor? I mean, what kind of things you have to do with it? And what monitor you used to have? Cheap ones, or some expensive-pro-ultra-enthusiast model?

Quote from koolby :

Problem is, I can't find any flatscreen that isn't widescreen and I'm scared that games will look awefull on them.

So my question is: will LFS and other games be stretched out on widescreens? Or does LFS just cuts off the top and the bottom of the screen? Or how is a normal resolution fit into a widescreen resolution?

Don't worry about widescreenness
Proportion of images displayed doesn't change, you will only have a slightly larger field of view.
And I like it much more than 4:3, because you can see more windows at the same time, and in LFS you have more side view. Definitely better.

I upgraded to a LCD from a CRT about 6 months ago, the first weeks were a pain in the ass, the low refresh rate and 6 ms of latency of my IPS panel, the last is what really still annoys me, I hate the damn blur you get in first person shooters or when trying to read a scrolling text, the least of your worries are the aspect ratio, new monitors have an option to put black bars on the sides so the image won't stretch in fixed 4:3 aspect ratio.

Depends how old the games you play are. The oldest game I play is RBR and it doesn't support wide screen. BUT, there is a free cam-hack program available that allows you to adjust RBR aspect ratio in game so you can fix it easily.

Any modern game will support widescreen, you may have to re-configure them. For example LFS I just deleted the card_cfg.txt file and selected the new widescreen format in LFS. Other games have a config file to run.

List some of the old games you intend to play here and others here will be able to inform you if they are widescreen compatible.

Also some old graphics cards cannot support all screen resolutions so you should look what resolutions your graphics cards spports. For example I had a Radeon 9600 pro which could not do 1680x1050 the radeon 9800 pro could though. A guy at my work bought a cheap 16" 1360x768 LCD for his home word processor PC and his on-board graphics could not do that resolution, everthing had to be stretched to 1024x768 so we found him a $30AUD AGP 4400MX and it supported his widescreen okay.

I used to have a Relisys 17" TFT which I no longer use. Although I baught a Sony Bravia TV 32" for my room and decided to give it a bash on the computer! It's massive but well worth it - especially when you get use to it!

Almost all modern games (including LFS) support widescreen.

And TN is not that bad as people on the Internet make it seem. For most people it's fine.

Quote from geeman1 :

Almost all modern games (including LFS) support widescreen.

And TN is not that bad as people on the Internet make it seem. For most people it's fine.

Agreed

TN panels are not that bad, the viewing angle is enough good. For me, its just the ignorant people who flame people who cant afford better. I went on budget monitor too, did long research on it and im fine with it. Im sure that this will serve me for atleast next 5 years. If youre a desktop PC user who sits kinda half meter away from the screen then dont pay serious attention on the viewing angle. Maybe vertical angle only. Look for smallest response time. And also higher contrast ratio is always better - 1000 is enough.

Quote from geeman1 :

And TN is not that bad as people on the Internet make it seem. For most blind people it's fine.

Fixed.

Get the largest IPS panel you can afford. If there's absolutely no way you can scrape together the cash for an IPS panel short of prostitution, get the largest MVA/PVA you can afford, even if it's 20" or smaller.

Avoid TN at all costs. Your eyes will thank you.

An extra 2-4 inches of screen size are not worth 22-24 inches of pure shittiness.

Quote from Forbin :

Fixed.

I present you a case in point: a person from the Internet

I've got two monitors in front of me. One is a VERY budget 19" that I bought about 7 years ago. The other is a far better, more expensive quality monitor. Both are TN screens. The expensive one is far better than the other.

At home I have a IPS Dell, and it's a bit better than the expensive TN, but not as much as people would have you claim. For 99% of people a decent TN will effectively match an IPS of similarish price...

I think TN panels can get a bad rep for the same reasons that CRTs do: people are just used to the cheap and nasty variants. A decent CRT gives an excellent picture, but a knackered old CRT, or just a cheap and nasty one, will give an awful picture, far worse than even the world TFT, that will at least not blur or distort (assuming the signal remains intact all the way to the panel, which is not always the case). Not helping either is that most CRTs can be drastically improved just by twiddling with the many different settings for half an hour, and setting a more suitable refresh rate.

Likewise panel type is not the most important attribute of a TFT, my IPS at home is worse for dark games and films than my TN at work due to the very poor black depth that comes with cheaper public displays, than the standard computer orientated monitor I'm sat infront of now. Of course, move to the design environment of display adverts in a bright or outdoor environment, and it's a whole different story which will give the better, more vibrant image, from any angle people might be looking from.

I'd imagine a modern TN panel is leaps and bounds ahead of early examples, and reaches the "good enough" level for most people. Other panels can look better, but many people won't pay a premium for extra quality beyond what they consider enough.

While I'll never buy a TN panel for myself at home, that's mostly because I'm an electronics snob and only buy the best I can afford, or I don't bother at all.

Quote from geeman1 :

Almost all modern games (including LFS) support widescreen.

And TN is not that bad as people on the Internet make it seem. For most people it's fine.

Do you have data to back this up? How do you know most people just aren't aware there are different panel types? How do you know most people aren't cursing the fact their monitor can't display consistent colors along the length of the screen, rueing this eyesore?

Quote from geeman1 :

I present you a case in point: a person from the Internet

Yes, because joe public is so much more trustworthy and knowledgeable. :rolleyes:

Because there isn't much cursing going on really. People, generally, are happy with what they've got, whether it's a car or a monitor or a pet. It might be because they don't know any better, or it might be that they are ignorant of alternatives, but I personally think it's more likely that it's simply good enough.

My home panel is an IPS, and on a day to day level, playing games, word processing and playing with CAD it's no better than even my crappy old TN in terms of useability. Colour reproduction isn't important to me, and neither is contrast most of the time, yet I use my PC for more things than 'most'.

IPS is, however, better when playing with images, when watching movies, or when playing many games. But for general 'OAP Computing' there isn't any need for IPS.