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General discussion

Are Widescreen Computer Monitors The Future?

Sep 17, 2006 7:46AM PDT

I recently purchased an Acer AL1916WABD LCD monitor which is a widescreen 19" monitor with digital DVI-D connector. Before that, I owned an LG Flatron L1720P 17" LCD monitor. The aspect ratio of the LG is the standard 4:3 and the Acer is 16:10.

The Acer is nice for playing videos and movies on which are starting to become mostly widescreen oriented, but much software is not especially games. My Acer's 'biggest' widescreen resolution to where text is still somewhat easy to read is 1440X900. However, I still find this kind of small for webpages.

I play a lot of the Grand Theft Auto games which do support widescreen, but I notice game performance takes a hit when running the games in widescreen mode as opposed to 4:3.

Then there are the physical sizes of the monitors. The 19" Acer is about .75" shorter than my 17" LG, but the Acer is about 3" wider than the the LG. The LG is 10.75" tall and 13" wide and the Acer is 10" tall and 16" wide.

At this point, I think I am going to exchange the Acer WS for another 17" 4:3 monitor.

Might anyone have thoughts or opinions on the subject of widescreen and standard LCD monitors?

Discussion is locked

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RE: Are Widescreen Computer Monitors The Future?
Sep 17, 2006 8:40AM PDT

OK I figured out something. Since I have an NVIDIA video card and the latest drivers, I was able to create a custom resolution of 1280x800 so webpages and text is much easier to read. The directions are here...

http://tinyurl.com/g4ehk

But you have to use the CLASSIC NVIDIA Control Panel to do it.

Here are some standard aspect ratios for 16:10 computer monitors...

2560x1600
1920x1200
1680x1050
1440x900
1280x800
1024x640
800x500

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Keep the widescreen
Sep 17, 2006 9:48AM PDT

I went from a 19" 4:3 Phillips monitor to a 20.1" Viewsonic widescreen and I love it. I am a pretty heavy gamer, and fortunately, many games support widescreen. Some don't, but they don't look too bad being stretched out.

Most new games will support widescreen. I increasingly see promo screenshots and E3 booths usiing widescreen for games, which leads me to believe they are developing more for it.

Movies are in widescreen, many types of applications can be viewed better in widescreen, and I am slowly noticing some websites starting to take advantage of it.

I would suggest that you keep the widescreen. Use the native resolution, and adjust font sizes and magnification accordingly. As for your game performance issues, it is probably because of the change in resolution.

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RE: Keep the widescreen
Sep 17, 2006 4:50PM PDT

Yes I have decided to keep the widescreen now that I was able to make the custom resolution and therefore make my icons and text bigger.

I think widescreen monitors are indeed the future, but it would be nice if video card manufacturers made drivers that supported standard resolution sizes I listed in a previous post in this thread. With my 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700LE, the only one listed was 1440x900, but once I found out how to make custom resolutions, 1280x800 looked much better.

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yes, widescreen definitely....
Sep 21, 2006 10:00PM PDT

I went from 17" to 19" Proview (both 4:3) and begun to love the big screen of 1280*1024, temporary I use my son's 17" Flatron 795T which is a fantastic monitor, but I'm spoiled by the 19". So now I'm looking for a widescreen 19" or 20" (the Acer seems nice), to fill my appetite. If you are text orientated please check if the monitor can handle that on the resolution you're normally working with, at the other hand if you're a gamer, take a look at tiniest details that's important. that's all...

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Keep it!
Sep 21, 2006 10:13PM PDT

I also went from a 19' to a 20.1' Viewsonic widescreen. Its awesome! Like the previous post said, most new games will support widescreen. And best of all, if your a huge World of Warcraft gamer then you cant go wrong with a widescreen. Looks amazing!

Dont forget that you must have a video card that will support the widescreen monitors. The better the video card, the better performance.

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RE: Are Widescreen Computer Monitors The Future?
Sep 22, 2006 1:00AM PDT

I sure hope not, because I prefer a standard monitor!

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RE: Are Widescreen Computer Monitors The Future?
Sep 22, 2006 2:11AM PDT

Well tough luck because they are the future... HDTVs is definitely widescreen, and only a handfull are 4:3... Those who prefer standard monitors probably like watching videos in weird formats... With a widescreen monitor, I am able to have 2 web browsers open (or one webbrowser and one quarter TV (PIP) and one quarter webcam...

With a 4:3 20 inch monitor, it really doesn't look so good with all the open windows...