From CRT to TFT – screen proportions!
 

Work have just replaced my 15” CRT monitor with an LG 17” Flatron.

I’ve already got a Sony flat screen at home and love it, so am very happy with the change, in principle.

But I swear (blind;)) that this new one looks like everything has been squashed up to the left slightly. The square icons on the desktop now look slightly tall and thin, the docs I write in Arial now look like they’re in Arial Narrow, etc. It’s like it’s gone from 16:9 to 4:3 (or maybe the other way round :), which is it?). I feel like I want to drag the right-hand edge out further to the right, so it all gets back into proportion, like you would resize an object in a document. Of course, I can’t. The resolution is changed from 800x600 to 1024x768, but that changes the size of objects – smaller and more difficult to see - not their proportions. And I know that a higher res effectively makes the toolbar shove up to the left as it is smaller, but it’s not that, it’s the appearance all across the screen.

My office colleague, who still has a CRT, agrees with me, but the HelpDesk guy thinks I’m imagining it (probably as he’s had one for a month already and so has got used to it). I was typing a doc when he made the change (only took 2 mins), so the difference was immediately visible, not as though it was a new start on a Monday after a weekend break.

Does anyone know any settings / tricks to change this, apart from going back to the CRT?

Many thanks

Brendan

TFT's have a native resolution that equates to the number of pixels the panel actually has. You should always set you video card to the recommended resolution for the panel. For example the NEC I'm using now is 1280x1024, 60Hz. It puts up a warning that the resolution is not optimal if I set it to anything else. Using an incorrect resolution may lead to some of the effects you mention as the panel has to scale the incoming video signal to fit the screen, either shrinking or increasing the resolution.

I'd expect a 17" TFT to be running at 1280 x 1024 for the best results.

Are you running Windows XP? If so, Microsoft's ClearType tuner might help:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/...pe/tuner/1.htm (it will prompt to install an ActiveX applet).

Thanks for your help - 1280 x 1024 is what the guy wanted to set it at, for optimum results as you say. But to my non-tecchie eyesight, it's bloody tiny! All the buttons in the Word toolbar are now about 3mm square! I've tried it again, I think it looks less squashed - but it's difficult to see as everything is so small!!

I've noticed this trend over the years, that a toolbar originally designed to stretch the width of the screen, now barely takes up one third of it, as higher screen res means it "shrinks". Suppose that makes me a Luddite of some sort :(

Can I set anything to keep it at that resolution (ie, those proportions) but increase the size of EVERYTHING? I know I can do "view doc at 150%", but that doesn't change toolbars etc.

Sorry to be a pain...

Windows control panel. You can turn on stuff for visually impared if you really want to - one of the guys I work with can't see much unless the text is 2cm high or greater... His desktop really is something quite special!

No need to go that far tho - control panel/display then appearance tab and you can change stuff to your heart's content.

Ahh, now as a techie, smaller is better (explains the glasses :D). The more you can have on screen, the less time you waste scrolling and stuff. Multi monitor set-ups rule :cool:

In Windows, you can turn on Large Icons. In XP it's:

Right Click Desktop > Properties > Appearence > Effects

In Word, try:

Toosl > Customize & tick "Large Icons"

Any better?

Chris.

you are right the icons will have changed in shape slightly due to the difference in aspect ratio between the resolutions you have been used to.

800x600 = 1.3:1
1024x768 = 1.3:1
1280x1024 = 1.25:1

the reason everything is smaller is just due to increase in resolution.

Mark

1280x1024 for me and no glasses either. I have a Dell 17" and if I drop the resolution the text is much chunkier and not as sharp. If I drop the screen down to 800x600 its actually all blurry.

Sounds like the resolution isn't good for that make/model of TFT (or a fault). I'd quickly try another TFT to double-check.

Have you tried changing the resolution up & down to see if the quality changes? Some graphics cards/monitor combos allow weird resolutions (and aspect ratios) that can make the image appear stretched (coz it is).

i.e. 1280x768 is stretched and looks cr@p (can hardly read text) compared to 1280x1024.

Stefan

Thanks all :)

What I've done is changed the "Appearance" from "Windows Classic" to "Windows Classic (Large)". Together with a colleague showing me the MS Word "Expand to screen width" button (90% of my work is in Word), I think I can live with it.

Scoobynet font is still bloody tiny though :D

For the SN font size go to View _ Text Size and choose a bigger one

XRS (1600x1200 20" TFT) :D