To Widescreen or not to widescreen

^whitey^

Folks,

I can't decide whether to go widescreen or not. I'm considering this great value 20" widescreen http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=322266 @ €375 but for that money I could get an excellent 19" standard monitor.

What are the advantages & disadvantages of going widescreen besides:

Games that support Widescreen will look excellent and ones that don't will have black bars on the side! This applies to DVD's aswell.

Its handy for Windows in that you can have two full browser windows open.

Im sure I've missed loads of points, can I hear the opinions of people who went widescreen? Or those of you who are in the know.

Cheers.

TomCo

There's usually a .ini hack available to force a game to display in widescreen.

Try http://www.widescreengamingforum.com

DonkeyStyle \o/

I've got a Dell 2005FPW... 16:10 aspect and have no regrets

You'd be surprised at the amount of games that support widescreen... the more modern ones anyway (halflife2, ut2004, GTA:San Andreas etc)... and for the ones that don't officially support widescreen resolutions or the native res of your lcd, there are a bunch of very interesting chaps over on www.widescreengamingforum.com who are very clever about finding ways to make games run in widescreen by editing config files or patching .exe's.
Definitely bookmark that site if you go widescreen... it's helped me many times.

And DVDs are indeed sweet, I don't think I could go back to normal 4:3 aspect now... no more than I could ditch my 5.1 speakers and go back to stereo.

As for the black bars, you can scale/strech the image to fill the whole screen either using the gfx card or the monitor itself (in my case)... though this non-uniform scaling isn't a perfect solution, it's enough to stop the black bars annoying you... that is if you can live with some things looking a little streched.

Also get your hands on Media Player Classic, I love that program... it lets you non-uniform-scale any video (avi) you're watching to fit your screen... again, it streches, but if you offset this by scaling vertically a bit aswell, you can lessen the effect if you don't mind losing a little bit of vert in the picture. (num-pad arrow keys do the streching FYI)

DonkeyStyle \o/

TomCo wrote:

There's usually a .ini hack available to force a game to display in widescreen.

Try http://www.widescreengamingforum.com

Ah beat me to it
Excellent site.

8T8

Widescreen is nice I have a NEC 20WGX2 which is a great display but there are a few conditions attached particularly if you're a gamer which have already been touched on (game compatibility & black bars).

If you intend to run at the native resolution make sure you have the hardware capable to do so at 1680 x 1050 so that means a good graphics card.

Other than the above it is quite nice, lots of screen real estate, games look great in widescreen as do HD videos etc. if you can handle the above then go for it.

TomCo

Yeah, I was hoping to move over to a 19" Widescreen after I build my new rig.

My sister was supposed to get my current one and my dad was going to buy my LCD off me for her. I get a new monitor, she gets a very nice 17" LCD and good PC, and my dad save's a few quid.

But now she's complaining that the tower will take up too much space in her room and generally being a bitch.

Christ I could strangle her.

unklerosco

TomCo wrote:

Christ I could strangle her.

Ah yes, dont i know that feeling.. The joys of not living at home no more

Anyways, Widescreen is the only way to go.. Its so much better, i've a dell 2405 n i love it.. I use it for dvds n my Xbox360 n it rocks.. Id highly recomend it..

Its the same as going from 4:3 tv to 16:9 tv.... Its well worth it, just make sure u have the gfx power to run those resolutions..

eamon234

definitely worth the investment if you watch movies I have a regular 18" NEC and it's a pain watching movies on it in widescreen so I'll be purchasing soon myself as I constantly get banished to the study while the Mrs is watching crap on TV!

BKtje

got a widescreen monitor recently. No regrets at all so far. Loving it.