Widescreen monitor question

[Haz]

Replaced 15" flatscreen with a 19" widepanel (Dell - instructions are
useless - spent an hour on chat - no joy.) My original desktop photo
appears as slightly distorted horizontally (stretch), or only the center
portion (center) (Even worse in 'tile")

Is there any way to get this photo to fit the screen?

Any suggestions

Haz

 

[Haz]

I should have added the comp has lowed to a crawl with this new monitor. I
only have 256 ram - do these wide screens take significantly more?

Haz

 

[rfdjr1]

Replaced 15" flatscreen with a 19" widepanel (Dell - instructions are
useless - spent an hour on chat - no joy.) My original desktop photo
appears as slightly distorted horizontally (stretch), or only the center
portion (center) (Even worse in 'tile")

Is there any way to get this photo to fit the screen?

Any suggestions

Haz

Probably just needs to be set to the proper 16:9 aspect ratio. The old monitor
no doubt was 4:3. What is you operating system? Also, I think 256k of RAM these
days is vitrually useless.

 

[gls858]

Replaced 15" flatscreen with a 19" widepanel (Dell - instructions are
useless - spent an hour on chat - no joy.) My original desktop photo
appears as slightly distorted horizontally (stretch), or only the center
portion (center) (Even worse in 'tile")

Is there any way to get this photo to fit the screen?

Any suggestions

Haz

Do you have a video card or are you using integrated video? It's
possible that you video card doesn't even support the 16 X 9 aspect
ratio. I know some of the older ones don't.

gls858

 

[Dave]

Forgot the basics - sorry
WinXP SP2

I may have mis-stated my photo problem - the desktop photo overfills the
screen when set on centered.- by quite a bit. Other apps, Word, Excel,
etc., fill the screen about right. On closer examination, it looks like all
photos are distorted horizontally when set to stretch. Again, on 'centered'
they are way overblown.

I guess my question is - are all my photos going to be distorted on this
screen?

I never had a chance to set the aspect ratio. Come to think about it, with
the desktop option of 'centered' I may be looking at 4:3. The instruction
CD is absolutely useless - I have no idea how to check/set the aspect ratio.
Everything seems to like to be 'automatic's

Haz - on another comp

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Forgot the basics - sorry
WinXP SP2

I may have mis-stated my photo problem - the desktop photo overfills the
screen when set on centered.- by quite a bit. Other apps, Word, Excel,
etc., fill the screen about right. On closer examination, it looks like
all photos are distorted horizontally when set to stretch. Again, on
'centered' they are way overblown.

I guess my question is - are all my photos going to be distorted on this
screen?

I never had a chance to set the aspect ratio. Come to think about it,
with the desktop option of 'centered' I may be looking at 4:3. The
instruction CD is absolutely useless - I have no idea how to check/set the
aspect ratio. Everything seems to like to be 'automatic's

Haz - on another comp

That is an indication that the video card is unable to handle wide screen
resolutions..


--
Mike Hall - MVP
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http://dts-l.com/goodpost.htm
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http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=newswhelp&style=toc
Mike's Window - My Blog..
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/default.aspx

 

[Ian D]

Replaced 15" flatscreen with a 19" widepanel (Dell - instructions are
useless - spent an hour on chat - no joy.) My original desktop photo
appears as slightly distorted horizontally (stretch), or only the center
portion (center) (Even worse in 'tile")

Is there any way to get this photo to fit the screen?

Any suggestions

Haz

This is because you are distorting a 4:3 photo to fit a 16:10
screen.

In 'stretch', it's filling the screen vertically, but widening
the picture horizontally to fill the screen.

In 'center', it's filling the screen horizontally while maintaining
the original 4:3 ratio, causing overfill in the vertical direction,
and cutting off portions of the top and bottom.

In 'tile' the picture displays at its original pixel size, so if it was
2000x1500 pixels, the display would only show the center
1440x900 or 1680x1050 portion, depending on your monitor's
resolution.

For a resolution, try resizing the picture so that its vertical pixel
size matches, or is slightly less than, the screen's vertical
resolution while maintaining its original aspect ratio. The
screen will be either 900 or 1050 pixels in height. Then use
'center' and it should display properly with bars of the original
background on each side. If you don't like the bars, the only
alternative is to crop the picture to a 16:10 ratio. At least this
gives you the choice of what to discard.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Replaced 15" flatscreen with a 19" widepanel (Dell - instructions are
useless - spent an hour on chat - no joy.) My original desktop photo
appears as slightly distorted horizontally (stretch), or only the center
portion (center) (Even worse in 'tile")

The answer depends on your video card (or motherboard video
capability, if you have no separate video card). You need to set the
wide screen monitor to the appropriate wide screen resolution for your
monitor. If you computer or video card is old enough, it probably
doesn't have an appropriate wide screen resolution choice.

For example, my wife's new Dell computer also has a new 20" wide
screen Dell monitor. The resolution for it should be set to 1440 x
900. If I were to use her monitor on my computer (which is old enough
that there is no 1440x900 resolution choice), I would have the same
problem you do.

Is there any way to get this photo to fit the screen?

Only by buying and replacing a new video card with appropriate
resolution.

 

[Dave]

The 1440 x 900 option does comes up for screen resolution in
CP/Desktop/Settings. I thought that meant, among other things, the fact
that this is a 16:10 monitor is being recognized by the system.

How do I tell if I have a separate video card? Also, what would be a good
source for a better card?

Does it make sense this problem only seems to be noticeable on the desktop
photo?

Appreciate your thoughts

Haz - (on another system comp)

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

The 1440 x 900 option does comes up for screen resolution in
CP/Desktop/Settings. I thought that meant, among other things, the fact
that this is a 16:10 monitor is being recognized by the system.

Then my guess that you don't have an appropriate video card is wrong.
If that's the resolution that Dell recommends for your monitor, just
use it, and the problem should go away.

But note that your desktop photo, if it is 4:3, will look improper at
the appropriate resolution for your monitor.

How do I tell if I have a separate video card? Also, what would be a good
source for a better card?

Does it make sense this problem only seems to be noticeable on the desktop
photo?

Appreciate your thoughts

Haz - (on another system comp)

 

[Ian D]

The 1440 x 900 option does comes up for screen resolution in
CP/Desktop/Settings. I thought that meant, among other things, the fact
that this is a 16:10 monitor is being recognized by the system.

How do I tell if I have a separate video card? Also, what would be a good
source for a better card?

Does it make sense this problem only seems to be noticeable on the desktop
photo?

Appreciate your thoughts

Haz - (on another system comp)

Have you installed the monitor's .inf file? It's needed for the
1440x900 resolution to be available in the video settings.

For applications, etc., the height and width are automatically
sized to fit the screen's attributes without disortion. A photo
has a fixed aspect ratio, and any attempts to fit it to a screen
with a different aspect ratio will result in distortion or clipping.

 

[Dave]

BINGO -

Thank you one and all - the comments about pixel count triggered a more
vigorous investigation. I may have said all pics in the comp appear to
display properly except the desktop photo. Turns out the desktop photo is
the ONLY one to be taken with a different camera - an 8 meg Olympus. ALL
the rest were take with a 3 meg camera.

So, sure enough, that 8 meg shot, in the 'center' mode, is huge, and only
displays a small portion of the center.

Thank you everybody - we would never have gotten there on our own.

Haz