image stretched on widescreen monitor

spud17

It's a Dell running XP, so probably at least 3/4 yo?
What's the graphics setup?
If it's still on-board or basic graphics card then it probably won't be able to supply the required resolution.

Great minds moonrakerz.

kwikbreaks

spud17 wrote: »

If it's still on-board or basic graphics card then it probably won't be able to supply the required resolution.

I connected my 1920x1080 monitor to an EEEBox - basically a netbook sporting pretty basic onboard Intel graphics. I had to download new drivers but that ended up working fine. On my pretty low-end desktop which I'd upgraded to Windows 7 the onboard graphics worked immediately although I have fitted a discrete card since. I'd say there's a good chance that a driver upgrade should do the trick.

I didn't see any stretched images though so I'd check the monitor menu to make sure it isn't upscaling or something.

googler

freddi wrote: »

It has always been like that, just look at old 4 X 3 TVs displaying a widescreen film, you either had black bands at the top and bottom, now when you get a 4 X 3 picture on a widescreen TV you get black bands at the sides.

It is the laws of physics, how on earth do you think you can fit a 4 X 3 picture on a widescreen without distortion or black bands?

TV's a different kettle of fish as it's not displaying pictures WITHIN an application window.

I expected a picture within a webpage, or a picture opened through 'Preview' or photo-editing software, to display in its original aspect ratio, with the application filling the whole of the widescreen, but retaining the true aspect ratio of the picture; but as I said, when I set the PC resolution to the optimum resolution of the monitor, as per the monitor's instructions, it renders everything so small I can't read it (although it does have pictures rendered correctly).

Any resolution setting that results in readable text gives me stretched pictures.

spud17

kwikbreaks, perhaps I should have added without upgrading drivers. :cool:

kwikbreaks

googler wrote: »

Any resolution setting that results in readable text gives me stretched pictures.

You are altering the wrong setting. Set the resolution to 1920x1080 and set the font size (Appearance tab to the left of the Settings tab in XP Display Properties) to whatever you need to be able to read it.

amcluesent

>and set the font size <

And CTRL-mouse wheel to zoom up/down text in web-pages.

blackswan2

PS forgot to add that everything is stretched - desktop image, documents, outlook, internet, photos ...

freddi_2

everything is stretched - desktop image, documents, outlook, internet, photos

Of course it is, you are viewing 4 X 3 pictures on a widescreen monitor. Did you not understand my post?

How else are you going to fill the screen?

blackswan2

yes I did thinks, I just added the information since Nivz had specifically asked. Cheers ... Simon.

NiVZ

googler wrote: »

So you're telling me that if I go out and buy a brand-new PC with a matching widescreen monitor, that whenever I display a webpage with a 4x3 photo, preview or display a 4x3 photo of my own, or display a document containing a 4x3 photo, that photo will always be stretched unless I set my monitor to display a 4x3 box with black lines on each side....???

If so, someone in the computer industry really hasn't thought this through.....

No, I'm saying if you buy a widescreen monitor and set it to a 4:3 resolution (eg 1024 x 768)it will probably stretch it. Thats what most PC's and laptops I use do anyway (and also why there are buttons on TV's to switch the aspect ratio)

If you are using a Widescreen monitor, your graphics card needs to be set to use a widescreen resolution, eg 1280 x 768, 1920 x 1080

NiVZ