Widescreen or Full Screen?

[Null]

Originally Posted by MrCoffee

now I have a qeustion, I am an hardcore gamer/inspiring programmer/netowrk techinion/regular trechnicion...more liek computer guru, anyway I am getting a 19inch LCD sometime nextweek. Tell me this I have a choice between a 19inch widescreen and just a regular 19. Not im wondering if this will make my gaming ability go all weird if i go widescreen, and how it will affect my workspace? Will everything get streched out or what? Give me your opinion.!!

ah the exact same question i had when getting my new lcd monitor.

i went with the widescreen lcd. and honestly i absolutly love it.

workspace.. windows will work fine in widescreen. you should be setting the windows resolution to whatever the optimal resolution of the montor is.. mine is 1440x900. workspace is easily a lot better. you get more space left and right to work with.. move 2 windows side by side easier. its just a lot better. it came with stuff to install, but it worked as soon as i plugged it in. infact, you could probably test widescreen out right now... find a widescreen resolution and switch to it.. then go into your monitors settings and shrink the screen up and down.


gaming can get tricky. as far as for me, (i dont know if its the same for every lcd widescreen monitor) it wants to run every game in the desktop resolution. 1440x900, that worried me at first, but actually since its running at the optimal resolution, it runs them without any slowdowns or loss of frame rates at all.

Counter-Strike: Source was the easiest of the games to setup. i simply selected the widescreen ratio, and resolution and done.. the game looks BEAUTIFUL, i get an advantage over many people cuz i can see more to the left and right. and the higher resolution makes everything sharper (on my CRT before, the more i upped the resolution, the more power it needed to run the game, not the case when i put it at this resolution on the lcd)

other games is where it got tricky... Quake 3 and Quake 4 i had to go in the config and setup a custom resolution, really wasnt hard, they work perfect except for the crosshair isnt quite in perfect perportion.

Battlefield 2 doesnt support widescreen yet, but lotta people are bugging them about it, and theres some work arounds to get it working.. i got the game running in wide, but the HUD is stretched.

had to go into the config and setup warcraft 3 and unreal tournament 2004 for a custom resolution also.

i had a website that listed all the games and how to do it.

and it doent cost a lot more... 19inch wide was about the same price give or take as a normal 19inch.



I absolutly love mine. i've gotten all my games to work in it, (mine doesnt have an option to give black bars on the left and right, so if a game didnt then it would be stretched)
but most new games support wide i think now anyway.

i'd never go back to a normal monitor, wide for me.

[GameMaster]

Where did you get your cool wallpaper?

[Null]

somone made that on deviantart.

[DimHalo]

I always get widescreen. When I first started getting dvds I thought full screen was better, but I didn't care much... i just bought whatever. At the time all the movies i got ended up with both options.

Now I only get widescreen unless i make a mistake. I like the way it looks better.

My mom only buys the full screen. She hates the black lines.

[Null]

well next time shes watching a movie ask her whats going on to the left and right, and when she says she doesnt know, say BECAUSE YOU CAN SEE OVER THERE!

why buy a movie when your not getting it all. and someday when she gets a new TV, every movie she has is going to have even thicker black lines to the left and right.


people have gotten me full screen movie as a gift before, i return em and get wide, heh.

[GameMaster]

Which begs the question, why don't DVDs just have both options on one disc? I think some of my early DVDs have both just like JS was talking about.

[Null]

a few reasons.

the few i have and have seen with both on it, have it on both sides of the disc, one is wide one is full.

reason 1. people actually like seeing a graphic on the top of the disc rather then both be a data side. more appealing to people.

reason 2. space, ones i have with both formats on the same disc dont have much in the way of special features. not a big reason, but it plays a part in some ways.

reason 3, the main reason... Money. theres a number of reasons why they get more money releasing both formats.. one i always argue is that everyone buying full screen now because they dont like black bars... will end up rebuying movies in widescreen years later when hdtv's become standard.

[DimHalo]

Originally Posted by Null

well next time shes watching a movie ask her whats going on to the left and right, and when she says she doesnt know, say BECAUSE YOU CAN SEE OVER THERE!

I've actually done that. She doesn't care.

We also had a huge wide screen tv and she really didn't like that. Because all of the regular tv shows had all the blank space on either side.

She's pretty open to change, but I think this is one thing she doesn't want to budge on.


As for the two options on one disc... mine have graphics on them but there's not much for extras. I like my extras so i'll choose those over having both options. (Although, widescreen isn't much fun on a little tv... but I don't have that problem now that i've replaced my 13 inch tv with a 20 inch)

[Null]

widescreen is also a more natural field of view. normal vision from your eyes if you think aobut it is widescreen. in full screen people are actually looking up and down more then they need to, with wide it allows your eyes to stay more centered and still pick up everything easier.


and i know what you mean about widescreen on a little TV... luckily for me tho, my ipod has the option to watch in wide screen, or zoom in and take up the full ipod screen... very nice feature