Widescreen Gaming Forum

It appears that this got long...Sorry.

I am a new Acer AL2216WBD (Black) LCD Monitor user, and so far, I like the unit for the price. I know there are better monitors out there, but I wanted to try this one because I have always been a CRT user. This is my first LCD (at home anyway). I don’t like the ‘never really back’ aspect of LCDs, but I will get used to that.

My native resolution is 1680 x 1050. Most all of my games (except some retro’s I play) are working well. I can even get some of my retro games to work without a problem, but I am having problems getting my new screen to 'squish' horizontally for non native resolutions . It has no problems stretching resolutions to a wider format (with the black strips on top and bottom) through my Catalyst software.

What I would like to be able to do, is run a 800 x600 or 1024 x 768 resolution with OUT stretching the 800 or 1024 width to the width of the monitor. What I expected to see was black strips on the right and left side (and possibly top and bottom) as the monitor scales the resolution it is given. It does this with a 16:9 resolution (again, black strips on top and bottom of the screen), but I cannot get black strips on the left or right side as it scales. It normally scales to the height correctly, but stretches the image to the full width extents.

Am I explaining myself correctly? This may be a limitation of the Catalyst software, or more so the monitor being stubborn and wanting to ALWAYS stretch to the width. I am using a DVI connection from an ATI X1600 pro to the monitor, and I have the Catalyst software set so that it scales. It just doesn’t scale as I thought it would. (I have actually test both with scaling and without) I thought about purchasing Powerstrip to try and get it to do what I want, but it appears like the monitor always wants to stretch to it’s width, no matter what. But I was hoping to find out if this is a limitation of the monitor before I purchased it.

Any info is greatly appreciated. (Don’t be too hard on me…I am new to the LCD world)

ATI X1600 Pro (512m) AGP
Catalyst driver 7.2
(Other specs in sig.)

Now that I know that the problem I tried to describe is called 'Pillarboxing' I can do some more research.

Sorry for the long question. I thought I had searched before I posed, but now that know what I was asking about has a name.... :oops:, I will read some other threads.
tnx

:-(

I have been changing about every setting I know to get this new monitor to do pillarboxing, to no avail. If anyone has a 22" 16:10 Acer and successfully is able to set up the monitor to be able to pillarbox, please pass the info along.

Even if I can not figure this out, I have found this site to be a great resource. (and I still have the old 19" 4:3 I can go back to, I just hate to)

Hey bud ...

From the profile page ...

Signature:
Use this block of text to display your system specs. There is a 512 character limit. Please no images.

Please keep the text (colored text is fine) between sizes 9 and 11 (using BB Code). Run your specs horizontally (rather than vertically), and limit to four lines at normal forum width.

I know it isn't that bad but ... please could you change it ...

Thank you .... 8)

Sorry about that. Hopefully this is more how it should be. :-) I like to follow the rules, but I honestly missed that one.

Thank you ... 8)