Are there any other pros to widescreen LCDs for PCs?

[neilencio]

This is probably just a rant but...

I mean, I just bought one on sale - a 16" LG Flatron W1642s, and sold my old generic 15" LCD one. Bad move on my part, as I later found out that widescreen has a very limited use for my gaming needs, and introduces several problems.

For one thing, I do a lot of retro gaming through emulators, which all use a 4:3 aspect ratio, and would look like crap stretched/scaled on 16:9. Some of the later emus have widescreen support due to the system itself (some N64 games have widescreen support, and the plugins I use support them).

As for PC Games, I have to bump all of the resolutions to widescreen ones, at least for the ones that support WS resolutions. Most old games and some new-ish ones don't (Need For Speed games don't have widescreen support, even the newest ones). Some of the new games, that DO support 1368 x 768 tend to take a heavy toll on my midrange graphics card, so games that I used to enjoy on silky smooth 60fps @ 1024x768 now drop to as low as 30fps.

...gaming sucks, but it has its uses, I guess. Photoshop kicks ass as now I can drag the toolbars all the way to the left, where they won't get in the way much. And there's the part about movies not being letterboxed.

Here's a real question. Most of my problems with the 4:3 ratio can be easily fixed by using the monitor's 4:3 in wide mode, which just renders in the middle so I now have pillarboxes. I figured I can just run my PC in that mode all the time, but would it have any long term negative effects on the monitor? like burn in or dead pixels or something? as a good percent of the left and right side are not used anymore.

[MrPopo]

There should be no harm in running in that mode.

Also, what emulators are you running that can't handle a widescreen monitor and put bars on the side?

[Dylan]

Popo beat me to it. Nope, your monitor should be just fine.

[neilencio]

There should be no harm in running in that mode.

Also, what emulators are you running that can't handle a widescreen monitor and put bars on the side?

Majority of the emulators I use actually can't put a bar on the side, and just stretches the image so that things look squished. There are exceptions with other emulators that can keep a 1:1 aspect ratio, which just renders in the middle, resulting in the pillarboxes (off the top of my head, Snes9x does this as well as PJ64 and FCE Ultra.)

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

This is why the 4:3 CRT is king.

[GrandMasterJimmy]

Most graphics cards have a setting to change depending on the programs resolution, to keep the aspect ratio correct by adding borders. Then you still have widescreen during everything but fullscreen 4:3 applications.

[JordanPlayer]

I was wary of buying a widescreen flat panel monitor moving from a 19 inch flat screen CRT (especially since I was playing an FPS competitively at the time). I dragged my feet so long on it... and then I finally bought a 22 inch widescreen. I couldn't have been happier since, although I made sure to upgrade my graphics card to support the higher resolutions required. I just checked my emulated games and the two emulators I ran both loaded up the games in 4:3 with some black on both sides... I honestly didn't even think about it until you asked. The emulators were ZSNES and Gens, I believe they did this automatically when maximized. Movies are better to watch, it feels like you can see more while playing games, and it is definitely much lighter

[Hatta]

You can mount the monitor on its side and play vertical shmups in TATE.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

You can mount the monitor on its side and play vertical shmups in TATE.

Actually TATE is in 4:3 and will show black bars on each end.

[Pulsar_t]

Virtually all emulators offer the option to keep aspect ratio so what's the problem? You do lose precious inches of viewable space when you play in 4:3 but for the benefits (ws gaming and movie watching) outweigh this limitation. In the near future everything will be designed with wide viewing angles in mind, even website design.