Widescreen Monitor vs 4:3 - The Transition

[AppleQueso]

I just bought a projector to cancel all this out. Sure I have pillarboxing on my shooters, but when the play screen is already four feet across, it doesnt really matter. And no, I am not going for a worldwide highscore, just a friendly one.

My personal belief is if you want a tv bigger than 32 inches, buy a projector. And now with LED and CRT projectors dropping in price, it can be more cost effective in the long run.

Projectors are very cool, but come with their own slew of problems like everything else. Plus I think 32" is an awfully small number to be drawing the line at really.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

I just bought a projector to cancel all this out. Sure I have pillarboxing on my shooters, but when the play screen is already four feet across, it doesnt really matter. And no, I am not going for a worldwide highscore, just a friendly one.

My personal belief is if you want a tv bigger than 32 inches, buy a projector. And now with LED and CRT projectors dropping in price, it can be more cost effective in the long run.

Projectors are very cool, but come with their own slew of problems like everything else. Plus I think 32" is an awfully small number to be drawing the line at really.

At this point I'd say 52" is the number.

We used to have a projector when I was younger, and loved it, other than I like to play in rooms with plenty of sunlight. As AppleQueso said, they have their own problems though.

[msimplay]

It really bothers me when I see a stretched image.

I can not understand how someone prefers that over black bars. Most sets (particularly on TVs, but most flat monitors as well) have black frames around the image anyway (you know, just outside the screen). At least people look normal.

It is particularly terrible in stuff like news shows, where the anchor has been there for years and some people still appear to not be bothered that the faces are squashed.

I once changed the image on a tv set to have bars (incorrectly assuming that anyone would have it stretched because they don't know how to change the factory default or something) and the person didn't like the bars. I dutifully changed it back as even if I don't understand it, I respect it. But I can not understand the logic.

I think it is just to fill out the screen? Wow. Sorry it does not make sense to me.

As I say, outside the actual image there is other stuff anyway (often a black frame which must look pretty fashionable as pretty much every tv set has a black frame), so with black bars there is something outside the actual image as well, it just happens to be still inside the screen.

Ivo.

Ideally the correct resolution to fill the TV would be great but Black bars really bug me.
Ever since I saw the picture squashed in Street Fighter 2 on the Snes the black bars bugged the heck out of me especially since I was used to playing at the Arcade with a full screen.

It makes perfect sense to me not to want the black bars especially when you sit further back it makes things more difficult to see I mean on a 42 inch 1080p TV you spent a grand on and then the picture isn't even that big I mean people pay to see the picture that big but they only getting 80% of that with DVD's unless you stretch them.

Luckily these days we have the option to Stretch or keep the correct aspect ratio

[fastbilly1]

I just bought a projector to cancel all this out. Sure I have pillarboxing on my shooters, but when the play screen is already four feet across, it doesnt really matter. And no, I am not going for a worldwide highscore, just a friendly one.

My personal belief is if you want a tv bigger than 32 inches, buy a projector. And now with LED and CRT projectors dropping in price, it can be more cost effective in the long run.

Projectors are very cool, but come with their own slew of problems like everything else. Plus I think 32" is an awfully small number to be drawing the line at really.

It really was the price point. Right now I can get a 32 inch tv or a low end projector for about around $350. Sure the tvs resolution will be higher, but sometimes thats not as important. I recently picked up a Benq GP1, which is a DLP LED projector that while it was only 100 Lumens, in a darker room or at night (which is 90% of my time on the tv), it is more than bright enough. The projector was only $350. Now sure most of you will say that 100 lumens and SVGA resolution are not enough, but honestly, its not that big of a deal. I have pushed full hd video through it and it looked fine. Sure it did not look as good as it did on my Astro monitor, but I do not need it to.