Dealing with a large-ish 1080P screen

[Anapan]

I'm not really sure where to post this, but having recently switched to a 1080P monitor (actually a 36" LG LCD-LED TV). I've come across some problems that are inherent in the high resolution it has vs a comfortable distance to sit from it - A wireless keyboard and mouse make any distance viable, but the text size is dependant on the DPI setting in your display settings (on Windows at least). Changing the DPI setting is a can of worms you don't want to open up in XP - dialogs, number entering and various other word placements can get unreadably messed-up. Just leave it at 96.

As I adjust to sitting further away from the screen, I've found a few tweaks to make everything work well for me.
I welcome any comments, suggestions or additions as I plan to switch to a 3LCD high-lumen 1080P projector soon.

#1 - Firefox
My eyes are bad. Small text gets more info on the screen, but I just can't read it when I'm at the back of the room (ya, I'm old). Here are some great plugin-based fixes I found:

Stylish 1.2.6 with style "Firefox 4: Crisp Scaled Images"
Zoom Page 3.0 with default: 200%

These plugins will keep all the pixel art perfect and default to 200% - yeah, you could just change the default CSS page if it's there, but these plugins are foolproof.

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#2 - ePSXe

ePSXe:

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.9

Resolution&Colors:
- Fullscreen mode (Selected) Desktop resolution 1920x1080 32 bit
- Window Mode (unselected) Window Size: 1280x960
- Use Window size in Fullscreen mode (widescreen fix)
- Internal X resolution: 2
- Internal Y resolution: 3
- Stretching Mode: 0
- Render Mode: 2

Textures:
- Filtering: 0
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- Use Pixel Shader for PSX Texture Window: disabled
- VRam size: 0 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: off
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: 200.0 (selected)

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 1
- Framebuffer effects: 3
- Framebuffer uploads: 2

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Mdec filter: off
- Screen filtering: off
- Shader effects: 0/1 (disabled)
- Flicker-fix border size: 0
- GF4/XP crash fix: off
- Game fixes: off [00000000]

This will make all the pixel art show up with crisp edges and no weird scaling on it. I actually used a calculator for all the weird screen modes and this is the most compatible way to show the graphics. All vector stuff will be HD, all pixel-based content will be multiples of the 1920x1080 resolution. It's perfect afaik. Some game fixes and options may be necessary depending on your graphics card, but I have yet to encounter any big problems on my Nvidia GTX260.
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The older PC games are a mixed bag, but this site has explored all the possibilities for you. If in doubt, check the forums. I'm currently playing Diablo II at 1080P 1X1 and it works great!
Widescreen Gaming Forums - Master List

[gtmtnbiker]

I'm not really sure where to post this, but having recently switched to a 1080P monitor (actually a 36" LG LCD-LED TV). I've come across some problems that are inherent in the high resolution it has vs a comfortable distance to sit from it - A wireless keyboard and mouse make any distance viable, but the text size is dependant on the DPI setting in your display settings (on Windows at least). Changing the DPI setting is a can of worms you don't want to open up in XP - dialogs, number entering and various other word placements can get unreadably messed-up. Just leave it at 96.
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Yeah, I have this problem at times with my HTPC hooked up to my 52" Samsung. I'm using Windows 7 and there are bunch of display bugs with various programs (Chrome, uTorrent, etc) where the font display is not correct. Still, I change it to 200%.