OK I get you. I was mainly concerned with how a low-res narrow image would be scaled on a higher res widescreen and didn't notice that you were talking 4:3 on 5:4.

5u3 wrote:

Because 4:3 is the format of old games. Good widescreen monitors offer aspect-correct interpolation, but a surprising number of screens doesn't.
Interpolation is supposed to be done by the graphics card nowadays, that's why it's so difficult to find a decent screen for old machines.

Oh, I didn't know; my retro pc has a 14 inch color monitor, and my everyday Linux computer has a 17'' crt monitor, so this house is LCD free, never had a LCD monitor and I was planing to buy one but didn't know the wrong aspect ratio would affect, I thought if I run an old game the monitor would display a standard 4:3 image with black bars on each side, am I correct?

You can force to always keep the aspect ratio through your graphics card control panel, so it's mostly ok 😀.

F2bnp wrote:

You can force to always keep the aspect ratio through your graphics card control panel, so it's mostly ok 😀.

Graphic card control panel in real mode DOS? I don't think so.
no idea how a LCD screen behaves on DOS

Oh yeah, that's right I didn't even consider DOS, it really is a bad idea 😜

A quality LCD monitor will also have OS-independent aspect ratio options in the OSD.

Stull wrote:

A quality LCD monitor will also have OS-independent aspect ratio options in the OSD.

I will check that out, any brand recommended ?

vmunix wrote:

Stull wrote:

A quality LCD monitor will also have OS-independent aspect ratio options in the OSD.

I will check that out, any brand recommended ?

I've owned Samsung and HP models with stretch/maintain ratio options, and a cheapo Hanns-G that didn't have any...

Stull wrote:

vmunix wrote:

Stull wrote:

A quality LCD monitor will also have OS-independent aspect ratio options in the OSD.

I will check that out, any brand recommended ?

I've owned Samsung and HP models with stretch/maintain ratio options, and a cheapo Hanns-G that didn't have any...

I can set the correct aspect ratio for various resolutions using the OSD on my cheap 'LG IPS235V' monitor 😀.

4:3 in 2013? That's something, considering that 16:9 is becoming obsolete now as many TV channels have already moved on to an even wider aspect ratio. The last 4:3 I had was a Samtron monitor from 2002.

what aspect ratio, what resolutions and where do you live?

Mike wrote:

4:3 in 2013? That's something, considering that 16:9 is becoming obsolete now as many TV channels have already moved on to an even wider aspect ratio. The last 4:3 I had was a Samtron monitor from 2002.

TVs have not moved on from 16:9 at all (not sure where you heard that?)... I think 16:9 is going to be with us for quite some time. I know LG and Philips have released their own 'ultra wide' 21:9 TVs, but we're not sure how quickly they'll catch on yet (although they'd probably make a good alternative to multi screen setups when it comes to gaming 😀).

Ditto for that,

Even 16:9, although undisputably dominant, is not defacto standard yet (not all TV channels moved to it yet, many DVDs of old available around are still 4:3) although its around for more than a decade, so I'm not expecting something would change in a couple of years, into another standard.