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    Wide or Regular Display?

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by Yasumi, Oct 12, 2004.

  1. Yasumi

    Yasumi Newbie

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    Hey all,

    I finally decided to buy me an Acer Travelmate 4501. Therefore I wanted to ask if it's better to buy a widescreen or regular display? I will do both, watching DVD's and playing games (mostly strategy and 3D-Games), with the notebook. So, when playing games I normally won't use the native resolution. Is this highly noticeable with a Widescrenn display? Anyone with some experience with it?

    Thanks in advance
    Yasumi
     
  2. cool_guy

    cool_guy Newbie

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    I thought about this alot before ordering mine with widescreen. I can't say that it ruins the picture. I have tried both DVD video and games in 4x3 resolutions. If I do not look at it to try to find out if it is stretched, I can't say that it is.
    I have seen people complaining about this, but I don't. I think it works good in all resolutions
     
  3. Dr. Awkward

    Dr. Awkward Notebook Enthusiast

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    There are some games that run in widescreen resolutions these days, and it seems to be an increasing trend as laptops become more popular and start to replace desktops. www.widescreengamingforum.com has a lot of information on playing games using widescreen. Many games that don't support it can be modified with a hack or by editing the .ini files, and there are a few modified video card drivers (notably the Omega drivers at www.omegadrivers.net ) that have some extra tricks to allow you to play on widescreen monitors without stretching your view (often by putting black bars on the left and right sides of the display) if that's what you want to do. The new Doom 3 patch includes widescreen support, and I think if enough people bug the game and video card manufacturers, we might see more companies supporting it.

    For DVDs, you're better off with a widescreen monitor if you want to watch widescreen movies, and most players have a "preserve aspect ratio" button that they can use to display 4:3 movies without stretching.
     
  4. cool_guy

    cool_guy Newbie

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    nice widescreen forum. I found this tip:
    to use a non-stretched resolution for a game, which do not support it:
    http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=32

    I just tried it (on a 4501 with widescreen)
    It do as it says. I will give black borders and a non-stretched display. I prefer no black borders, but I have yet to see some of the problems some of the people on that forum have. Everything I have tried so far have looked nice