Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi there,

I have a Viewsonic E96f+SB monitor (CRT 4:3) and was wondering if the CRT technology could do letterboxing, or was it restricted to DVI monitors?

I have a gut feeling it's the latter, but I'm hoping it's still possible to letterbox.

Yes, you ned DVI cable (still, right?) , but you should be able to do it by using your max/native resolution width and calculate whatever height ratio you want and make a custom resolution.

I don't think you need a DVI cable.

However, if the monitors native res is, say, 1600x1200... and you want to run 1600x900... you might need to fiddle the monitors vertical stretch to actually get it 16:9.

I had 1600x100 working on my old 17" 1600x1200 CRT for a while, but it involved playing with the screen positioning.

I think I tried Custom Resolutions some years ago, but found the feature in nVidia's driver not to work at all (not a single custom resolution).

I'll try some of the things you people mentioned though, thanks.

For years, nVidia's custom res option worked perfectly for me. And then they broke it with the release 100 drivers. Hasn't worked since. Although I've been using ATi cards most of the time since then on the rigs where I need to fiddle with custom resolutions, and that's a whole new game of fun stuff there...

There are a few fixes/tweaks for getting custom resolutions on the newer drivers in threads around the forum.

I have a Viewsonic G220fb CRT monitor and have made several game videos in 16:10. Sometimes 16:9 will even work, depends on the game. For movie watching, both my G220fb and my Samsung 26" CRT HDTV will show letterbox aspect ratio no problem. If the use is for the latter, I highly recommend KMPlayer, which has several aspect ratio options to view with.

Hi Frag Maniac,

I need a widescreen aspect radio in fullscreen only, not for windowed movies. So the desktop would be either 16:9 or 16:10 (letterboxed), and modern games would work inside this.

And looking at the nVidia custom resolutions again, there is no aspect ratio option in there anyway. So maybe custom resoltions wouldn't help me, no?

Actually I AM referring to full screen vs windowed mode. For games, 16:9 often doesn't work well on my 4:3 CRT. Even if I can get a 16:9 res to display, it's often not possible to get it to look undistorted and it will often show distorted in Fraps too.

Some games however will not only display well in 16:9 once the monitor is adjusted, but record well in Fraps too. In fact I just finished making a 16:9 Ghostbusters video a few days ago that came out fine.

A 16:10 res will always work though, and it only requires adjusting the vertical and horizontal adjustments on the monitor to get it to fill the screen exactly left and right with the appropriate amount of bar width top and bottom. If in doubt, check anything round in the game like the scope mode of a rifle in a shooter. That will immediately show if you've done the adjustments right.

to be really funny.... can you select a widescreen resolution and then use the monitor picture adjust options in the menu on the screen, and reduce the height of the screen until you get proper aspect ratio? :P

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to be really funny.... can you select a widescreen resolution and then use the monitor picture adjust options in the menu on the screen, and reduce the height of the screen until you get proper aspect ratio? :P

Its funny because thats what I was about to recommend.