[Novalug] incredibly stupid monitor

Ed T. Toton III bones@necrobones.net
Wed May 14 09:58:37 EDT 2008


Thus spake Ken Kauffman:

> The woman should have more appropriately said that older computers VIDEO 
> COMPONENTS may not support those resolutions.
>
> However, if you used correct resolution in the configuration of the 
> display and you used a refresh rate that was supported, I am not sure 
> how that would fry a monitor.



Most video cards for the last 10 years have supported at least a 
resolution of 1600x1200. 1280x1024 (considered a 4:3 resolution since the 
screens are in that form-factor, even though the resolution is 5:4, 
resulting in a mild distortion that most people don't notice) has been a 
standard entry-level resolution for about that long.

It's true that widescreens (generally 16:10 (ok, 8:5) for monitors, and 
16:9 for HDTV) are a more recent occurance, but here the limitation in 
supported aspect ratio is usually in the drivers and not the hardware.

Many new video devices in the last year or two will support DVI-D, and if 
so, typically can handle up to 2560x1600 widescreen.


Frying a monitor with incorrect video settings is hard to do these days. 
That was more a limitation with older CRTs that didn't do any 
sanity-checking on the signal. Modern LCDs connected via DVI won't have an 
issue at all, as they're limited by the DVI's bandwidth anyway. Even 
connected via analog VGA you're unlikely to cause harm as most monitors 
these days will detect an improper signal and just show a blank screen.

And if you send a 4:3 signal to a widecsreen LCD, depending on how it's 
configured, you'll either get a 4:3 image in the center of the screen, or 
it'll stretch to fill the entire view.


------------------------------------------------------------------
- Ed T. Toton III, RHCE --|-- www.necrobones.com -- ed.toton.org -
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"Ignorance must certainly be bliss or there wouldn't be so many
people so resolutely pursuing it."
 				-- Unknown




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