aspect ratio irritation at BDS

Post #366,070 by rcareaga 11/9/12 8:17:50 PM Reply	aspect ratio irritation at BDS As I have had occasion to mention, BDS is a digital monoculture: Everyone runs Windows 7, the same model Dell PC, the same model ViewSonic flatscreen display. And every single one of these distorts the aspect ratio, stretching it along the horizontal axis. I know this because we are all required to display the BrainDead chop (designed by Landor Associates back in the day for, I imagine, a princely sum) as our wallpaper, and Landor's bold circle looks distinctly flattened (not that I care about that specifically). I thought at first, well, how difficult can it be to tinker with the aspect ratio? Not difficult at all, of course. How difficult to tinker in such a way to yield up the—or even a—correct aspect ratio? Beyond my poor powers, apparently. So a couple of weeks ago I flagged down our Tech Guy (who amusingly enough occupies an office directly upstairs from me that used to house punched-card sorting machinery, which was how we kept track of our cargo back in the day. It was considered a punishment detail, and I spent many marginally productive weeks there in the late seventies—but I digress) and appealed to him for assistance. He ambled down to my office fiddled with the settings, shrugged, said "You're right," and strolled off. I followed him back to his office. "Does your workstation behave that way?" "Dunno...Yup, it does." "So how do we fix it?" "We probably can't," ushering me out. I'm not presently at work (indeed, I came home after turd delivery on Monday feeling very seedy indeed and haven't been back; today learned that what I'd taken for a particularly vicious cold/flu is actually bacterial pneumonia) so I can't provide model numbers or setting particulars, but this seems odd behavior even for Windows. I'm wondering if the ninnies in purchasing have inappropriately paired up these modestly widescreen displays with PCs sporting onboard circuitry fit only for output to the traditional models that were replaced en masse early in the year. And I wonder, doesn't anyone notice? Doesn't anyone care? Are my colleagues all dumber'n a sack of hammers? And when will the antibiotics kick in? cordially,
Post #366,071 by Another Scott 11/9/12 8:31:57 PM Reply	Maybe my earlier experience will help figure it out. http://forum.iwethey...iwt?postid=347654 Best of luck with it, and with fighting your pneumonia! Take care. Cheers, Scott.
Post #366,072 by drook 11/9/12 8:43:21 PM Reply	Will they notice? Why should they? Everything they create is stretched. If it's disturbingly so, they correct by making it "too tall". Then whoever they send it to sees it appropriately stretched back out. More likely, they just assume that's how computers work. People have been treating Windows machines like that for years ... that's just how things are. As an aside, we have a wide-screen TV, but don't have digital cable. That means we get analog channels which are formatted for 4:3 TV. Many newer shows are displayed in widescreen letterboxed to 4:3 format, which means we have a black border all the way around. The TV has settings to stretch various formats into their appropriate size. I use those settings all the time. I can't stand watching things in the wrong format, or smaller than they could be, or with parts cut off becuase they're larger than they should be. My wife, on the other hand, hates when any part of the screen is unused. So she'll leave things zoomed even when watching 4:3 formatted shows and the top and bottom will be cut off. At least that's an improvement (I think) over what she did when the TV was new. She'd zoom to "fullscreen" which would stretch the aspect ratio. -- Drew
Post #366,075 by scoenye 11/9/12 11:11:30 PM Reply	If those PCs are old enough... When the i845 chipset was young, it came with driver support for 4:3 resolutions up to 1280x1024. By the time the current crop of widescreen LCD displays came around, the OEMs had lost interest in providing updates. The result is pretty much what you describe. The boxes I'm thinking of would be Optiplex GX260 vintage. If you can/want to try, grab the last driver update straight from Intel. They did add support for things like 1440x900 later on.
Post #366,079 by folkert 11/10/12 1:00:38 AM Reply	but but but... Linux has updated drivers for i845 chipsets... Funny that. -- greg@gregfolkert.net PGP key 1024D/B524687C 2003-08-05 Fingerprint: E1D3 E3D7 5850 957E FED0 2B3A ED66 6971 B524 687C
Post #366,108 by scoenye 11/10/12 8:43:25 PM Reply	That's why it took some headscratching to sort out ;-)
Post #366,233 by rcareaga 11/13/12 8:22:06 PM 11/14/12 12:52:08 AM Reply	Re: If those PCs are old enough... Indeed, 1440 x 900 is the maximum res, and no 4:3 option is provided. "Grab the last driver update straight from Intel?" My dear fellow, there are elementary system settings (like...changing our fucking wallpaper) that are reserved for the Tech Guy alone. There are others still (I can't remember the specific setting, but the realization made my jaw drop) that again you'd assume would be left to the end user that are forbidden even to the mighty Tech Guy, and can only be tweaked by the MIS folks back at the Mothership, three time zones away. I don't call it BDS for nothing. cordially, Edited by rcareaga Nov. 14, 2012, 12:52:08 AM EST Expand All History
Post #366,242 by scoenye 11/13/12 11:13:49 PM Reply	I figured as much... Hence the "can/want" phrasing. I'm just not as good at the prose as you are ;-) But I just realized you mentioned Windows 7. That makes the obsolete driver problem a bit of a non-starter. I encountered the flattening on OEM XP installations. An OEM W7 box would be way younger than that and an upgrade from XP to W7 would have taken care of the old Intel driver.

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