• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Suggestion for a flat panel LCD with 640x480 native resolution

R

retrobot

New Member
Joined
Mar 8, 2010
Messages
5
I'm looking for a flat panel LCD monitor that has a 640x480 (VGA) native resolution, uses a standard VGA style connector and is preferably 15" or smaller. A dedicated monitor or a TV is fine.

So far the only thing I've been able to scare up is the Q-See QSL104C. It looks pretty good, but I'm having a hard time justifying $150 on such a small screen.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6661080&CatId=5198

I still love using the old OS's and programs, but I've completely moved to emulation (except for my lone Apple PowerBook 170) instead of dedicated vintage hardware. It's working out pretty good for me except for a lot of stuff runs at VGA ( or lower) resolution and it's getting hard for these old eyes to see that resolution in the middle of a 1920x1080 screen.

Would love some suggestions.
 
Save your money. :) I use DOS all the time and just use a regular modern screen. The 17" ones are cheap new and $30 or so used. You will find that a DOS box will always give you 640x480 (VGA) unless you decide to go for less with the mode command.
 
Look into older 17" Dell flat panel LCD's. Originally, I was about buy a 15" monitor and decided to get the 17" instead. I'm glad I did because the picture is awesome.
 
Ole Juul & barney -- The 17" monitors you are using, are they native 640x480? I can find plenty of monitors with higher resolution, but the picture quality is really reduced when the resolution gets interpolated down to the 640x480.
 
Last edited:
I've been using a Dell 15" LCD for several years - paid about $80 or less for it. It will do 640 x 480, 800 x 600, and 1024 x 768 just fine. Your 'PC resolution' will be determined by your choice of video card and its settings.
 
Agent Orange said:
I've been using a Dell 15" LCD for several years - paid about $80 or less for it. It will do 640 x 480, 800 x 600, and 1024 x 768 just fine. Your 'PC resolution' will be determined by your choice of video card and its settings.
Click to expand...

All LCD monitors have a native or fixed resolution (eg. 1024x768) and then scale the alternate resolutions using interpolation which causes artifacts in the output. I have been reading about Nvidia cards and drivers that can do 1:1 image scaling, effectively doubling the pixels if the monitor supports the resolution, but the computer I'm using, a Mac Mini, only has Intel 945 graphics and doesn't support a feature like that (at least not that I can find).
 
Most of the multi-tap scalars in new displays are quite good now days. Usually they are at lease 5x3 taps and use Lanczos interpolation.
 
retrobot said:
All LCD monitors have a native or fixed resolution (eg. 1024x768) and then scale the alternate resolutions using interpolation which causes artifacts in the output. I have been reading about Nvidia cards and drivers that can do 1:1 image scaling, effectively doubling the pixels if the monitor supports the resolution, but the computer I'm using, a Mac Mini, only has Intel 945 graphics and doesn't support a feature like that (at least not that I can find).
Click to expand...

Where did you come up with that? I'm presently looking at your thread on a ViewSonic 22" monitor with a 'native' resolution of 1680 x 1050. I'm here to tell you that most LCD will run just fine at 640 x 480. If you're seeing 'artifacts' then you may have other problems - like maybe drivers/power supply/excessive refresh rate to name a few. BTW - you never fully expained what you trying to do or what your setup is like.
 
Where did you come up with that? I'm presently looking at your thread on a ViewSonic 22" monitor with a 'native' resolution of 1680 x 1050.
Click to expand...

OK. So? That offers no indication that you actually know what native resolution means on an LCD. Your monitor physically has 1680 columns of pixels, and 1050 rows. That is not changeable in any way. To display something with 640x480 resolution fullscreen, it would have to be stretched out to fill all 1680x1050 pixels. But of course 640 does not divide evenly into 1680, nor does 480 divide evenly into 1050, so distortions and interpolation have to be done to make it fit into the 1680x1050. That's not necessarily readily apparent if you're just watching a movie or something, but it results in a major drop in picture quality for anything using a lot of blocky graphics, lines and text... i.e., old games. Some LCDs are better at scaling than others, but none are perfect.

I'm here to tell you that most LCD will run just fine at 640 x 480.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they'll run at 640x480. But hey won't look good at 640x480. Lets go back to your statement about reading this thread on your Viewsonic. Lemme guess, you're running it at 1680x1050? Try switching your desktop resolution to something else, maybe 1024x768 or 800x600. Even 640x480 if the OS will let you do so. Now read through the thread. Unless your eyesight is terrible, you'll probably notice that the text and boxes and buttons and such all look kinda blurry and crappy, and diagonal and curved lines look all jagged. That's the 'artifacts' people are talking about, and the very thing the OP is trying to avoid.

BTW - you never fully expained what you trying to do or what your setup is like.
Click to expand...

What is there to explain? He wants to run things full-screen at 640x480, and have it look good.
 
Agent Orange said:
Where did you come up with that? I'm presently looking at your thread on a ViewSonic 22" monitor with a 'native' resolution of 1680 x 1050. I'm here to tell you that most LCD will run just fine at 640 x 480. If you're seeing 'artifacts' then you may have other problems - like maybe drivers/power supply/excessive refresh rate to name a few. BTW - you never fully expained what you trying to do or what your setup is like.
Click to expand...

Native resolution is not something I made up, it's inherent to the manufacturing process of LCD screens. It's not that displays won't scale the resolution down, it's how they do it that's important. You can read a little bit here if you're interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_resolution

http://www.pctechguide.com/flat-panel-displays/lcd-resolution-and-scaling

As I said in the first post, I'm using it to run emulators of older systems. Specifically I am using a Mac Mini Core 2 Duo (http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/stats/mac-mini-core-2-duo-2.0-specs.html) with a Viewsonic VX2250wm-LED running OS X 10.6. I use it with DosBox, Sheepshaver, Mini vMac Virtual II, and Hitari among others.

As eeguru posted, some monitors have better scaling algorithms than others. Maybe yours is really good. Or maybe we have a different level of what each of us considers to be acceptable for scaling. In my opinion, my monitor does not do a great job at scaling down to 640x480. It's not the worst I've seen, but it's not the best either. I find the artifacts to be distracting to the enjoyment of using the emulators. If there is a monitor that is generally accepted by gamers and users who run emulation as being good at scaling to lower resolutions, I'd gladly look into it. Otherwise, short of using a quality CRT, it seems a LCD monitor with a native resolution that I'm going to be running at -- 640x480 in this case -- would be the best bet.
 
Old Thrashbarg said:
OK. So? That offers no indication that you actually know what native resolution means on an LCD. Your monitor physically has 1680 columns of pixels, and 1050 rows. That is not changeable in any way. To display something with 640x480 resolution fullscreen, it would have to be stretched out to fill all 1680x1050 pixels. But of course 640 does not divide evenly into 1680, nor does 480 divide evenly into 1050, so distortions and interpolation have to be done to make it fit into the 1680x1050. That's not necessarily readily apparent if you're just watching a movie or something, but it results in a major drop in picture quality for anything using a lot of blocky graphics, lines and text... i.e., old games. Some LCDs are better at scaling than others, but none are perfect.





Yeah, they'll run at 640x480. But hey won't look good at 640x480. Lets go back to your statement about reading this thread on your Viewsonic. Lemme guess, you're running it at 1680x1050? Try switching your desktop resolution to something else, maybe 1024x768 or 800x600. Even 640x480 if the OS will let you do so. Now read through the thread. Unless your eyesight is terrible, you'll probably notice that the text and boxes and buttons and such all look kinda blurry and crappy, and diagonal and curved lines look all jagged. That's the 'artifacts' people are talking about, and the very thing the OP is trying to avoid.



What is there to explain? He wants to run things full-screen at 640x480, and have it look good.
Click to expand...

I don't have time to get into a pee-pee contest with you about how you preceive your LCD. I'm presently running (right next to me) a Dell 15" LCD on a 486 with a Diamond Speedstar w/1MB. Nothing special - no big deal. The video looks great in DOS at 640 x 480. WIN95 looks great at 800 x 600. If I toss in the other HD w/WIN98SE it also looks real good at 1024 x768. At 640 x 480 on my 22" monitor with a XFX 5850 its big but not crappy and blurry as you say. I don't know what else you could ask for in an older WIN/DOS setup. I'm baffled by the tone of your thread. I'm just passing down what I do and how it works for me. Also, the whole point was to recommend a small 15" LCD monitor. This particular 15" Dell's native resolution is 1024 x 768. However, with DOS or WIN95/98, it looks okay at 640 x 480 and 800 x 600. So, what your point in taking me to task?
 
Last edited:
retrobot said:
Ole Juul & barney -- The 17" monitors you are using, are they native 640x480? I can find plenty of monitors with higher resolution, but the picture quality is really reduced when the resolution gets interpolated down to the 640x480.
Click to expand...

I too am quite fussy about what my screen looks like and indeed there is better than what I'm using - but they're plazma or CRT. I use the same 17" (Acer AL1716) for both a modern OS and DOS. I certainly get cleaner letters in my Linux terminals than on the DOS. However with DOS there is only text (in my world anyway) and it is quite adequate. The best I have ever seen for DOS is CRTs but it seems like the larger letters on the 17" compensates for readability. I also use ANSI and set my screen colour to green which is particularly easy to read and focus on, being in the middle of the spectrum where the eye doesn't need to adjust. (An issue for me.)

Looking at it closely, I don't think there is really much problem with the resolution. The bigger problem is that it is a LCD and thus puts a veil over the whole picture because of those *%#$ dots. I don't think there is any way around that. Until they come out with some other technology, I personally don't think it is really worth discussing picture quality. Perhaps I've never seen a good LCD.

Anyway, that's my solution. It would be nice to have a better one for sure. :)
 
Well, LCD screens _do_ have fixed resolutions.. how could it be different? But they key to get good approximations at e.g. 640x480 is probably to start with a monitor with really high resolution.. i.e. lots and lots of pixels in a not-too big frame. Lots of small pixels, in other words.

I have one 19" LCD screen here which is a few years old, 1280x1024 I think. It doesn't look particularly good when I connect my Z80 / old-machine-simulator w/VGA. I have another monitor with much higher resolution but I need it for other stuff. I'm tempted to unpack the old 17" CRT I've had packed away for the last few years.

-Tor
 
retrobot said:
Ole Juul & barney -- The 17" monitors you are using, are they native 640x480? I can find plenty of monitors with higher resolution, but the picture quality is really reduced when the resolution gets interpolated down to the 640x480.
Click to expand...

That very well may be true about picture quality degrading, but I can't see it. The picture still looks great. I'll get my camera later and take a picture of my Dos system running on my 17" DELL. I would be hesitant about a 15" monitor with a resolution of 640X480 native. It seems to me that a monitor that small with that resolution would be older and therefore have the dead pixel issues that the first line of LCD monitors suffered. Also, if you ever decided to put this monitor to use on a current system, you would be out of luck. The usability of a monitor this old would be rather limited in my opinion.

In fact, I have a 22" HP LP2065 LCD that looks pretty damn good on my other dos machine. Not as good as my 17", but it is still pretty nice.
 
There is one monitor I've got that has a native of 800x600, looks like crap at 1024x768 (blurry and image ghosting) and it's the only LCD monitor (that I own) I was able to use on my old macs since none of the others supported the low resolutions this one supports.

I'll get you the model of it tonight, not sure what it is for I'm at school right now.
 
Ole Juul said:
Is interpolation entirely a function of the monitor? I just replaced a video card in my DOS box (post here) and the text is considerably clearer using the same monitor.
Click to expand...

I've seen the same thing. Using the same LCD, I've seen varying clarity with different video cards. For some reasons, all Speedstar cards with the Tseng chipset tend to look blurry to me. On the other hand, I have an Everex card with the Tseng chipset and it looks extremely clear.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top