[macdummy]

might be a silly question to most of you but i sure as heck don't have a good answer. i recently bought my father an intel 20" imac and he loves it. The problems is he can't read the text on the screen at the native resolution so we had to drop it down a bit.

Of course when doing so the screen is no longer crisp and everything looks blurry. Why is this? Is it that difficult to make things crisp looking with lower resolution? Thanks in advance

[hatim]

its because of the Native resolution of the LCD. LCDs will only look "crisp" on one native resolution. This has to do with the pixels. You cant do anything about it. Sorry. Try upping the text size in system preferences.

[macdummy]

gotcha and thanks

[Peabo]

actually they will also look crisp at even fractions of their native resolution.

[tooki]

No, they'll look blocky, and only if that's how the display chooses to scale up. Most displays now smooth the image even when it's an even multiple.

tooki

[Peabo]

they'll look blocky because the images are larger than normal, but will not suffer the blurring effect present with other resolutions

[Chuckit]

The short version is, LCDs look like **** when they're not at their native resolution — whether that means blocky, blurry or any other hideous effect.

[Peabo]

Chuckit speaks the truth

[tooki]

Originally Posted by z0ne81

they'll look blocky because the images are larger than normal, but will not suffer the blurring effect present with other resolutions

As I just said, many LCDs perform a smoothing algorithm even when displaying a resolution that is an even divisor of the native resolution.

tooki

[Peabo]

Originally Posted by tooki

As I just said, many LCDs perform a smoothing algorithm even when displaying a resolution that is an even divisor of the native resolution.

tooki

Well he said it was an imac. And my 15" Macbook Pro, 17" Powerbook and 23" ACD don't smooth at these resolutions, so I'm assuming all Mac screens won't either.

[goMac]

Just as a note in 10.5 you should be able to make everything bigger on the screen without changing the resolution. This is actually in 10.4 but a little glitchy still.

[kick52]

CRT - Great at any res.

[kick52]

Originally Posted by macdummy

might be a silly question to most of you but i sure as heck don't have a good answer. i recently bought my father an intel 20" imac and he loves it. The problems is he can't read the text on the screen at the native resolution so we had to drop it down a bit.

Of course when doing so the screen is no longer crisp and everything looks blurry. Why is this? Is it that difficult to make things crisp looking with lower resolution? Thanks in advance

what you should do is -

go to the native res.
go into universal access, and turn on zoom.
set a hotkey, so when the text is to small, he can press a few buttons, and then he can zoom in and zoom out whenever he wants

[Cory Bauer]

Originally Posted by kick52

CRT - Great at any res.

I would say that LCDs are excellent at one res, poor at all others. CRTs are just adequate at all resolutions

[wataru]

Originally Posted by kick52

CRT - Great at any res.

Yes, and also heavier, louder, produce more heat, have obnoxious flicker unless set to >60Hz...

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by goMac

Just as a note in 10.5 you should be able to make everything bigger on the screen without changing the resolution. This is actually in 10.4 but a little glitchy still.

"A little glitchy" is a little bit of an understatement.

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by kick52

CRT - Great at any res.

Though result in slightly bulky laptops ...

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by wataru

... have obnoxious flicker unless set to >60Hz...

Can one even find a crt anymore for over $50 that pushes high resolutions at anything less than 80Hz?

[LightWaver-67]

To state the obvious (to some) what is meant by it looking better at "native" resolution...

An LCD screen is made-up of pixels in a grid. Let's say for the sake of argument that your LCD's native resolution is 1024 x 768 pixels... 1024 across by 768 high.

It will look its "best" when your computer is set to a resolution of 1024 x 768 because every pixel on-screen is mapped directly to a pixel on your display. A perfect one-to-one ratio.

When you choose a resolution that is above or below your LCD's native resolution, the OS and/or the display need to re-map the pixels to approximate the resolution. You end-up seeing blurriness because the UI is resampled and interpolated. In other words, if the resolution you decide to drop-down to is 3/4 the amount of pixels... it now has to draw the equivalent of 3-pixels worth of data across 4-pixels of display area... it needs to "fill-in-the-gaps". Or vice-versa... if you try to RAISE the resolution, it's trying to cram 4-pixels worth of data into 3-pixels on your LCD...

Does this make sense...?


It's almost 4:30 a.m. here, so I'm not sure how coherent my explanation is. I hope it helped SOMEONE.




EDIT: Fixed spelling error

[wataru]

Between owning laptops and LCD monitors, I haven't touched a "new" CRT in years. The only ones I still deal with are more than 5 years old, and can't drive the highest usable res at more than 60Hz.

However it can still be an issue. For instance one of my Ubuntu installations couldn't figure out which resolutions the CRT supported, so it's running them all at 60Hz. Very annoying. I haven't figured out how to fix it.

[kick52]

Originally Posted by wataru

Yes, and also heavier, louder, produce more heat, have obnoxious flicker unless set to >60Hz...

yes, but, anyone thats 1 or less years old is perfect for decktop. stable, durable, good display.

but there crap if you get an old one.

you can look at the differences of LCDs and CRTs in different perspectives.

[barryjaylevine]

Go into System Prefs > Appearance. Play with the smoothing settings and the size of the where the font smoothing -stops-. See if this has any difference.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by wataru

1. Between owning laptops and LCD monitors, I haven't touched a "new" CRT in years. The only ones I still deal with are more than 5 years old, and can't drive the highest usable res at more than 60Hz.

2. However it can still be an issue. For instance one of my Ubuntu installations couldn't figure out which resolutions the CRT supported, so it's running them all at 60Hz. Very annoying. I haven't figured out how to fix it.

1. Then they must not have been very good displays to begin with, because my 7 year old Mitsubishi 19" can run at 1600x1200 (which is frankly a higher resolution than the phosphors can resolve crisply) at 85Hz with no troubles.
2. Well that is strictly a limitation of the graphics drivers, and in no way the fault of the display. LCDs may not flicker, period, but you can't fault a CRT for correctly handling a suboptimal signal.

tooki

[barryjaylevine]

I recently setup a 20" iMac for a client with macular degeneration. The screen res was reduced to 1280 x 800 from its native 1680 x 1050. Slightly blurry? Yes. However, the menu is larger (and there is no other way to make the menu larger without resorting to the "zoom" feature). My client was using an iBook with one of those large magnifying glass/fluorescent light combos; the iMac with the lower res screen eliminated the need for the magnifier.

We also set the display font to 16 point in the Finder, 20 point in Mail, and 18 point in Safari. In addition we set Safari to never display fonts below 14 point. My client is very happy.

I probably would have needed that 37" Mitsubishi LCD at its native res to duplicate what the 20" iMac has done for her. This was a great solution and, frankly, I'd love to see a 23" (or larger) iMac (for ME!).

[alansky]

As others have noted, reducing LCD screen resolution to make things bigger doesn't work very well. A better solution for many people is to increase the display size of things wherever possible. For example, it is easy to increase the size of the following items:

Desktop icons and filenames
Text size in open windows on the Desktop
All text (lists, messages and mailbox labels) in the Apple Mail Program
Text size on any web page in Safari (and many other browsers)
Text display size in word processors (zoom feature)
Some programs have a "larger" or "smaller" option for the software's own icons

I've probably forgotten other examples, but this is a good start.

In addition, virtually all image display applications have a zoom feature. And, as someone mentioned earlier, there is also a zoom feature built into OS X's Universal Access Preference Pane.

This strategy produces a reasonable compromise: a clear, crisp screen display along with larger, easier-to-read text.

[hwdor]

So would I be correct in assuming that an LCD TV might be a better choice for those with vision impairments than an LCD monitor?

Lower resolution + larger screen = clearer (large) text (?)

[philm]

Of course, if your Dad is struggling seeing the normal (small) text, he is likely not aware of the slight blurring when you drop the resolution. This might be an issue for you, but not your Dad!