Lower resolution displays

[GWarner]

As some of you may have noticed, I haven't been visiting these and other internet forums as much as I'd like. The reason I've not been visiting as often as I used to because this past year has not been good for my vision.

I started the year with around 20/60 vision, which means I can see a 60 millimeter gap in a black line on a white background at 20 meters distance. Normal vision is 20/20. It's a measure of the smallest detail you can see at a set distance.

My vision right now is probably more like 20/200 which is considered legally blind. Add to that another problem that developed over the year, which was bright environments and especially bright shinning towards me cause a drastic reduction in contrast, the light doesn't have to go into the eye, all it only has to touch the front or cornea of the eye to casuse the washing out effect. I've been through three doctors this year, not because they can't do anything to help me but because they either don't or won't do anything. One doctor just sat there and watched my vision go from 20/60 to 20/200 and never once said anything to me about or changed the regimen of treatment even though it was obvious the current regimen wasn't working.

From a computer use aspect it means I need to go to a much lower resolution, the problem is that while I like the new widescreen LCD monitors none of them appear to support a widescreen format once you go below 1,100 or 1,200 in the X resolution or 768 in the Y resolution, below that they all revert to 4:3 format which doesn't look good on a widescreen monitor. So as much as I'll hate to do it, I may be forced back to the 4:3 format.

At least there are several good brands that still make LCD monitors in the 4:3 format. Then again if I can find a good one it my be worthwhile to get a CRT monitor to escape the native resolution bull crap.

[Zach]

Asus and Samsung make good Monitors for sure..

You may want to look at a CRT however.. or maybe even a projector?

With both of those your display will scale and look decent to any resolution supported, however with LCD's if you run them below the native resolution then of course it will either letterbox it, or try and stretch it..

The lowest 16:9 resolution seems to be 854x480 but I don't think you'll find a Monitor that can do that. I found a total of 1 on Newegg that was out of stock and did 800x480 Link Here

Do you think you could tolerate 1366x768? That is a pretty low widescreen resolution and about the lowest you will find on any decent sized monitor..

Otherwise I recommend buying a 4:3 Trinitron (Sony) or something of similar caliber.. If we're talking 800x600 or 1024x768 here. 1280x1024 is 5:4 so you should probably avoid it since you have enough vision issues without sorting the difference between working on 4:3 or 16:9 content on a 5:4 Monitor. Although I have an old Samsung I replaced with another Samsung (23" LED backlit LCD) that was 19" 1280x1024 and it was pretty nice, although terrible at scaling lower resolutions up.

It would help to know what your desired specs are

[GWarner]

I'm not sure what wpecifications I'll end up with but I can tell you what I have now.first of all projectors are out, my reading distance is around 8 inches and the projection on the wall would have to be quite large that it would not hold the hole screen.

Until this problem began with 20/60 vision I had my 22 inch widescreen monitor set to 1280 x 768, the monitor will also do 1280 x 720 but that is just shadow boxed into a 1280 x 768 resolution. The monitor's native resolution is 1920 x 1200 and even though I'm running it at a lower resolution it does a respectable job of scaling the image without generating scaling problems most monitors would have, expecially with text. Of course I paid almost twice the average price for a 22 inch widescreen to get that kind of image quality.

Anyway, back to the question, I have been running this 22 inch widescreen at 1280 x 768 which is comparible to a 19 inch 4:3 CRT at 1024 x 768 which is what I had before I got this LCD moitor. It's usable with a little difficulty if I magnify it by 50% or make the image 1.5 times larger. If I magify it by 100% or make it twice as large it's usable with no difficulty.

[TomS]

What OS are you using?
On Windows 7 (at least, maybe earlier versions have it, too) there's an option to upscale everything to 125%.

Win7: System control -> Icon with monitor and color-fan (I don't know how they call the groups in english) -> Display (second from the top)

[GWarner]

I am running Windows XP and it has that feature, and I've tried it, it does work but unfortunately not all programs recognize it or support it.

So that is why I feel the most reliable and best way to approach the problem is to leave the DPI setting alone and change the resolution instead. That always works the way you would expect it to.

From my first message, if I could find widescreens that supported them two resolutions on a 22 inch monitor that might work for me are 1024 x 640 or 960 x 600.

[Rook Zimbabwe]

In windows 7 my ACER 24inch runs at 800X600 (the fullscreen of my POS program) but not gracefully!

[Trond]

Your description of 20/60, 20/20 and so on are simply wrong. It's not related to millimeters. If you got this information from an eye doctor, you need a different one!

Such a pair of numbers is used together with a standardised chart. The first number (20) is how long away you're standing from the chart. The second number is the smallest line number on the chart that you can read.
The lines are numbered after how long away from the chart a person with normal vision can be and still read it. So a person with normal vision can read the 10 line from 10 feet, the 20 line from 20 feet, the 50 line from 50 feet and so on.

When your vision is 20/20, it means when you stand 20 feet away you can read the line that can be read from 20 feet if you have normal vision.

When your vision is 20/60, it means when you stand 20 feet away you can read the line that can be read from 60 feet if you have normal vision.

20/200 is not anywhere close to legally blind and can easily be corrected with glasses. Also it does not lead to lack of contrast. Only if your vision is 20/200 after the correction with glasses or contact lenses you are legally blind.

If the cause of your poor vision is myopia then the doctors didn't change the treatment because there is no treatment for myopia.

[GWarner]

Your description of 20/60, 20/20 and so on are simply wrong. It's not related to millimeters. If you got this information from an eye doctor, you need a different one!

You are right. I don't know where I got that information, but to me it seemed accurate because I'd always believed that science prefered precise and repeatable measure ments. And everyone know there is no preciise description for what is normal in any subject But to me surprise, apparently vision acuity measurements are subjective rather than precise simply because they use the variable value of normal.

At any rate your description of the ywo numbers in vision acuity measurements means is correct.

20/200 is not anywhere close to legally blind and can easily be corrected with glasses. Also it does not lead to lack of contrast. Only if your vision is 20/200 after the correction with glasses or contact lenses you are legally blind.

That is where you are wrong. When most people hear about someone with vision problems the first thing they think is, "Why don't they get glasses?" as if glasses were some miracle cure'all for whatever ails your vision, they aren't. There are lot's of problems you can have with your eyes that affect your vision that won't help you with. And yes 20/200 vision may be a long way from being totally blind but here in the US if your best corrected vision so 20/200, for all practical purposes and intents you are considered blind.

If the cause of your poor vision is myopia then the doctors didn't change the treatment because there is no treatment for myopia.

Maybe so but wouldn't you expect a doctor to tell you you have myopia instead of saying nothing at all? And that is my point the doctors I've been through so far weren't telling me anything about my eye problems or what my treatment options myight be. When your vision is failing would you continue going to those doctors?

But none of this helps me to find a monitor I can use comfortably with my vision.

[Trond]

20/200 is not anywhere close to legally blind and can easily be corrected with glasses. Also it does not lead to lack of contrast. Only if your vision is 20/200 after the correction with glasses or contact lenses you are legally blind.

That is where you are wrong. When most people hear about someone with vision problems the first thing they think is, "Why don't they get glasses?" as if glasses were some miracle cure'all for whatever ails your vision, they aren't. There are lot's of problems you can have with your eyes that affect your vision that won't help you with. And yes 20/200 vision may be a long way from being totally blind but here in the US if your best corrected vision so 20/200, for all practical purposes and intents you are considered blind.

That's what I said: if your corrected vision is 20/200 you are legally blind. But almost no one with a corrected vision of 20/200 have a vision of 20/200. I have a vision of 20/200, but my corrected vision is 20/20.

If the cause of your poor vision is myopia then the doctors didn't change the treatment because there is no treatment for myopia.

Maybe so but wouldn't you expect a doctor to tell you you have myopia instead of saying nothing at all? And that is my point the doctors I've been through so far weren't telling me anything about my eye problems or what my treatment options myight be. When your vision is failing would you continue going to those doctors?

No, I wouldn't. If you have 20/200 vision without correction that glasses can't correct even for a fixed distance, it means you have some kind of eye disease, so I would switch doctors until one could diagnose it.

But none of this helps me to find a monitor I can use comfortably with my vision.

I'm not sure of exactly what you're looking for. An expensive option would be to buy a high-end widescreen and run at half resolution. There are some expensive and huge (30") ones which support 2560x1600 resolution. If you run it half the resolution you will get 1280x800. The reason you want exactly half is that else the picture becomes blurry. But with half the resolution, it shouldn't.
Also you could try Windows 7: it has a more sophisticated dpi control than Vista and XP. So it can scale up non-dpi-aware applications.

[GWarner]

Probably the best solution for me will be to abandon widescreen and go back to a LCD or CRT monitor in 4:3 format.

Widescreen is great but it isn't supported at the lower resolutions.

[Zach]

I think you also need to consider a trip to the Mayo Clinic if you truly cannot find a doctor who will even tell you what's wrong.


What would be really f'ed up is if this weren't even caused by your eyes, but by a tumor or something putting preassure on nerves, or god knows what else.

[Tenaja]

32" LCD televisions have become much more affordable recently; I have successfully used one for a monitor for presentations, and it works great.

[GWarner]

I think you also need to consider a trip to the Mayo Clinic if you truly cannot find a doctor who will even tell you what's wrong

Actually, I'm considering a trip to Florida and St. Lukes Eye center, they are considered to be the best eye care center in the country and my folks likve about 30 minutes away from it, plus they have a local office in the town they live in. It was St. Lukes who did the initial diagnosis and evaluation of my glaucoma when it was first discovered.

What would be really f'ed up is if this weren't even caused by your eyes, but by a tumor or something putting preassure on nerves, or god knows what else.

St. Lukes had thought of that and had MRI scans of my eyes perferformed, they found nothing intruding into the eye socket that would account for my elevated eye presure.

A few years ago a frind of mine's wife has frequent heart spells where her pulse rate would run dangerously high for 15 to 30 minutes, then settle back down, durring these spells she felt pain in her chest and often felt fatigued. After most of a year of these spells and many visits to her cardiologist who said he could find nothing wrong and kept prescribing these pills, my friend decided that the cause might just be the pills his wife was taking so he told her to stop taking them. These heart spells were common, at least once a week and often two times a week, but after being off the pills she had not had a single hear spell in two months! They went back to his wife's cardiologist, he had nothing to say except that she needed to be back on those pills. My friend who was never one to hold any punches told the doctor what he could do with his pills and they left. They found another cardiologist that agreed with them that the pills the first doctor was prescribing was completely wrong for his wife, he prescribed a different pill that as my friend says, seems to be helping without causing those heart spells.

So I wouldn't be surprised if there are treatments that can help me that my last two doctors, for whatever reasons, didn't want to try or even offer to me as an option. You see, I believe (hope) that a large part of my eye problems is from side effects of the drops I'm taking for glaucoma, but my past doctors have always been relictant to trying something else to see if I'm more tollerant of it than I am my current drops.

32" LCD televisions have become much more affordable recently; I have successfully used one for a monitor for presentations, and it works great.

Unfortunately 32 inches is entirely too big for a computer monitor I have to be 8 incnes or so away from to read. of course any monitor but a very small one would seem big to most people if they had to be 8 inches away from it.

It appears that CRT monitors have all gone the way of the dinosaurs, the only place I can find them is on the used market, so I guess I'm stuck with LCD. I have found one LCD monitor that might be ideal, it's a 19 inch screen in a 4:3 aspect ratio and even has LED backlights. LEDs are a plus I'll take, not a necessity I have to have. Now if I could find a 21 incher, that would be ideal. Back when I still had a CRT monitor it was a 19 inch and I was considering going to a 21 inch when I instead got my current 22 inch widescreen. Back then I was thinking of making 1024 x 768 graphics a little bigger and easier to read, now I'd be looking at meybe not having to reduce the resolution quite so much though that may be a moot point considering what resolutions the monitor might support.

LCDs may be great, but to someone like me who can't use their native resolution, they are a terrible display technology compared to CRTs.