Monitor seems a little blurry

[wolfman]

I just bought a new tower (Windows 7) and hooked it up to the monitor, and the print seems just a little bit blurry. It isn't bad, but after I made sure I didn't have a beer, the print seems just a little off. Is there something on the monitor I should adjust, or is there something under control panel I should be using on Windows?

[Allan]

Flat panel or crt? DVI or VGA?

[wolfman]

Not sure. It's a 17 inch LCD flat panel Viewsonic VA720. Hope this helps. Thanks

[jason2074]

You could try pressing the menu button of your monitor for the menu page to appear. Use Auto adjust or on your desired Color/Image settings. Then on your OS resolution settings or background. You could also first try other monitor before making any adjustment to check the difference.

[Kurtiskain]

Some monitors (especially LCDs) have a native resolution, that everything is the sharpest in. doing a quick search shows...

Give your eyes the pleasure of watching clear pictures and images thanks to the high 450:1 contrast ratio of the Viewsonic VA720. The native resolution of 1280x1024...

So please ensure your monitor is in 1280x1024 and not 800x600 or some other small resolution.

right click your desktop, set resolution. I belive this is the way Win 7 has it. I am on holiday and only have a vista machine for refence

[Allan]

What color is the cable connecting the display to the computer, blue or white? Also, try adjusting the cleartype settings (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/tune.aspx)

[Computer_Commando]

... It's a 17 inch LCD flat panel Viewsonic VA720...

I have a similar Viewsonic, which is 1280 x 1024 native resolution, same as yours.
Print (text) will look as you describe at any other resolution.  It's normal for LCD displays, not an issue for CRT's.

[Allan]

It's normal for LCD displays, not an issue for CRT's.

I beg to differ. I have a whole bunch of lcd screens and because my old eyes don't care for small type, I don't use the native resolution for any of them - in fact, for the most part they all are set a different resolutions. And the type is perfectly clear on all of them.

[Computer_Commando]

I beg to differ. I have a whole bunch of lcd screens and because my old eyes don't care for small type, I don't use the native resolution for any of them - in fact, for the most part they all are set a different resolutions. And the type is perfectly clear on all of them.

Perfectly clear for you, maybe.
Some notice the difference & some don't.  Just because you don't see a difference doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_resolution, which reads, in part;
...The native resolution of a LCD, LCoS or other flat panel display refers to its single fixed resolution. As an LCD display consists of a fixed raster, it cannot change resolution to match the signal being displayed as a CRT monitor can, meaning that optimal display quality can be reached only when the signal input matches the native resolution..."

[Allan]

Yes, I know what the native resolution is, thank you . And the fact that a display is set to other than the native resolution does not mean that type will not be clear - to anyone. But I can see this isn't an argument that is going to have a "winner" so I suggest we agree to disagree and not get bogged down with it

[BC_Programmer]

And the fact that a display is set to other than the native resolution does not mean that type will not be clear - to anyone.

Yes. It does. It's the nature of the technology. Except in some very rare instances, such as using 640x480 on a 1280x960 screen, since that will simply make each pixel in the image take four pixels on the LCD.

Aside from that, if you reduce the resolution from the native resolution, you either get a "letterboxed" picture, or you get the "new" resolution stretched to fit the old one. This is done by the LCD- sometimes you can change it's options around to do one or the other. In the case of a stretched display, the pixels in the original resolution seldom map perfectly to pixels in the new image; the LCD tries to "compensate" by performing some sort of bilinear filtering on the pixels, but it doesn't help. particularly with an analog connection, the pixels that stretch to fractional pixel locations often "jitter".

Additionally, I find it curious that you would suggest the use of cleartype and additionally imply that you use cleartype at resolutions other then the native resolution, since the cleartype FAQ says the exact opposite of what you are saying:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartypefaq.mspx


Q.    When I turn on ClearType on my display, the text looks blurry. I thought ClearType made the text look sharper?

A.    If you are using a laptop display

Make sure your display is running at its native resolution. Check the user manual to find the resolution of the laptop's screen. If, for example, the screen is 1024 x 768 pixels, make sure Windows 'display properties' are set to 1024 x 768. In this example, if Windows display properties are set to 800 x 600 pixels then the laptop may rescale the screen, resulting in blurry text and icons, regardless of ClearType being on or off.

- If you are using a separate flat panel display

ClearType works best with flat panel displays that have a digital interface. Check your flat panel display manual to see if you are using a digital input. If your display's video cable plugs into a standard VGA connection in the back of your PC, then it's probably not using a digital interface. Also, make sure your display is running at its native resolution. Check the display's user manual to find the resolution of the screen. If, for example, the screen is 1024 x 768 pixels, make sure Windows 'display properties' are set to 1024 x 768. In this example, if Windows display properties are set to 800 x 600 pixels, then the screen may rescale the screen, resulting in a blurry text and icons, regardless of ClearType being on or off. If blurriness persists, you might want to check with the screen's manufacturer to see if the display conforms to the ClearType hardware guidelines issued in April 1999.

Not to mention cleartype simply doesn't work properly unless it has control of the "subpixels", which it can only get by using the native resolution. When cleartype thinks it's messing around with subpixels and performing subpixel aliasing it's actually just giving all the text a nice colourful fringe (depending on the scaling technology used). In fact, the entire purpose if adjustable DPI is specifically for this use case (larger more readable text). And it works rather well.

Now, if LCD panels would automatically upscale input resolutions to the native resolution using something like HQ4X, that would be great.


Lastly, changing the resolution to change text size is brute force. use the Native resolution and change your DPI settings so text is large enough to read.

[Allan]

Yes. It does. It's the nature of the technology. Except in some very rare instances, such as using 640x480 on a 1280x960 screen, since that will simply make each pixel in the image take four pixels on the LCD.

No, it doesn't. It simply means that nothing on the screen is being displayed optimally. As I said, text is not blurry to me - or anyone else using the systems - on which I do not use native resolution (literally a dozen or more systems). The text may not be "perfect" (based on native resolution settings), but it sure ain't blurry.

[BC_Programmer]

No, it doesn't.

Wether lower-than-native resolutions will cause blurry text is not always the case, sometimes it will, sometimes it won't. It will if you are using a Analog connection and the monitor doesn't have a particularly good resizing algorithm. Rather then simply pixel aliasing as you would get with "standard" resized display, you end up with artifacts from the attempt to "stretch" half of a pixel across two. This is made worse when you use not only a lower resolution but also one with a different aspect ratio.

additionally, I just changed my own resolution to 800x600.

And it looked blurry. No surprise there. Disabling cleartype actually made it easier to read, not harder. The blurryness is somewhat offset by the fact that the text is bigger, but I find it difficult to ignore the colourful rainbow that appears around every single piece of text when cleartype is on and I'm not using the native resolution, much as I can't ignore said rainbow when using a vertically-positioned LCD (where the subpixels are oriented in a way Cleartype doesn't expect).

While the question of wether it appears blurry when you use a lower-than-native resolution depends mostly on the stretching logic of the monitor (a digital interface providing the best result- as well as wether you are changing the aspect ratio) you cannot simply discount the fact that using the non-native resolution entirely supplants the very assumptions that cleartype is trying to use to- make text clearer. When you reduce the resolution, no longer is there a 1:1 relationship between a screen pixel and a device pixel, now when you draw a pixel you could be using up two or three pixels, and if you have a relatively crappy (or analog) LCD monitor possible a nice blur on the edges due to clock skew. The fact is Cleartype thinks it can address subpixels- for a single LCD pixel there are three "subpixels"- red green and blue. Cleartype controls these so as to essentially triple the horizontal resolution and attempt to make things clear- and it works, quite well in fact. But it simply doesn't work when you rip those assumptions out from under it. Suggesting that "cleartype can be used on non-native resolutions" is pure bollocks. This combined with the fact that the aspect ratio will be different (native res for their monitor is 1280x1024, whereas almost any other selection will undoubtedly be 640x480, and the default is 800x600; so if they are using 640x480 or 800x600 the LCD is stretching that 4:3 ration screen to 5:4 (1280x1024)  which only magnifies the "blurry text" effect you claim is nonexistent to anybody and that clearly I am demented when I just changed my resolution and I saw blurry text. You're implying that it's all in my head? that I have a special gift to make believe blurry text even when it isn't there?

[Allan]

You're implying that it's all in my head? that I have a special gift to make believe blurry text even when it isn't there?

On the contrary, you seem to be implying that I don't know blurry text from clear text.

[BC_Programmer]

On the contrary, you seem to be implying that I don't know blurry text from clear text.

Let me make that implication explicit then. Either that, or you are in fact using a higher DPI and not a lower resolution. Also, I've known plenty of people who can use monitors at 43hz and claim there is no flicker. 99.9% of the population would say they are wrong. Wether they do or do not see flicker is irrelevant, since even if they don't see it, it's there. Same goes for blurry text. In fact, I was running at a somewhat but not quite native resolution for a good few months at one point and I didn't really see a huge difference, in fact, aside from the sudden onset of frequent headaches nothing was any different. I actually thought it was me when I first noticed it then I realized that I wasn't seeing anything but the screen with that ever so subtle blur. In fact I blamed cleartype at first and shut it off which I thought was the problem since comparatively speaking the text cleared right up. I at some point later discovered I was running in a lower-than-native resolution and changed it and it was like those times you've been without your reading glasses for a while and think you can get along without them if you have enough tylenol but then you find them and put them on and you're like, "wow, I almost forgot how clear this makes things look" Basically, telling the difference between clear text and blurry text is a case of subjectivity. If you see text, you can't really "know" if it's blurry without comparing it to clearer text. (Unless it's like really really blurry to the point of being difficult to see). When I go from a LCD to a CRT- the CRT text looks blurry. Somebody using that CRT for years would probably find the text to be nice and clear. basically, if you run in the non-native resolution, you are probably looking at what people who are used to the native resolution would call "blurry text". Either way, as I noted before, reducing the resolution is a sort of silly way to get the same effects as a higher DPI setting.