Widescreen display
Hi, I'm a soon to be mac newbie (waiting for my mac mini to arrive). Is the mac mini optomized for widescreen or letterbox display? Or is it simply a matter of plugging in the monitor and tweaking the resolution with the SwitchRes software that is often mentioned in this discussion group?
I am looking for a new monitor and am wondering whether to buy a 20 inch LCD widescreen or a regular 19 or 20 inch LCD display.
Other than for watching movies, what advantages does a widescreen monitor have?
mac mini
mac mini
Hello,
It is not optimized for either type of display. Rather, it just displays in the format compatible with the monitor you connect to it.
So, just buy whichever you like.
I've used a 15-inch standard LCD at 1024x768, a 17-inch CRT at 1280x1024, and a 19-inch wide-screen at 1440x900.
My mini has automatically detected each of them, and displayed everything properly. It doesn't care what type of monitor it is. It just detects it, and displays in the proper orientation. And, it will fill the screen. No black boxes around your screen.
As for advantages of the wide-screen, I like to have more than one program running at the same time, and have both of them side-by-side on my screen. With a wide-screen, I can do that and have both windows fully visible. With a standard screen, there would likely be some overlap unless the windows were very narrow.
I hope this helps.
Let us know if you have other questions.
P.S., if you'd like, go ahead and click the "Helpful" or "Solved" buttons on any of the posts / replies above if you feel they were helpful or adequately answered your question.
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I THINK that the problem is with the ATI card in the iMac being annoying and not wanting to do widescreen through VGA, if anyone has any ideas/advice on what might work to get this sorted please get in touch.Some general background info that may help reduce the confusion (or at least help explain why it exists):
• As explained in this Wikipedia article,"VGA" specifically refers to an analog video computer display standard introduced by IBM in the 1990's with a resolution no greater than 640 X 480 pixels, but in common use "VGA" has become a generic term for any of the modern analog video computer display resolution standards that use the analog VGA connector, or for the connector itself.
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