laptop screen and projector resolutions do not match - Going round in circles.

[edutech4schools]

Hi,

 

We have just got some new laptops, installed Win 10 on them and handed out to staff but the image on the smartboard from the projector is letter box and the text is almost unreadable. The laptop is using a resolution of 1366 x 763 and I think the smartboard / projector likes a resolution of 1024 x 765. Switching them around in the graphics properties just makes the other one look good and the the one that did look good looks awful.

 

They currently connect using a VGA cable but we do have a port for HDMI, would this help?

 

Any ideas how I can make them both OK or at least usable.

 

Cheers

[sted]

depends on the laptop but essentially one will always look wrong or have black borders as one resolution is 16:9(or 16:10) the other is 4:3. So if it looks right on the non widescreen projector it will either have black borders down the sides or be stretched to fill the screen on the laptop. If its right on the laptop you will either have a projector image missing the edge or in letterbox format.

 

the only real solutions are to a. put up with 1 looking weird or 2 use extended rather than clone mode

 

hdmi would make no odds

[3s-gtech]

You need

a) Projectors with at least a widescreen resolution, if not natively the same as the laptop

b) Laptops with 4:3 screens (which are near impossible to find)

 

Really, your screens need to be matched. When we last refreshed the projectors, we bought widescreen ones only - the few 4:3 ones that remained were matched with older 4:3 monitors. It's a nightmare otherwise, and certainly doesn't give a good viewing experience for the users.

 

Obviously, this has a big cost implication. In the meantime, you may have to stretch the image on the laptop display or just use the inner 1024 pixels to match the projector. You can't meet both criteria at once. If you connect via HDMI you should find that the laptop detects the projector resolution automatically, but that won't change the fact that the numbers don't match.

[Steve21]

Set the laptops to whatever the display option for the smartboard is, and then disable scaling/stretching in the Intel drivers. (Unless you like it on)

 

We use that for all VGA models using 4:3 projectors on 16:10 screens.

 

Adds the black bars onto the monitor as mentioned but looks normal

 

Steve

[TronXP]

And remember your smartboard is probably 4:3 so getting a widescreen projector will mean that the image does not fill the entire board, you can buy widescreen smartboards but the costs soon mount up.

[sted]

And remember your smartboard is probably 4:3 so getting a widescreen projector will mean that the image does not fill the entire board, you can buy widescreen smartboards but the costs soon mount up.

 

at this point if you need to do widescreen and your projectors and boards are 4:3 id be tempted to start looking at tv style smartboards rather than new boards and projectors

[TronXP]

which is exactly what we are doing

[GuyJD]

There should be a button on your projector remote labeled Aspect or Aspect ratio, if you press that is should be able to switch it to 4:3 then when you connect the laptop to it, the laptop should recognise it's connected to a 4:3 output and automatically switch the output resolution to match, this will mean that the laptop screen has black lines down either side but it will change back to 16:9 when the VGA connector is disconnected.

[OxfordBlue]

best not to mirror as you wont get native resolution on both, aspect forcing may help scale, but text could look a little odd as out of native.

 

if you can extend the desktop, and set both resolutions to the native (W10 also allows spanning of touch for later touchscreens).

 

failing that SMARTboard only. but defeats the object of having laptops.