How to force letterboxing on the display

displaydisplay-settings

What I want to do:

I want to put vertical letterboxes on the sides of my widescreen display to run a 4:3 resolution while maintaining the native pixel-for-pixel aspect ratio and scaling: my display is 1360×768, and I would like to end up with a desktop of 1024×768 with two 168-pixel-wide letterboxes occupying the remainder. N.B. I am reluctant to accept third-party software as a solution.

What I've got:

  • Windows 7 Home Premium
  • EVGA GeForce GTX 460 SE
  • NVIDIA Control Panel version 7.7.760.0

The display is a Dynex LCD DVD/TV combo DX-22LD150A11. It is using VGA input, which is provided through a hardware DVI adapter into a VGA cable (it has coax, VGA, HDMI, component, and USB inputs). It reports its native resolution to Windows as 1024×768, but most games detect native as 1360×768 (which corroborates what I found online in a service manual).

What I tried:

The NVIDIA Control Panel:

screenshot

has a setting called "Adjust desktop size and position".

  • The scaling setting aspect ratio claims, and I quote, "Stretches the
    desktop as much as possible to fit the display while maintaining the
    aspect ratio. If the desktop has a different aspect ratio than the
    display, there may be black bands around the desktop."     That is
    precisely what I want, however when I change my resolution from
    1360×768 to 1024×768, it stretches to fill my 16:9 display area
    anyways. It is also ineffective if I change my resolution first, then
    apply this scaling. I suspect this is because the control panel
    believes the monitor's native resolution to be 1024×768, which is
    quite noticeably and obviously not the actual native resolution of
    the display: I have tried many resolutions, including 1024×768 and
    1366×768 and 1360×768 is the only resolution that does not blur any
    pixels. However, if that suspicion is correct, then it should
    letterbox if enter 1024×768 resolution, enable scaling, and then set
    a lower resolution (e.g., 800×600), it does not letterbox, instead
    stretching the desktop even worse.
  • The scaling setting no scaling claims "The display image remains the original size and is centered on your display screen. This may result in small, but crisp, image. The remaining area around the image is surrounded by black bars." This sounds similar to aspect ratio, but that it would be willing to letterbox both horizontally and vertically together; but it doesn't work either.

Best Answer

For anyone googling this in the future and wanting an answer...

If you have Nvidia Control Panel, go to Display > Adjust desktop size and position

Go to the size tab, select a custom resolution that's native to your display (in either height or width) but with one side adjusted to 'fit' the target ratio.

In the case of 1920x1080 to 4:3 this would be 1440x1080.

Then, in the Scaling tab select the following:

"Select a scaling mode:" - Aspect Ratio

"Perform scaling on:" - GPU

Check off the override option.

Now if you load up a 4:3 game and go full screen, you'll maintain the black bars on the sides.

Cheers.

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