Suggestions for resolution(s) on emulators

[greenpuddin]

EDIT - Resolution:

Turns out the correct resolution I was looking for was 1366 x 768. I took up the suggestion from this thread on Toms Hardware (after reading the second to last post, I Googled around and found more people confirming this). The good news: on the newer LG TV I have, everything ran smooth and superb. The bad news: the old TV could only recognize a few emulators, and GameEx still expanded in the middle. Chances are if you have a more "recent" television (say, within the past three or four years) and it recognizes 1366 x 768, give it a shot. Most likely they are made to see those kind of resolutions. I'm running an ASUS VivoPC-VM40B-02, I realize it isn't the most amazing chipset and Intel HD is pretty bad in general but I grabbed it for the form factor, not having to build and hey if my specs are this bad and everything works it's bound to work on whatever you are running

-----Original Post-----

Hello! Just want to preface this a bit; I know I'm new (registered today), I did read over the FAQs (could have missed this) and checked other forums (also checked for where to post this) and didn't see anything. This sort of attributes to GameEx, but more to emulators in general.

Here's what I have going on; I bought GameEx (good job to whoever made it seriously), has been working fantastically on my Dell u3011 monitor with whatever I throw at it. I'm not playing MAME on it yet, I'm focusing on making my box a portable retro console box (small form factor box, easy for travel etc). This pertains more to GameEx, Project64, etc.

I figure that since I'll be using HDMI out, I would be safe to set up the box to output to 720p (1280x720) as (again assuming here) most TV's would pick up on this.

Well, not quite.

My monitor, no problem. I plugged my box into an older 55 inch we have here that goes up to 1080i. Surely 720p wouldn't be an issue (as that is what we had our PS3 set to on here), turns out that forcing GameEx to run at that resolution expands out the theme a bit, as in you can't see the top half and bottom of it but can navigate lists since my theme has it the list in the middle (I can take a picture if I'm not making sense). What I'm trying to say is that it's not quite scaling, or perhaps going over. Project64, you could hear the sounds but there was no display.

Tried this on a month old LG TV we have around here, same result on GameEx. On Project64, the Rice plugin I have set up changed it to a very tiny box in the middle of the screen.

A lot of the old console stuff (NES, SNES, Genesis) worked with that resolution set. Fusion would not do so on the old TV, but the LG picked it up fine.

So I come to you nice people and ask, is there an all around resolution / setting you suggest for something like this, a portable GameEx box with emulators most likely going on many different televisions for travel? Or is this going to flub? Thanks.

EDIT: To clarify a bit, I have Windows set in the backround to go to 1280x720, GameEx to specifically set itself on 1280x720 on boot (which I have going with the sheller program), and every emulator is set up to go to 1280x720 when a game is launched.

[MNMax21]

I think my TV just defaulted to this resolution with the hdmi output from my GeForce card. Good to know its right.

[Draco1962]

You may also want to look at the actual theme aspect ratio. Some themes will stretch to fill in the difference if the aspect ratio is not the same as the monitor upon which it is displayed.

Here is a decent guide as a reference:

[greenpuddin]

  On 7/16/2014 at 10:56 AM, Draco1962 said:

You may also want to look at the actual theme aspect ratio. Some themes will stretch to fill in the difference if the aspect ratio is not the same as the monitor upon which it is displayed.

Here is a decent guide as a reference:

Vector_Video_Standards2.svg.png

Think I'm running the default theme that comes/starts with GameEx, the media one (can't check I'm at work atm). Yeah yeah I know I'm boring

Good reference chart though, thanks for the replies guys.