Marquee Screen Resolution

[bradical]

Hi everyone,

I am building an arcade cabinet, and after discovering Launchbox, I have decided to use Big Box as the front end. Part of the reason I loved Big Box was because I can use another monitor as a marquee screen and added that to my idea for the next build. So now that I'm getting parts for that build, I found a screen cheap enough that was close to the size I needed for the build and grabbed it off ebay.

The problem is, physically it is a really weird proportion compared to most monitors, 1280x390. Windows 10 defaults to 1280x720 for this monitor and the only other options are 1024x600 and 800x600 as far as it is concerned. This obviously looks really bad on it, 1280 pixels are fine but vertically, it's basically compressing 720 lines down to 390 actual lines smashing the whole image. My first action was to get a program called CRU ( Custom Resolution Utility). Didn't work. Tried messing around in the windows registry. Didn't do anything at all, nothing changed. Looked up the controller board for the screen, no documentation of changing resolutions, and as far as windows cares, it's just a regular VGA input, has no idea it's supposed to be a thin little lcd for showing old marquees.

Of course, this isn't a Bigbox problem, but I was hoping it could be a solution. The only goal for the screen is to get it to display an image on Bigbox that looks good, I really don't care what actual resolution it is at. Is there any way I can edit a theme or something to do that?

[Retro808]

You should be able to edit the xml for the theme you are using. In this thread users were able to edit and get marquee images set up properly on custom cut lcd screens. You should be able to do the same. I would say post in that thread and maybe Retrohumanoid or one of the others that have done this can assist. 

[bradical]

Thanks for the response. I had stumbled upon that thread a while back before I was even having issues, but it seemed to more address the alignment of the image, since the custom cut lcds only utilize part of the former screen it was cut from. Still there might be something I can figure out from it. At the moment though, I seem to have solved the issue within windows using CRU. Seems it does not like being run from the user folder because it's working now from the root of the hard drive. Sometimes it is the smallest things... Anyway, marquee images are looking fantastic now.

[Stevenoj]

On 10/6/2018 at 3:05 PM, bradical said:

Thanks for the response. I had stumbled upon that thread a while back before I was even having issues, but it seemed to more address the alignment of the image, since the custom cut lcds only utilize part of the former screen it was cut from. Still there might be something I can figure out from it. At the moment though, I seem to have solved the issue within windows using CRU. Seems it does not like being run from the user folder because it's working now from the root of the hard drive. Sometimes it is the smallest things... Anyway, marquee images are looking fantastic now.

bradical,

I also have the LTA149B780F 1280x390 screen.  Can you post the details of how you set up Custom Resolution Utility (CRU) to get it to work?  When I create the 1280x390 resolution it looks condensed on the screen vertically and ends up looking worse than Windows 10 default of 1280x720.

Thanks!

 

Edited May 23, 2019 by Stevenoj

[ColyWobbles]

+1 here can you explain how you sorted this as I have the exact same LCD panel

thanks in advance Colin

[bradical]

I don't think I ever got it working crystal clear, but I got it to stop stretching it to a standard resolution. I know I used a program called custom resolution utility to change the resolution to the actual size of the LCD. I had problems getting CRU to work at first and I don't remember what I did to fix it. It wasn't perfect as the picture on it was kind of compressed looking, but looked fine for Marquee images in bigbox.

Overall, I was happy with it when I tested it but I haven't actually used it in a cabinet build like I was planning to yet. Sorry if this wasn't the response you were looking for.

[Reaperxero]

In case someone searches this and is having issues. To fix this, go through Custom Resolution Utility and set your resolution 1280x390 . The trick is making sure you plug in the refresh rate at 68hz. I will not recognize 60. Don't forget to restart once you do this. When you boot up go into (in my case the nvidia control panel) in the section of custom, you should see the one you created. 

Edited March 1, 2020 by Reaperxero

[andrusha88]

I got the same screen - I was able to get the resolution perfect through NVIDIA control panel but now big box won't display the marquee just a black screen. But when I change the resolution to 720 it does show. Did anyone have a similar issue?

[TheUrbanDragon]

On 2/15/2021 at 6:39 AM, andrusha88 said:

I got the same screen - I was able to get the resolution perfect through NVIDIA control panel but now big box won't display the marquee just a black screen. But when I change the resolution to 720 it does show. Did anyone have a similar issue?

Seeing the exact same issue - I've got one of the little Lenovo Thinksense PCs running my Bartop cabinet with the Intel 4600 Graphics adapter - BigBox is fine if I leave it at 1280x720 but doesn't display the marquee if I create a custom resolution of 1280x390 @68hz (or 60hz) using the Intel utility - Windows otherwise seems to be fine with the custom res though.

[andrusha88]

8 hours ago, TheUrbanDragon said:

Seeing the exact same issue - I've got one of the little Lenovo Thinksense PCs running my Bartop cabinet with the Intel 4600 Graphics adapter - BigBox is fine if I leave it at 1280x720 but doesn't display the marquee if I create a custom resolution of 1280x390 @68hz (or 60hz) using the Intel utility - Windows otherwise seems to be fine with the custom res though.

I was able to “fix” the issue by setting the resolution x2. So I set up a custom resolution with same aspect ratio of the screen so I took 720 divided by 390 got 1.85 then multiplied 1280 x 1.85 and set the resolution to 2364x720 and it works on 68hz.

[andrusha88]

Just now, andrusha88 said:

 

I was able to “fix” the issue by setting the resolution x2. So I set up a custom resolution with same aspect ratio of the screen so I took 720 divided by 390 got 1.85 then multiplied 1280 x 1.85 and set the resolution to 2364x720 and it works on 68hz.

Here is the result

[TheUrbanDragon]

Thanks!  That did get it sorted out - I had to use the Custom Resolution Utility from here to get the setting to work, for some reason it wouldn't show if I created it with the Intel utility but works perfectly fine with the CRU and BigBox is displaying properly without me having to go adjust a lot of PNG files manually.her

[andrusha88]

1 hour ago, TheUrbanDragon said:

Thanks!  That did get it sorted out - I had to use the Custom Resolution Utility from here to get the setting to work, for some reason it wouldn't show if I created it with the Intel utility but works perfectly fine with the CRU and BigBox is displaying properly without me having to go adjust a lot of PNG files manually.her

Glad you got it man it was driving me crazy so I had to get creative

[Fujur411]

On 3/1/2020 at 12:35 PM, Reaperxero said:

In case someone searches this and is having issues. To fix this, go through Custom Resolution Utility and set your resolution 1280x390 . The trick is making sure you plug in the refresh rate at 68hz. I will not recognize 60. Don't forget to restart once you do this. When you boot up go into (in my case the nvidia control panel) in the section of custom, you should see the one you created. 

This saved me! the 68Hz was the thing to use - I was using 60 hz and it was failing. Now successfully using it with Lubuntu.