Question about the 17" LCDs

[henmaster]

I know these screens have a native resolution of 1280 x 1024, which they can display perfectly. My question is can they also display 1280 x 960 perfectly, which would mean the screen has black bars on the left an right rather than stretching the image.

I play a lot of starcraft, which has to be run in 640 x 480. I figure a monitor that can display 1280 x 960 perfectly can also display 640 x 480 perfectly by simply displaying each pixel 4 times. Can the 17" LCD's do this?

Why did they make the screen 5:4 anyway? I would much prefer the native rez to be 1280 x 960.

 

[Nestle]

Because LCDs are 5:4 they do not stretch the image at 1280x1024.

 

[JZilla]

I think you can choose whether to have the monitor stretch the image or to have black bars.

 

[henmaster]

Nestle: I know the 17" LCDs can display 1280x1024 without stretching, my question was whether they could display 1280x960 without stretching (meaning it has the black bars on the sides)

JZilla: That option would be a good one, thanks for the heads up.

Does anyone know if the option of stretching vs black bars is present on the Planar PX171M 17" and Hitachi CML 17" LCD's? Those are the ones I'm considering. Or even if they dont give you the option of stretching but just do black bars that would be fine. What I do not want is just stretching since that would screw up the picture alignment.