Cleartype?

It's supposed to happen; ClearType works by aliasing at the subpixel level. However, it's not supposed to be very noticeable unless you're really up close and can see individual subpixels. It's possible that your monitor may display subpixels in a different order than the standard, so you may want to try the ClearType tuner.

hope that helps,

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Original post by agi_shi Anyways, the letters have small r/g/b (either one of those) colors to them if you look closely... So is this supposed to happen?

Yes. ClearType does sub-pixel anti-aliasing based on the arrangement of the RGB elements in your monitor.

Cleartype looks horrible on low quality CRTs. On others it looks very good, better even than on some LCDs (for example on my 19'' CRT from NEC it looks way better than on the 17'' widescreen of my laptop - and they are both top-grade monitors).

Do try cleartype tuner. Playing with the dark-light setting should do the trick.

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Original post by Fiddler Cleartype looks horrible on low quality CRTs. On others it looks very good, better even than on some LCDs (for example on my 19'' CRT from NEC it looks way better than on the 17'' widescreen of my laptop - and they are both top-grade monitors).

There is absolutely no reason to use ClearType on any CRTs, unless you actually want muddy, blurry text.

I used Cleartype on my old CRT and much preferred it to regular Windows anti-aliasing. It may be designed for LCDs but I personally liked it on that CRT (it was a very high quality CRT running at very high resolution for the size of the display). From the official ClearType FAQ:

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Q. Will ClearType improve text display on CRT monitors? A. Yes, but less so than with LCD displays. Because a standard cathode-ray tube (CRT) screen uses an electron beam to activate pixels, ClearType does not provide the same benefits that you experience on an LCD screen. However, because ClearType still applies a form of filtering similar to traditional antialiasing, you may see some improvement when enabling ClearType on a CRT screen.

I suspect it looks better than regular Windows anti-aliasing (at least to some eyes, mine included) because the anti-aliasing routine underlying ClearType is just better than the standard Windows one, even if you're not using an LCD and getting the benefit from the offset colour elements.

I have a 19" monitor and I keep cleartype off. It just makes the text look blury, not smooth. I have a nice monitor too, its a Samsung SyncMaster 914v.

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Original post by mattnewport Q. Will ClearType improve text display on CRT monitors? A. Yes, but less so than with LCD displays. Because a standard cathode-ray tube (CRT) screen uses an electron beam to activate pixels, ClearType does not provide the same benefits that you experience on an LCD screen. However, because ClearType still applies a form of filtering similar to traditional antialiasing, you may see some improvement when enabling ClearType on a CRT screen.

Huh, that is surprising. I didn't know that ClearType would antialias text which normally wouldn't be antialiased.

You know, I may be dreaming this up, but the more I look at ClearType the more it appears to me that all it does is shift type over 1/3rd of a pixel.

Hmm... Thanks guys, and also thanks for the tuner powertoy. I'll try it out.

From far away (my normal position) it's not visible, but just wondering, if, you know, my monitor is functioning incorrectly (this is my first LCD, among the fact that it's a widescreen [never used a normal lcd] [grin]).

As for my opinion, on my old 17" eMachines CRT, it looks HORRIBLE. HORRIBLE. Though I must say, kudos to th ClearType makers, on LCD monitors it makes the text thicker and no so jaggy, very readable.

Stupid question, how do I open the cleartype tuner once installed [lol]?

No icon, no start menu (even under "Microsoft Powertoys", only TweakUI is there), and no Program Files folder for the tuner... [grin]?

Control Panel.

Or google 'ClearType' and near the top should be the web-based ClearType tuner.

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Original post by Sneftel There is absolutely no reason to use ClearType on any CRTs, unless you actually want muddy, blurry text.

Not sure why that is - the individual red, green and blue dots for each pixel are slightly offset (admittedly not as badly as an LCD, as they are in a triangle rather than a straight line), and it still works wonderfully.