Blurry picture quality

Everything looks all stretched out and weird on my screen because I’ve got my PC hooked up to this TV that’s stuck at a 1024x768 resolution. Even though I have that specific resolution set in the settings, the image just looks totally squashed—you know, that annoying look you get when you try to force a 4:3 photo into a 16:9 widescreen layout

Is there some little software fix or a tiny utility out there to sort this mess out? Because honestly, none of the standard resolutions provided are doing anything right; the picture just refuses to look the way it's actually supposed to look

🕺

What kind of graphics card are you running, and what's the TV model? I'm going to need a few more details to really get a handle on this. Also, where are you getting the idea that the TV has a 1024x768 resolution? That's just not a thing—you won't find that resolution on any TV out there, whether it's an old-school CRT or a modern LCD.

Dell Inspiron with AMD Radeon graphics

So I’m getting this annoying message popping up every single time I boot up a game telling me my screen resolution is all messed up 🤷

shadowlynx102 said:What kind of graphics card are you running, and what's the TV model? I'm going to need a few more details to really get a handle on this. Also, where are you getting the idea that the TV has a 1024x768 resolution? That's just not a thing—you won't find that resolution on any TV out there, whether it's an old-school CRT or a modern LCD.

Man, look... his plasma setup basically has...

@darkmarlin16, you've got a TV running a resolution meant for a 15-inch LCD monitor with a 4:3 aspect ratio. But since yours is a widescreen, the ratio is more like 16:10, just stretched out over 43 inches.
Since a monitor is a PC's "natural habitat," this resolution is standard for 4:3 panels, and that's how the GPU handles the image and geometry. I have no clue how watching TV looks on that thing, but I'm guessing classic broadcasts are 4:3 and just look stretched (or "squashed" as you put it) if they fill the whole screen without cropping the top and bottom. Honestly, I don't even know what that specific TV can do regarding aspect ratios; you're probably best off judging by how old-school formats look versus modern 16:9 stuff.

The behavior you're describing is totally normal for a screen like that. It’s just displaying the same number of pixels as a 4:3 screen, but stretching them wider. That's why the geometry looks wonky.
You could try messing around with weird custom resolutions, but this is his native one. Lowering the resolution won't help because everything is already pretty low-res for a screen that big. You could maybe play with the "scan" settings on the TV, but you'll likely just lose more quality.
Bottom line? That's pretty much it. Take it or leave it...