Windows 8 font rendering looks weird on CRT monitor

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I am using a CRT monitor, for various reasons... But I am having a particular problem: some smaller text is being rendered in a very bizarre manner, for example the "C" on the first line of this text, is missing the bottommost pixels (thus it looks like a arc and a dot).

I tried disabling cleartype, enabling cleartype, tuning cleartype, nothing helps... I don't remember having this problems back in Windows 98 for example, so why font rendering is so bad on CRT and Win 8?

EDIT: the laptop rendering is not that great either. Also I tried disabling DPI and whatnot.

So far I saw a improvement in most apps by using "MacType" program, but the windows UI itself still look terrible, I've seen suggestions that it is because Windows up to XP used Tahoma, and now it uses Segoe, that was designed with high-res and cleartype and mind, thus looks terrible in low-res LCDs (like my laptop) and on CRTs.

speeder

Posted 2015-12-29T19:46:59.847

Reputation: 340

How many monitors are you using? It's might be a DPI scaling issue https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn469266%28v=vs.85%29.aspx#dpi_virtualization_and_scaling

– g2mk – 2015-12-29T19:54:34.730

I am using two monitors (a laptop monitor, 1366x768 and a CRT as "main monitor" 1280x960, in "extend desktop" mode) – speeder – 2015-12-29T19:58:52.727

Windows 8 or 8.1? System DPI <> monitors DPI? – g2mk – 2015-12-29T20:00:23.603

windows 8.1 (it updated to 8.1 forcefully, it quite pissed me off when it did that) – speeder – 2015-12-29T20:03:22.600

do you refer to Desktop rendering or the new "metro" UI/apps rendering? – magicandre1981 – 2015-12-30T06:30:02.913

Both. Windows 8+ use Segoe UI font on all UI "modes", and it looks bad in all of them on CRT screens. – speeder – 2016-05-20T17:29:53.920

Answers

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As you haven't provided your OS and monitors DPIs (CRT DPI) I guess that is DPI scaling issue for not DPI–aware and system–DPI aware applications.

If your OS DPI is other than monitor DPI:

  • Application windows are virtualized at OS DPI.
  • Application windows are scaled to monitor DPI before displaying on that monitor.

As scaling algorithm isn't ideal you probably lose a bottom text line.

You might try to match OS DPI to native CRT DPI [Windows 8.1 section] (which I guess is lower than laptop monitor DPI) but not DPI–aware and system–DPI aware applications will be scaled on your laptop monitor then.

g2mk

Posted 2015-12-29T19:46:59.847

Reputation: 1 278

Asked: 2015-12-29T19:46:59.847

Viewed: 160 times

Active: 2015-12-29T20:44:45.097