Why can the monitor automatically set itself to any timing format?
Multimode monitors can measure the incoming sync signal frequencies and thus sync to any frequency within their range of operation. But the sync signals carry no information regarding the relationship of the video signal to the sync pulses. Each timing format, up until now, has had a unique definition of these parameters, and so it has not even been possible for the display to accurately ‘guess’ where the image might be, though modern displays do make an attempt to do this, based usually on the preset timing information that it does have.
