Comments on: Using HDTV as PC Monitor

By: Wiesbock

Wiesbock — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 05:08:16 +0000

I Bought Samsung 32’s series 5 a 1080p HDTV, i hooked up in my pc, with a VC geforce 8 8500gt evrything great though when i restart my pc i cant see the bios or anything.. it will be back to normal when it hits logon screen..

i cant dispose my old monitor because if something goes wrong or i wanted to format my pc, the tv goes blank.. from the start..

oh and is it wise to buy a hdmi to dvi cable? since hdmi is for high def .. right??

By: Random

Random — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:33:31 +0000

most people don’t realize this but 720p hdtvs are actually 768p to save on manufacturing costs…

By: Matt M.

Matt M. — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:00:17 +0000

Would any of you mind commenting on the text quality when using and HDTV as a monitor for general task work, e.g. web browsing, word processing, etc. My interest in this comes via the fact that I am legally blind. I use magnification software on my laptop at college, but my distance from the screen requires me to use very high levels that are inefficient and sometimes disorienting. I first considered an external monitor (22″ range) to set closer, but thought the resolution jump might diminish some of its benefits.

A 720p TV would closely match my current resolution, meaning the added size would directly increase the size of elements on-screen and I could use less magnification. The issue though would be clarity. Is there a great difference between a computer monitor and a TV used as one beyond the lower resolution and larger pixel size? Also, any recommendations of ones that work particularly well with this would be helpful. I am on a tight budget and looking at several 32″ models in the $4-600 range.

By: Pieter Eveleens

Pieter Eveleens — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:35:30 +0000

none of your articles ever mentions, if it ok to use lens cleaners, which we use in cleaning spectacles is also suitble to clean monitor screens

By: JCarr

JCarr — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 07:23:23 +0000

I too am looking into getting a mac mini and setting it up with a 32″ sharp aquos 1080p LCD tv. Really tryin to figure out if itll work or not… or, if i just got a 30″ HD monitor from apple would I be able to run my PS3 to it or HD Directv?

By: Frances S.

Frances S. — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 23:28:11 +0000

I’d like to hear from Claire S. about using a TV as a computer monitor and a TV. I’m looking to do something similar so that I can watch TV off the net. Did you get your system set up, what problems did you encounter, and how does it work?

I’m also not a techie.

By: Joe Messman

Joe Messman — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:36:45 +0000

I have a 42 inch plasma and my inputs are only HDMI, Component and lesser quality inputs. I tried to view my PC on the plama with a DVI to HDMI cable to no avial. I found out that with my ATI video card I could use a DVI to component adapter on the back of my PC an run it to the component input on my PC with a component video cable. Works great! The only thing is you have to scale it to 1216 X 680 wth the ATI control center and it is not at all intuitive. Even with that resolution it looks fantastic. I watch Netflix streaming movies on it and they are just fine. There are step by step instructions, but the language is not well written. Anyway, this works for various ATI Radeon cards. Here is the link to the device.
http://www.svideo.com/hdtvaiwr8500.html

By: John

John — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 10:21:05 +0000

if your tv came with a vga port it will automatically go to the native res and the picture will be great, i have an hdtv used as a monitor and the hdmi was grainy used the vga cable and it cleared the picture right up.

By: Matt (Velislide)

Matt (Velislide) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 11:12:28 +0000

I was over at a friends the other day, and seen one of those Vizio 32″ HD LCDs I was talking about, very very nice TVs, and the casing on them looks great. Also the inputs/outputs are all on the bottom, so you can have it flat against a wall, its a really well designed TV, and for only 600$ its a steal.

Highly recommend that Claire if your looking at spending that much for a HD TV, instead of a little 20″. If your thinking a 32″ is way too big for a PC monitor, thats what Im using and I love it, just have to set it back a little further and it looks GREAT.

By: Matt (Velislide)

Matt (Velislide) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 00:28:48 +0000

Finally have fixed my HDTV and its coming in perfect. Basicly the moral of this whole story is that Nvidia HDTV settings / tools really REALLY suck, and are incredibly buggy. I cant even explain how I fixed it, because it took like 1000 different changes and certain orders of things to get it to work right, its basicly just stupid.. lol.

By: Matt (Velislide)

Matt (Velislide) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:31:46 +0000

A regular TV has less then half of the picture quality as Computer monitors, in most cases even 1/4th the quality.

If you wanted to use your PC to watch your cable TV, you would need to buy a TV Tuner card for your PC, which runs 30-60$ or more, depending on what you get, what features it has. If the HDTV you buy has a VGA port on it for a PC, you shouldnt have any problems hooking it to your PC. Also most cable companies now days have high quality cable boxes that support different types of video out, like the Yellow/White/Red RCA jack outs, which if your HDTV has those inputs, you can use that instead of the fat coaxial cable.

That Sharp 20″ LCD you mentioned looks to be INSANELY overpriced, 560-750$ for a 20″!? I bought one of the best, if not best 32″ LCD HDTVS for 750$, lol. You can get a Vizio 32″ HD LCD for 600$… Do more research or compare prices to other sizes, Vizios are good though, very good for the price.

By: Claire S

Claire S — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 18:29:13 +0000

I have a mac mini and just got rid of my old tube TV set. I’m getting cable installed on Tuesday and am looking to buy an LCD HD TV (about 20″) that I can use both for TV and with my computer. One option is Sharp LC-20D42U. It has HDMI and analog PC input.

Question: Do I need to get a TV with built-in tuner if I’m getting cable? Are there TV monitors that would work with cable input and computer input?
Another question: Could my current 19″ LCD monitor be used as a TV receiver with a cable box? Would the TV picture be good? I think a TV would have better picture quality but I’m not sure. I’m no geek, as you can tell.

Claire S

By: Matt (Velislide)

Matt (Velislide) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 23:43:15 +0000

Ok I was wrong, actually 1024×768 or 2048×768 both look perfect with no pixelation or anything like that. Now if I bump it up to 1280×720, it gets really nasty and has like 4 shadows under the mouse in a patern, and text is really blotchy.

Cant wait to figure this out, it will look so good! lol.

By: Matt (Velislide)

Matt (Velislide) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 03:03:47 +0000

AHHH!!!

I setup my 19″ LCD on the other side of my desk, have the dual-desktop thing stretched horizontally so I can drag stuff from one side, to the other, and the resolution on 2048×768, and it looks PERFECT once again!!!

Talk about confusing, I guess you can call this some kind of progress though. I shall not fail!

By: Matt (Velislide)

Matt (Velislide) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:34:53 +0000

Ok, I just about started crying here, haha.

I was fooling around with S-Video to my HDTV from my computer, just to see how horrible it looked.. yea pretty horrible, but alot better then regular tvs. Well, I was like ok thats cool and was a total waste of time, so I unhooked the S-Video, plugged in my DVI cable back into my computer (which the HDMI on the other end never was unplugged from the HDTV), and after it loaded the screen, IT WAS TOTALLY CLEAR!!! HONEST TO GOD CLEAR!!!! It WASNT the pixelated mash of fuzzy text with shadows under the mouse that it used to be, IT LOOKED LIKE A COMPUTER MONITOR!!!… well with minor overscan, so I jumped into the Nvidia drivers, feeling victorious I found the Nvidia Scaling feature, and set it to fill the LCD @ 1280×720, which was the resolution it was on right now, just missing some of my desktop around the borders.

Well, lets just say after I clicked apply, it went back to the distorted, pixelated hell it used to be, and I havent been able to get it back since. Even if I blow up a huge 640×480 resolution, the text looks garbled and the mouse pointer has like 4 shadows all around it… so something is screwy here.

Sometimes I wonder if this HDTV hates me, I know I havent been feeding it any HD-DVDs lately, but c’mon, give me a break…