tv for a monitor

[dubstar]

is it possible to have a tv as a monitor, instead of a CRT or whatever? wouldnt it be cheaper? S-video, flat screen, bigger size, cheaper too.. just wondering.

 

[blinden]

well, just about EVERY new card has an s-video output...

but, I think you are going to lose a lot in the translation from the computer too the screen, and I don't think you would be all that pleased, unless you had an expenseive, flat, digital TV, and, well, then you aren't saving any moeny at all...

 

[jumpy]

AFAIK, most TV's have poor resolution, except as blinden said, in the case of more expensive HDTV's...Yes, you can use your TV as a monitor and is not bad for graphics type stuff but don't expect to be able to read text too well. So yeah, that's basically the answer to your question.

 

[jonifen]

aye, I agree with the others...

My stb machine uses a TV rather than a monitor using the TV-Out socket on the graphics card. Text looks blurry and is hard to read at times, the resolution can go no higher than 800x600, but for films its really good

 

[Big Booger]

if your TV has a digital input and your graphics card does too, you're in business. The signal will come out looking clean and crisp, in fact, mine looks 10X better than my 18inch LCD. Movies encoded with divx look really sweet on TV but come out like a bag of monkey ballz on my LCD... But text is kind of small on the TV, because it has a limited resolution of 1024X768 .. LCD goes up to 1280X1024..

If you do go the TV route, make sure to adjust your flicker rate, and if you have a digital vibrance setting, I found it helps enhance the coloring of the desktop.. which improves readability quite a bit.

If you can afford a plasma TV, they are simply LCD TVs.. those do fine with text, graphics, movies, etc...

BUt for everyday usage, I'd stick with a conventional monitor, either LCD, or CRT.



let us know how you set it up

 

[Zedric]

As said earlier, movies and gaming works well on the TV. Especially 3D-games as you get (sorta) FSAA for free due to the bad resolution. Details are harder to see though.

 

[Herkalees]

Most T.V's, even the high def ones, can't go above 1280X whatever... so if you're used to resolutions higher than that, you will be dissapointed.

Even then, a high def t.v. costs more than a monitor...

 

[jonifen]

and depending on your graphics card, you may not even get 800x600 resolution on the TV - the TNT2 in my TV box maxes out at that.

And anyways... 19" CRT monitors are going for like £150 in the UK nowadays, and you can then watch TV while you use the PC