HDTV as a monitor?

[Baronz]

A friend was talking to me about how his friend had bought a 27" Zenith HDTV with VGA input, and used it as a monitor.

He said that it was very crisp, and the resolution went up to about 1900X****, forgot what 2nd set of numbers was, but it was in that range. He said it was alot clearer than how the TV came in as well.

Is this true? Im not so sure that HDTVs go this high in resolution...but if you can do this i may pick one up 🙂

 

[madthumbs]

That resolution is most likely interlaced (the highest hdtv's really go is 720p as far as I know, and that's rare). The picture quality may not be as good as a monitor, but the text is crisp enough to read, games are awesome if you can get them to use the tv's limited resolutions, downloaded movies are great, etc... You'll be wanting a cordless kb/mouse.

 

[BDawg]

Originally posted by: Baronz
A friend was talking to me about how his friend had bought a 27" Zenith HDTV with VGA input, and used it as a monitor.

He said that it was very crisp, and the resolution went up to about 1900X****, forgot what 2nd set of numbers was, but it was in that range. He said it was alot clearer than how the TV came in as well.

Is this true? Im not so sure that HDTVs go this high in resolution...but if you can do this i may pick one up 🙂

*cough* bullsh1t *cough*

I have a 55" Mitsubishi with a VGA input. It only accepts 640x480 through the VGA input.

Anyway, only large TVs with 8" + guns are able to fully resolve a 1080i signal (1920x1080 interlaced). His 27" is lucky to resolve 800 lines.

His dot pitch is probably around 75 too.

If he's really doing that, it's not a TV, but probably a $10,000 computer monitor.

 

[Baronz]

Originally posted by: BDawg

Originally posted by: Baronz
A friend was talking to me about how his friend had bought a 27" Zenith HDTV with VGA input, and used it as a monitor.

He said that it was very crisp, and the resolution went up to about 1900X****, forgot what 2nd set of numbers was, but it was in that range. He said it was alot clearer than how the TV came in as well.

Is this true? Im not so sure that HDTVs go this high in resolution...but if you can do this i may pick one up 🙂

*cough* bullsh1t *cough*

I have a 55" Mitsubishi with a VGA input. It only accepts 640x480 through the VGA input.

Anyway, only large TVs with 8" + guns are able to fully resolve a 1080i signal (1920x1080 interlaced). His 27" is lucky to resolve 800 lines.

His dot pitch is probably around 75 too.

If he's really doing that, it's not a TV, but probably a $10,000 computer monitor.

Thats the thing that occured to me, if you can get a 27" monitor for 800$ that can do those resolutions, nobody would ever buy 800$ 21" monitors.

I do alot of graphics work on my computer too, this is when I'd need the clarity of a conventional CRT monitor, so this may be a no-go for me.

Although if all i did was play games and watch movies, this would be perfect.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Baronz
A friend was talking to me about how his friend had bought a 27" Zenith HDTV with VGA input, and used it as a monitor.

He said that it was very crisp, and the resolution went up to about 1900X****, forgot what 2nd set of numbers was, but it was in that range. He said it was alot clearer than how the TV came in as well.

Is this true? Im not so sure that HDTVs go this high in resolution...but if you can do this i may pick one up 🙂

No TV (not even HDTV) will hold a candle to any good quality computer monitor in resolution and color quality. If you feel like spending loads of money, get a top of the line 24 inch Sony CRT flatscreen monitor.

 

[BDawg]

Originally posted by: jliechty

Originally posted by: Baronz
A friend was talking to me about how his friend had bought a 27" Zenith HDTV with VGA input, and used it as a monitor.

He said that it was very crisp, and the resolution went up to about 1900X****, forgot what 2nd set of numbers was, but it was in that range. He said it was alot clearer than how the TV came in as well.

Is this true? Im not so sure that HDTVs go this high in resolution...but if you can do this i may pick one up 🙂

No TV (not even HDTV) will hold a candle to any good quality computer monitor in resolution and color quality. If you feel like spending loads of money, get a top of the line 24 inch Sony CRT flatscreen monitor.

Color has gotten much better on HDTVs, and the resolution isn't too bad. The thing that seperates them the most is dot pitch. Mine has one of the best pitches in all TVs at .55, which isn't even close to a bad monitor at .27. 🙂

 

[RanDum72]

Maybe he's singing praises of the Zenith because it happens to be a direct view TV instead of projection? HDTV projection sets are good but direct view sets are always better. They may be smaller but brightness, contrast, vieweing angles, everything is superior to projection TV's.

 

[madthumbs]

Projection sets aren't "that" bad. You WILL want to learn how to adjust the convergence manually for them though, and get a good one. The warranty repair guy did a half-assed job on mine so I decided to hunt down the information on doing manual convergence myself. Most people wouldn't even know the convergence was off. I've seen many sets especially in Circuit City that are way off (>1/4"!).

Is dot pitch really important when you're looking at the tv from a distance? Those dots are gonna appear much smaller from a distance, and I doubt anyone is gonna sit right in front of a 27"+ tv like they would a monitor. My tv is a 43" WS projection. I'm using it in conjunction with a VGA to component converter (~$120). With it I can get 540p, but use 500 lines of resolution to cut down on the overscan. It's not significantly better than 640x480 but for games, and movies it's awesome! Just imagine games that don't run good at higher resolutions for you... run great on an HDTV because of the lower resolution, and aliasing is a lot less obvious! I wouldn't recommend it as a stand alone monitor for people into photo editing, or other things like it.