Is this TV supposed to view fonts so poorly?

[Noylopa]

My brother got me this TV to use as a monitor and I was psyched to have a 32" 'monitor' for my pc. And the reviews for this thing are great and movies AND games do look awesome.
But fonts, dear god, jagged and horrid-looking. Are all TVs this bad as monitors when it comes to fonts?

This is the one I have: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ls_o01_s00_i00

Is there anything I could do to make it better for fonts? I really want to keep this thing but creating a word document is truly painful.
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[DSF]

Text on TVs is tough. How far away from it are you sitting?

I've found that if I want to type on an HDTV it helps to have the Word window maximized and zoom to Page Width. That's not doing anything fancy to make the text readable other than zooming in, but I found it to be a workable solution.

When reading web pages Ctrl+ is your friend.

 

[cl-scott]

TVs work fine as monitors in a pinch, but as a long term solution... Not so much. You can try messing with the ClearType settings, and you might make it a little more tolerable, but tolerable is probably the best case scenario you're looking at.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

The obvious question is what resolution are you using? Anything less than 1920 x 1080 will look bad.

What graphics card, and what connection (DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI, VGA) are you using?

 

[Noylopa]

The obvious question is what resolution are you using? Anything less than 1920 x 1080 will look bad.

What graphics card, and what connection (DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI, VGA) are you using?

I'm using exactly 1920 x 1080, connected via DVI with an ATI 5700 HD card which I love.

Actually, I think I found a way to make it tolerable, maybe MAYBE even for the long run. This model, as I think most of Samsung models, has three picture modes -- Standard, Dynamic, and Movie. Movie actually makes the text bearable, but then reducing the sharpness down from 50 to 10 actually makes it pretty decent looking. And movies still look good as far as I can see.
I think this will do it. I hope it does...

 

[mfenn]

1920x1080 on a 32" screen == big freaking pixels. I'd imagine that being able to easily discern the individual pixels is what you're referring to when you say that text is jagged.

To add insult to injury, normal font smoothing techniques that rely on sub-pixel rendering tend to break down with such large pixels because you'll be able to easily discern the color cast around the edges of the text.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My Westinghouse 32" LCD TV (an older one) actually emulates NTSC-style blue/red color fringing on the HDMI inputs.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

connected via DVI

That's using a DVI to HDMI connector, right? Can you do straight HDMI?

 

[Noylopa]

That's using a DVI to HDMI connector, right? Can you do straight HDMI?

Yeah, I have to use DVI to HDMI, because the HDMI output on my video card is in use already for my main TV in living room. Watch a lot of content via Media Center so for my own use, I have to use DVI to HDMI. But I did try a straight HDMI to HDMI connection to see if it made a difference in text quality-- it didn't, at least none that I could see...

 

[Durvelle27]

i have a Vizio 32" 1080p tv that i use as my primary Monitor with a HD 6950 and i don't have problems with text and i sit 5 1/2 FT away from it ?

 

[TheStu]

i have a Vizio 32" 1080p tv that i use as my primary Monitor with a HD 6950 and i don't have problems with text and i sit 5 1/2 FT away from it ?

Some TVs handle it better than others. My old roommate's Philips was amazing as a 'monitor' and he even used the PC mode for all the inputs since it actually looked better all around anyway.

My TV... Eh. Don't get too close. But it is a 46", so if I am using it for gaming, i am sitting across the room anyway.

 

[kalrith]

Make sure that there's no overscan or scaling being done by your video card. Also, make sure that your TV is set to 1:1 pixel mapping (this setting is different for different TVs). Settings like sharpness can also make a big difference in both text and input lag, so look at the following thread for some tips on settings:

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1398113/official-samsung-unxxeh5000-unxxeh5050-owners-thread/150

Hardforum also has a good display forum, and I've found that much of the content there is for using a TV as a computer monitor: http://hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=78. It's blocked at work, so I couldn't search for much info on your specific TV.

About 4 years ago, I bought the following TV to use as my computer monitor: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001U3YK48

I sit about 3 1/2 feet from it. When I first got it, it would blur red text really badly. After a lot of search at avsforum and [H], I got the TV set up to show crisp text.

 

[piasabird]

Most fonts dont use pixels. You might have to adjust the setting in the TV. It is kind of tricky when you use an adapter like that. I use to do this on my 40" TV and when I switched to a new Computer and used HDMI the picture improved 100%. If you have a HDMI, maybe use a HDMI Splitter.

You could also research custom settings. Maybe the TV is changing the resolution based on some setting.

 

[mfenn]

My Westinghouse 32" LCD TV (an older one) actually emulates NTSC-style blue/red color fringing on the HDMI inputs.

That's not emulation. The subpixels that are used for font smoothing are just big enough so that you can discern their colors. Look really close at your normal monitor and you will see the same thing.