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TV for monitor???

L

laurenlex

Platinum Member
Hello all. I built my wife's parents a new computer to replace the painfully slow WebTV system they had. I bought them a nice 19 inch NEC monitor, but it is too small to see comfortably from the couch. Father in law is too lazy to move closer to the screen. (He works hard, so I guess he deserves it.)

I don't think a 21 inch monitor will be much better. They had some guy said that any flat screen TV would work, with the proper cable adapter.

I thought I heard that you need a HDTV to view the computer text and have it readable. This was one major drawback to the webTV, that small text was unreadable.

So I ask, what is the best solution to use for a monitor for the parents. They sit about 10 feet from the computer cart. Money is a concern, but if they can't see the damn screen, the 700 dollar computer is kinda useless.

BTW, the computer is:
Shuttle socket A - onboard graphics
Sempron 2400
 
Where I work, we had a hp media center (the m1080) connected to a Samsung dlp as a demo, and the text was surprisingly good in hi def res. So yes, HDTV would serve well for the purpose, but it costs quite a bit. As an example, on our demo, you could sit back and write a letter or email with no problems (using the gyration kb/mouse combo).
 
Most newer HDTVs have DVI in one flavor or another (HDMI, etc). Reset the PC to a nice low, safe resolution (say 800x600) then plug it into the HDTV via DVI and try some of the higher resolutions until you find one that works well with the tv.

If you're talking composite or svideo, they will be ok, but slightly blurry. A totally different world from DVI, but still usable.
 
Any old SDTV will work (via composite or S-Video out, assuming your video card can do that), but only up to ~800x600 (beyond that, everything just gets scaled down to 800x600 and becomes a blurry mess). I am using an HTPC like this (running 640x480), and it is definitely usable from the couch. At 800x600 the text is a bit harder to read on web pages, etc. -- but you could scale up the fonts in the web browser, and it also depends on how big the TV is and how far you are from it.

Computers with appropriate video cards can output HDTV resolutions (either 720p or 1080i) via component or DVI for display on an HDTV or HD projector. This will look a *lot* better, obviously. You might want to look around at www.avsforum.com for way, WAY more information on this subject.
 
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