TV vs Monitor - Pros and Cons?

[scapes]

With TV prices dropping so low (I'm seeing 32" for $499), I'm hoping and wondering if one day soon I might switch from the PC monitor I currently have on the machine to a larger LCD TV. But I wonder if there are any problems I haven't thought of. Are there any drawbacks to using a TV on the system than a monitor. All I have thought of is maybe one would have to manually switch off the TV at night instead of relying on Windows to put it on standby with the rest of the system, plus I can currently use DVI to connect the monitor, but some of the TV's I have seen only offer VGA/SVGA/XGA/SXGA - plus the usual (non-PC) AV/S-VIDEO/YPbPr/YCbCr/HDMI input options.

Interested to hear all your opinions and experiences

[eclipz]

apart from physically having to turn the plasma/lcd off instead of windows putting into standby you also need to look at the price between a dedicated pc monitor and plasma/lcd.

Decent 32" lcd's are well under the affordable price range now and if it was me, this is the way i would go as most companies like Dell are still charging $1999 for their UltraSharp 3008WFP 30-inch Widescreen.

On the other hand, many people will argue that buying a proper PC monitor will give you better graphics and a better resolution.

1 last thing, any new LCD or Plasma will have HDMI, DVI and VGA. It if doesnt have HDMI then its an old panel so dont purchase it as it will also be older technology. even the cheapest of cheapest LCD's have HDMI now... (Used to work for Good Guys and Retravision hence the reason i know)

hope i have been of some help.

[ryan_t]

How close are you going to be sitting and what are you using it for? If you are giong to be sitting really close to the display, then I would go with a traditional monitor - chances are it will look better (it should have a much higher resoltuion).

If you are doing photo/video editing, and lots of standard computer tasks, then I would also recommend a monitor over the TV (again resolution - higher resolution means you can put more on the screen at once). There are also little issues that TVs can have when being used as a monitor - Overscan is a big one - some TVs won't let you adjust the overscan settings (at least not easily) and you could lose the outside border of the screen (some video cards can correct for this, but with varying degrees of success).

If you are mainly using the computer for Media Center (and perhaps games), then I would recommend using a TV. For this type of use you aren't going to be sitting right in front of the display, and you usually don't need to have a lot of stuff going opened on the screen at once, and therefore the higher resolution won't make a difference. Also the price for a TV is much cheaper, and you could plug a game system/other compenents in much more easily.

As for the connection from the computer to the TV, as eclipz said, all new TVs should have an HDMI connection on them. You can easily go from DVI to HDMI without any loss of quality, so that is usually the best way to hook it up (if the TV doesn't have an actual DVI port).

[logifuse]

One of the often forgotten elements in the monitor vs TV decision is that if most of the stuff you'll be watching is relatively low res (FTA TV, DVDs, AVIs, etc.) it wil probably look better on a lower res screen.

Also, a monitor is 16:10 & a TV is 16:9, so with most content being 16:9, you end up with minor letterboxing on a monitor.

Justin

[scapes]

My thoughts were in terms of a dedicated Media Center PC - no other work is done on it at all. After upgrading to a newer PC last year my former PC, which was still pretty decent, was sitting pretty much unused. So when I wanted access to the new HD channels (plus my TV was a dinosaur 20 years or so old at a guess - maybe more - RF input only), and had been shopping for ages for a budget way to access them without much success (and got knocked back for my application to be a TiVo beta tester), I jumped in and made the older machine my main living room TV. I sit about 3 metres away from it where my work desk is located.

For a screen, I had a 22" widescreen monitor on the newer PC, so used that, and bought a TinyTwin Tuner. Once I finally got some old, ongoing antenna issues solved I have been pretty happy with performance. But that lead me to this post, as I saw prices just lower and lower on 26" to 32" TVs, as well as on Dell's older 24" monitors. A side benefit of course would be to get my 22" back on my work computer

... and there is an epilogue to the story too. After I posed the question here I pretty much convinced myself that if there were any negatives to using a TV, they would be outweighed by the extra 10" on the MC and 2" on my work computer. So I jumped on the $499 deal while I could (it was a one day offering at CatchOfTheDay). Can't really afford it right now, but I guess my credit card will just have to live . Yesterday the set arrived and I am absolutely delighted with the results. It's a Conia with Samsung Panel, inbuilt SD tuner (useful perhaps as a backup if for example, the power supply on the PC dies etc) and 1366x768 resolution. Currently it's connected via VGA, but I have a DVI-HDMI adapter on order that I should get in a few days ($11 on ebay).

This was the second time the deal had come up on catchoftheday.com.au so if it comes up again, I highly recommend the set. I don't think you will find a comparable price elsewhere for a while even if prices do continue to drop generally.