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Widescreen or HDTV?
Ok so for a while now I have been looking out for a nice 20"-22" widescreen. Ive had my eye on a few, such as the one from scan
Although lately I have been thinking about getting a new TV. Now would it be in my best option to go for a nice 22"-32" HDTV which I will be able to use as a monitor or should I just get a TFT?
Any adivce would be great! :)
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the bigger the better! if you can afford it get both!
if not depends on whether u want ure pc sitting next to your tv or whether you want it in a diffrent room with its own monitor!
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a tv will make a bad monitor., full stop.
a 24" hdtv will be 1366x768, or thereabouts
a 24" monitor will be 1920x1200
that's a difference of more than double the screen real-estate
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So even a TV such as this one
Would that still not be advisable to use as a monitor? I mean I dont use really big resolutions anyway. Would the picture be unclear or anything, or would it have the same picture as using a normal monitor?
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No, I wouldn't. The pixels will be massive unless you sit about 6 feet away from it, and some LCDs handle PC inputs better than others
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If it's being used as a computer monitor, get a computer monitor. The main difference between, for example, a 24" TV at 1280x720 and a 24" Monitor at 1920x1200, is the 'pixel pitch', ie. the size of each individual pixel.
Using some pythagoras theorem....
The pixel pitch on the TV = 0.415mm (which is VAST!)
The pixel pitch on the monitor = 0.269mm (AFAIK, the best pixel pitch I've seen is 0.252mm which is what you get on a 20" panel with a resolution of 1680x1050)
So there you are, the pixels on the TV are 1.54 times the size of those on the monitor, so the picture on the monitor would be far sharper (as well as capable of viewing content in 1080p, whereas the TV could only show 720p. Just make sure the monitor is HDCP compliant if you want to watch Blu-Ray or HD-DVD movies on it.) If you just want a big screen to use your computer as some sort of media centre thing, then a big TV would do the job, just don't expect the response times to be as good as a monitor when playing games.
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I've got a 22" CRT and next to it a Samsung R7 26" HDTV.
I sometimes play games on the Samsung but as noted above you're limited to WXGA (1366 x 768) in terms of resolution. Input is via VGA only, apparently nothing else works (DVI-HDMI etc) though I've not tried it.
I'm quite happy to play games on it (Medieval Total War 2 looks great in widescreen) but I wouldn't want it as a main monitor. I have issues of ghosting/fringes around text in particular but that could be down to cabling on my part.
If you sit a fair way back from the PC then the HDTV would probably be okay, otherwise I'd say go for a monitor instead..