HDTV(1080p) vs. LCD PC Monitor

Pros and cons of each....say a Dell, HP, or Apple 30 inch display versus Samsung, LG, Sony, Sharp, etc. 32 inch 1080p HDTV. I've done some research and have my own opinions, but would like to hear others.

If you could afford the PC displays, which are significantly more expensive, which would you recommend and why? Obviously they provide higher resolution, but need dual output cards to allow this. I'm looking at both, and for connecting my HDX, I can't really justify the extra bucks for the PC displays.

Even if you have a high end desktop, would it make much of a difference?

 

Well if you cant justify the extra for a 30" monitor then your choice should be pretty obvious. Also you need a Dual-Link DVI, HDMI 1.3+ or DisplayLink. If your notebook has none of those then you are out of luck anyway. You probably have HDMI 1.3 so you will need a LCD that supports HDMI 1.3. You need 1.3b to convert to DL-DVI I believe and if your HDMI is 1.3b you can use any 30".

 

im looking at the same sort of thing. 24 inch 1080+ res monitor or a 24 inch 1080p tv.
what ARE the advantages of the monitor over the tv? its mostly for my bluray films but also for general use and gaming. the thought of having an HD tv i can attach a console or similar to is also appealing, but currenty un-needed.

 

Well the 30" Dell or Apple use Dual Link DVI so forget using your consoles and stuff on them.

Much higher cost for the smaller size but a much higher resolution.

a HDTV is a Computer Monitor at its core, the only real difference is the connections, the tv tuner, and thats about it.

For a small size you can probably find a "monitor" cheaper but for large sizes you can find a "tv" cheaper.

All TV's are 16:9
Monitors come in both 16:10, 16:9, and I guess if you wanted to you could even find a 4:3.

I use a 37" Westinghouse LVM-37W3 as my desktop monitor its a 37" HD LCD, its not a TV because it has no tuner. So basically its a HDTV that is targeted for PC use.

1920x1080 resolution, and its a thing of beauty. It makes watching movies or playing games a great pleasure, and even while just on the forums like now it makes reading things so easy due to the large size.

Same for photoshop, you may think the larger resolution you could get on a monitor is better, but being able to see more detail easy ends up being just as nice of a benefit to me. Plus It doubles as my Wii, Dreamcast, and Arcade monitor. A "real" computer monitor wouldn't cut it due to the small size and probably lack of inputs.

Also a last note, I find in TV's the hardware scaling is better, so if you plug in a 480p Wii into a 1200p computer monitor it has to scale the image up. Since the TV is designed to have multiple sources at different resolutions it has a good scaler. The computer monitor doesnt really focus on this and is intended to run at its native resolution or have your computer video card scale the image for it so they have cruddy scaling if you do it on the hardware level.

I cant wait to upgrade this baby to like a 47" 120hz TV one day

Actually most probably I will get a HD projector and 3x monitors but that is a story for a different day.

 

My choice for a 30" monitor would be the Dell 3008WFP. It has two dual-link DVI, VGA, component, composite, HDMI, and DisplayPort inputs, a hardware scaler, a USB hub, and a built-in memory card reader. The LCD panel is S-IPS, which has the best viewing angles of all LCD panel types and better than any LCD TV. The panel is mostly what makes it so expensive compared to TVs. The only thing it's missing from being a full-blown TV is a built-in tuner and remote. The downside? It's expensive as hell and only palatable if you look for a refurbished one in the Dell Outlet. I was going to buy a 3008WFP before I had my 27" Dell 2707WFP replaced under warranty, which uses an S-PVA panel but is otherwise very similar in features minus a few inputs and the scaler. I hooked up my HD cable box through 1080i component and it looked great.

The dual-link DVI requirement for a 30" monitor confuses a lot of people. Pretty much any mid-tier video card you can buy today has a dual-link DVI output to support 2560x1600 resolution. This is not the same as dual DVI outputs on the back of the video card. The only thing you need in most cases is a dual-link DVI cable, which includes the middle 2x3 set of pins on the 9x3 pin grid portion of the connector. Also, you only need dual-link DVI for viewing at 2560x1600. You can use a single-link DVI cable to view resolutions of 1920x1200 and lower.

Whether you choose to get a TV or a monitor depends on how you use it and what your priorities are. The Dell 3008WFP is an anomaly because most monitors don't have such a wide array of inputs. Besides that, are you planning to hook up multiple devices to the display? Are you going to watch movies and play games, or are you going to be working with applications where color accuracy is more important? What's your viewing distance? Do you want or need a desktop resolution higher than 1920x1080?

Most people could get away with a larger LCD TV as their computer monitor. I would personally hate it because the lack of 120 pixels in height does indeed make that big of a difference to me.

Regarding Photoshop, the higher resolution always wins out because your usable desktop space is of utmost importance. If you need to see detail, then zoom in, because if you're doing some serious pixel-precise image editing, you can't work at 100% zoom anyway. The whole concept of "seeing details" is a fallacy because it's a product of the screen's relative pixel size based on your physical viewing distance. At the same resolution, I see more detail on my 27" monitor at 2' away than my 52" TV at 12' away. Bring that TV much closer and you'll have to deal with neck strain.