What problems would you run into if you used a TV as your monitor?

Say you have a thinkpad yoga and you just want to be able to plug the laptop into one thing and get alot of screen space

1. Would the TV not recognize the laptop until some messing around with the settings?

2. Would the TV be too high generally on your desk to use effectively?

3. Are there smarter solutions to what I want to be able to (reduce wire mess but still get a ton of screenspace)?

4. Maybe the single mini HDMI on the thinkpad yoga would not work well with a 40 inch TV that has a greater resolution than 1080p?

 

kneehowguys, what TV model exactly are you talking about?

 

If TV supports 1080p or 720p @ 60 Hz (and it should, other resolutions may or may not be supported, but those 2 are pretty much standard) there should be no problems, except maybe one: fuzzy picture, especially smaller text. Depending on the model and I found it hard way, a lot of TVs are designed to process video signal only and all video signals are encoded with full luma info, but chroma info is shared between 2 pixels or more to save bandwidth. This works fine for movies and videos, but when computer sends full RGB signal for each pixel, a lot of TVs will cut half of color info for processing, making small text and pixel detail little fuzzy. Bottom line, unless your TV is top of the line, computer signal will not look as sharp as it would look on dedicated monitor and this specification is rarely published, so unless you go to TV forums and read other people comments you can't tell if given TV will give you full resolution or will it cut it in half without telling you. I would suggest just go ahead and test it, if it looks acceptable, fine, if not there is nothing you can do, except going to tv forums and ask around, which TV works good as monitor.

 

What kind of TV models would be good on a desk? And are modern enough to have good image quality with a laptop and can be easily connected to a laptop? Honestly, I have not connected a television to anything since the 1990s and am pretty clueless what is out there and what specs I should be looking for

I go to amazon and find a TV

Will this work? Would this be good for what I want to do? :

http://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronic...=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1429584836&sr=1-2&keywords=tv

What would be a good bet considering what I want to do?
http://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronic...=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1429584836&sr=1-2&keywords=tv

Is an ultrawide monitor a better bet than a TV for screen real estate and less hassle to set up?

Ideally, I'd like to just plug in my ultrabook into one thing and be done and for it work everytime.

I had some frustrations plugging my laptop into a school TV one time whereas a VGA monitor I never had problems so I am bit clueless on this.

 

I can go walk into a store and start plugging my laptop into various TV's?

"computer signal will not look as sharp as it would look on dedicated monitor and this specification is rarely published, so unless you go to TV forums and read other people comments you can't tell if given TV will give you full resolution or will it cut it in half without telling you. "

What does it mean to cut it in half?

Would I not be able to do things like split screen on this?

http://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronic...=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1429584836&sr=1-2&keywords=tv

If you were me and wanted just a plug into one thing have very little wire clutter and get tons of screenspace, what would you look into?

 

I don't want to be too technical, but computer signal sends red, green and blue color info for each pixel, many TV's share red, green and blue color signal between 2 pixels. Simplest test: picture with 2 vertical lines right next to each other with no space between, one line is green one is red: computer monitor will show this picture exactly, some TVs will show one pixel line in between which will have mix of green and red color, because every 2 pixels share the same color info and the border pixels between those 2 lines need to share color . In real world small text, will not look sharp and if the font has color (not black on white) it will be hard to read and have hallo's around it.
If I was you I would go to avsforum, here http://www.avsforum.com/forum/166-lcd-flat-panel-displays/ and ask or read comments about TV I was interested in. They also have "help me choose TV" section, just like here.
This has nothing to do with split screen, in simplest terms some TVs are not as sharp as dedicated computer monitors and this will not show up when playing games or watching movies/pictures. However it will show up when reading small text, for example this website, so if you only plan to play games or watch movies, any TV will be fine.

 

Overscan is the biggest issue. Usually correctable, but not desirable.

 

I often use my Laptop and Tablet connected to both PC monitors (IPS panel) and Plasma / LCD TV's around my house.

My experience is that using a TV is fine for presentations or watching movies, but playing PC games, reading text or word processing quickly leads to eye strain. (For all the reasons stated above in previous posts.) The worst is my Panasonic Viera plasma, it's hard to read text on that screen, it has bad overscan that I cannot correct, it is only 720p and if I play a fast action game from my Laptop I will actually start to get motion sickness (screen lag ? Eye strain? ). But for playing movies on a big screen it's great.

I play my Xbox360 just fine on this plasma, I think the difference is that xbox games are built to be viewed from 10' away (larger text, etc) but PC games often have text & icons too small to read from the couch.

I resisted buying a computer Monitor since I had so many nice TV's around the house.... But when I got my 27" IPS panel (1 ms response time) I saw the difference for sure.

 

Yeh, I forgot about overscan, but many TV sets have computer setting where overscan is eliminated. Of the 3 TV's I have, all mid to lower range, none has overscan issue with proper settings, but only one is razor sharp, like it should be, other 2 suck when displaying small text, including $800, 49' LG 3D TV I bought 3-4 yrs ago, big disappointment especially that otherwise it is a great set.

 

knwwhowguys... I'm going to go slightly off-track here, to try and answer a similar question that you asked in a different conversation thread...

Using an HDTV as a computer monitor isn't a great idea, unless you're using the HDTV to display video or games. It isn't good for productivity use, since the image quality will be poor (compared to a monitor), color reproduction will be poor, and text will not look great.

If you're REALLY asking "What's the best way for me to get an inexpensive external display for my Lenovo Yoga?" then I'd recommend you look into buying an inexpensive 27" 1440p monitor. You can easily find a 27" 1440p monitor with an IPS panel for around $350 USD, which is going to be your best bang-for-your-buck to get a large, high-quality external display for productivity use.

 

I beg to differ, as I said in my previous post it depends on how TV is processing signal and there are TVs that do it properly (but not easy to find), I have one of those, it looks great, almost as good as any dedicated monitor. All OP has to do is spend some time reading AVS forum, but it's almost the same everywhere, there are plenty of crappy laptops, cars, appliances and without educating yourself, it's like playing lottery.

 

the biggest Problem i have with my PC connected to my TV is Input/display-lag!
Disabling Motion Interpolation will reduce it (depending on the TV in use) but it will still be noticeable.

 

Yes, that depends on the TV: perfectly PC signal should be bypassing most of the processing done to TV signal and load straight into frame buffer(which would cut the delay), since all the processing is done by video cards and AVS forum would have the info which TV's are better than others, but that begs the question why computer monitors are so much more expensive than TV, despite requiring much less signal processing. There is easy way to check the delay: you run clock showing milliseconds on dual display and take high speed camera picture, the difference between the clocks is your delay, of course compared to the laptop screen which has delay on its own.

 

FYI, if you have a game console with the "Rock Band 2" guitar, it has a light sensor on the Guitar that measures display lag based on special test signal that is sent to the TV. It's part of the game' calibration / setup menu, shows you a numeric value (milliseconds?) for your display.
I realize not everyone has this game but just mentioning it.