"A TV is not a Monitor..."

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Schuler
  • Start date Start date
J

John Schuler

Hi

I have severe vision problems, so am alway on the lookout for a better
PC display solution. Toms Hardware Guide just reviewed 26'' LCD TV's,
but started the testing section with the statement that "a TV is not a
monitor".

WHY? Could a 26'' LCD TV be used as a PC monitor?

Thanks in advance!
 
TV's use a far smaller number of pixels for a given screen area than a
Monitor does. Thus the quality of a high resolution computer image is far
less on an LCD TV than on a Monitor.
 
JS > I have severe vision problems, so am always
on the lookout for a better PC display solution.
Click to expand...

Bigger pixels

DW > TV's use a far smaller number of pixels for a
given screen area than a Monitor does. Thus the
quality of a high resolution computer image is
far less on an LCD TV than on a Monitor.
Click to expand...

Which sounds like it's exactly what JS needs.

One could accomplish the same thing with a high-end
large monitor, run at a way-lower-than-max res, but
a TV will be cheaper. A 1920x1200 23-inch monitor
run at 960x600 would provide "wide SVGA" and
generously large (and sharp) pixels.

The issues are:
- discovering the native res of the TV's panel
(which is apt to be in the 640x480 range for
SDTV, so I'd suggest looking at HDTVs, and
their native resolutions vary wildly)
- making sure the graphics card can emit the
desired res (esp. if wide aspect ratio)
- making sure the TV can accept DVI at that res
- determining if the resulting image solves the
problem
 
John said:
Hi

I have severe vision problems, so am alway on the lookout for a better
PC display solution. Toms Hardware Guide just reviewed 26'' LCD TV's,
but started the testing section with the statement that "a TV is not a
monitor".

WHY? Could a 26'' LCD TV be used as a PC monitor?

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

A 26" LCD TV could be used as a PC monitor but it's going to be rather
limited. The main problem is resolution--you can't fit much screen on one,
which is good sometimes but not others.

A friend of mine has vision problems--whenever a new technology comes out I
show it to him and if it seems to be an improvement then he goes for it
without hesitation.

Right now he's running a Samsung 213T on a Matrox G550 that supports quick
and easy resolution changes (just hit the F11 key or whatever other key you
want to assign) and it goes through three resolutions, with a virtual
desktop at all but the highest which is quite handy. He likes this
combination very much.

The downside is that that feature has been removed from the current Matrox
drivers and the last ones that have it have minor bugs under XP (the big
one is that sometimes there's a "ghost" mouse pointer somewhere on the
screen after the resolution change--it doesn't move though so it's not a
huge problem).

There is a not-cheap software packaged called Zoomtext
<http://www.aisquared.com/Products/Products.htm> that works very nicely,
however he did not feel that it was enough of an improvement over what the
Matrox drivers did to justify the price. They have a 30 day free trial.

There's a page on such products and other software for the visually impaired
at <http://www.magnifiers.org/> that you might want to take a look at--last
time I went through it a bunch of links were broken but that was a while
ago and they seem to have updated it since.
 
John said:
WHY? Could a 26'' LCD TV be used as a PC monitor?
Click to expand...

Television sets have much poorer image quality than PC monitors. In
particular, they have really low resolution.
 
J. Clarke said:
John Schuler wrote:




A 26" LCD TV could be used as a PC monitor but it's going to be rather
limited. The main problem is resolution--you can't fit much screen on one,
which is good sometimes but not others.

A friend of mine has vision problems--whenever a new technology comes out I
show it to him and if it seems to be an improvement then he goes for it
without hesitation.

Right now he's running a Samsung 213T on a Matrox G550 that supports quick
and easy resolution changes (just hit the F11 key or whatever other key you
want to assign) and it goes through three resolutions, with a virtual
desktop at all but the highest which is quite handy. He likes this
combination very much.

The downside is that that feature has been removed from the current Matrox
drivers and the last ones that have it have minor bugs under XP (the big
one is that sometimes there's a "ghost" mouse pointer somewhere on the
screen after the resolution change--it doesn't move though so it's not a
huge problem).
Click to expand...

I used to use Matrox video cards for this very feason - then our company
switched to Windows NT and there was no driver support for this feature.
The switch to 320x200 was great!
There is a not-cheap software packaged called Zoomtext
<http://www.aisquared.com/Products/Products.htm> that works very nicely,
however he did not feel that it was enough of an improvement over what the
Matrox drivers did to justify the price. They have a 30 day free trial.
Click to expand...

I used to beaa test for Zoomtext (atually AI Squared).
There's a page on such products and other software for the visually impaired
at <http://www.magnifiers.org/> that you might want to take a look at--last
time I went through it a bunch of links were broken but that was a while
ago and they seem to have updated it since.
Click to expand...

I went through all of these produsts; the only useful one was a $700+
product from the UK :(
 
John said:
I used to use Matrox video cards for this very feason - then our company
switched to Windows NT and there was no driver support for this feature.
The switch to 320x200 was great!
Click to expand...

It's there in 2K and XP, but not with the most recent driver.

ATI boards are physically capable of doing this as well, but ATI has their
drivers so hosed up that it's almost impossible to get it set up to work in
a useful manner.
 
Mxsmanic said:
Television sets have much poorer image quality than PC monitors. In
particular, they have really low resolution.
Click to expand...

Not in the case of LCDs, they don't; with this technology, X by Y
pixels is X by Y pixels, whether you call it a "TV" or a "monitor" or
some sort of hybrid, "multimedia" product (which is becoming more
and more popular in the 20-30" size range). And right now,
performance improvements in LCDs (in the areas of contrast,
brightness, color gamut, response time, and viewing angle) are
certainly being driven more by the TV market than by monitors.

I agree completely with the earlier suggestions re an LCD TV
of between 20-3", say something with a 1920 x 1080 or 1920
x 1200 panel, being fed a "half-res" image (i.e., 960 x 540 or
960 x 600) - in this case, the pixels of the image will scale up
to exactly 4 physical pixels each, and give a very sharp, "big
pixel" image at a decent physical size.

Bob M.
 
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