PCs Over LCD TVs, And TV Over PC LCDs

While Steve Ballmer might be fond of chanting "Developers! Developers! Developers!", I have an equivalent mantra, "Readers! Readers! Readers!". I love hearing from y’all, although I confess that I generally decline invitations to assist folks in debugging and resolving Windows, OS X and HDMI-handshake problems Among other things, reader emails give me ideas on topics to write about both in print and online (not that I generally have any trouble doing so on my own…), as well as how to prioritize those writeups.

Take, for example, Fred Bontemps. On Tuesday morning, he wrote:

I regularly read (and very much enjoy) your blog. And while this email is not in direct response to any of your posts, I’m hoping you can offer some guidance and/or maybe some links related to my question:

What is the relationship between screen size and viewing distance for using an HDTV as a PC monitor? In addition to playing movies, I would like to be able to surf the web, email and do light word processing/spreadsheet work.

I’ve seen many articles that discuss screen size vs. viewing distance for video, but have not come across anything for PC applications.

Good question, Fred. In the interest of time and space, I’m going to give you an admittedly somewhat simplistic response, but my observations will generally hold true (modulated somewhat by close-out and Black Friday specials on the low end of the price-vs-features spectrum, and by premium-brand profit margins on the high end).

At roughly the same screen size and/or price point, here are the tradeoffs:

• HDTV (LCD, plasma, etc): integrated NTSC/ATSC tuner, more abundant set of audio and video inputs
• LCD computer monitor: faster screen refresh rate and response time, much higher native pixel resolution

Take, for example, case studies from my personal experience. First there’s the two 37" widescreen LCD TVs I’ve bought in the recent past, from Magnavox/Philips and Syntax Olevia. They offer 1366×768 pixel native resolutions…i.e. wide XGA, spread out over ~590 square inches of LCD surface area. In contrast, look at the 28" widescreen LCD monitor I recently obtained, which I’ll tell you more about in following paragraphs. Its native resolution is 1920×1200 pixels, i.e. wide UXGA (2.2x the pixel count of the 37" LCD TVs), spread across ~340 square inches of LCD surface area (0.6x that of the 37" LCD TV). And it also claims a 3 msec response time.

HDTV resolutions are lower than those of LCD computer monitors because they can be…the displays are tailored for video, after all, which means a maximum of 1080 vertical pixels per frame, and 720 vertical pixels still qualifies as ‘HD’. Translation: your PC-tethered picture may be bigger with a HDTV, but it’ll be quite a bit softer (due to upscaling) and lower in resolution, both factors especially noticeable given how much closer you’ll probably be sitting to the HDTV when using it as a PC monitor, versus in the traditional video-viewing environment it was designed for. Icons and other graphical elements will more completely dominate the screen and, more generally, you’ll notice a less efficient use of display real estate. And you might not like the outcome if you try to play fast-twitch games on it. Granted, though, if your eyesight isn’t great, you might actually prefer the overall results on a HDTV.

I have a friend, for example, who has a beautiful WSXGA (1680×1050 pixel) 22" LCD computer monitor that she runs in wide SVGA (1024×600 pixel) mode. I confess that I cringe every time I see it, but at the display’s higher native resolution she’s not able to discern the correspondingly shrunken text and other elements, and she doesn’t want to bother tweaking with Windows settings to enlarge them. One other note: be very careful if you decide to take the plunge on a ‘1080p’ display. What this usually only means is that the display will accept video inputs up to progressive-scan 1080 vertical pixels per frame in size…which it will promptly downscale to whatever the display’s native (lesser) resolution is prior to output. Displays with 1080 or more native vertical pixels are fairly rare, often very large, and quite expensive.

Continue reading with ‘Pixel Imperfection, Resolution Excellence: Hanns.G’s HG-281DPB‘…