Widescreen PC Monitors

I keep seeing inexpensive LCD widescreen PC monitors being sold at
rather low prices - some under $200. Yet they never seem to be marketed
towards the TV market, just the PC monitor market. Would they work as
small HDTVs? What is the downside to using them in this way?
Typically, they have 1440x900 resolution and 700:1 contrast ratios.
Most offer both DVI and VGA inputs.

I've got an HD set top box that's not in use at present, so a small
monitor might make a nice bedroom display for it.

On Sun, 03 Sep 2006 17:50:52 -0400, Jim Gilliland wrote:

I keep seeing inexpensive LCD widescreen PC monitors being sold at
rather low prices - some under $200. Yet they never seem to be marketed
towards the TV market, just the PC monitor market. Would they work as
small HDTVs? What is the downside to using them in this way?
Typically, they have 1440x900 resolution and 700:1 contrast ratios.
Most offer both DVI and VGA inputs.

I've got an HD set top box that's not in use at present, so a small
monitor might make a nice bedroom display for it.

Any PC monitor makes a good HDTV monitor. I'm using a 17" at 1280x1024 and
a 19" at 1600x1200 behind MythTV boxes. The 19" which provides a much
higher res than a $700 LCD HDTV only cost $69 after rebate.

--
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"Wes Newell" wrote in message
news:[email protected]
On Sun, 03 Sep 2006 17:50:52 -0400, Jim Gilliland wrote:

I keep seeing inexpensive LCD widescreen PC monitors being sold at
rather low prices - some under $200. Yet they never seem to be marketed
towards the TV market, just the PC monitor market. Would they work as
small HDTVs? What is the downside to using them in this way?
Typically, they have 1440x900 resolution and 700:1 contrast ratios.
Most offer both DVI and VGA inputs.

I've got an HD set top box that's not in use at present, so a small
monitor might make a nice bedroom display for it.

Any PC monitor makes a good HDTV monitor. I'm using a 17" at 1280x1024 and
a 19" at 1600x1200 behind MythTV boxes. The 19" which provides a much
higher res than a $700 LCD HDTV only cost $69 after rebate.

--
Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html Usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv
My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php
HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm


Don't the "cheap" ones usually have poor refresh rates? I've read that a
good pc gamer monitor should have a refresh rate below 8 ms or the picture
smears too much. Wouldn't that apply to HDTV as well?

alien

alien wrote:

Don't the "cheap" ones usually have poor refresh rates? I've read that a
good pc gamer monitor should have a refresh rate below 8 ms or the picture
smears too much. Wouldn't that apply to HDTV as well?

All the cheap ones that I'm looking at quote refresh rates that range
from 8ms down to 5ms.

On Sun, 03 Sep 2006 17:50:52 -0400, Jim Gilliland
wrote:

I keep seeing inexpensive LCD widescreen PC monitors being sold at
rather low prices - some under $200. Yet they never seem to be marketed
towards the TV market, just the PC monitor market. Would they work as
small HDTVs? What is the downside to using them in this way?
Typically, they have 1440x900 resolution and 700:1 contrast ratios.
Most offer both DVI and VGA inputs.

I've got an HD set top box that's not in use at present, so a small
monitor might make a nice bedroom display for it.

I have some recent LCD monitors (20 and 19") and a 40" LCD HDTV.

There are some major differences. Refresh rates are not one and for
all but a tiny percent of the population refresh rates considerably
slower than 8 ms are all that is needed.

The differences I've seen are the computer monitors, even the ones
used for photo editing do not have near the contrast ratio of the TV
sets and as computer monitors are normally viewed from pretty much
straight on all that I've seen had less than half the useful viewing
angle of the new TV sets.

With my TV I can move so far to the side the image is no longer useful
(178 degrees and I believe it), but it does not change either color
tint or contrast. I doubt you will find many new LCD computer monitors
with useful viewing angles that approach much more than 60 degrees.

Most LCD computer monitors will have only a fraction of the contrast
range of the new LCD TV displays.

This is a new monitor and it was not cheap. It's useful viewing angle
is wider than any of the others I tried and it must be about 120
degrees. At that point the contrast starts to go a bit off but the
color is still correct. OTOH I doubt the useful vertical viewing angle
is more than a total of 45 degrees. . Contrast? It's listed at 800:1,
but I only run the brightness at about 50% for comfortable viewing.
That reduces the contrast range to less than the 800:1.

Still, I sure would like to have three 32 to 40" (preferably 40") wide
screen monitors set up with my computer for running flight simulator.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

Roger wrote:
On Sun, 03 Sep 2006 17:50:52 -0400, Jim Gilliland
wrote:

I keep seeing inexpensive LCD widescreen PC monitors being sold at
rather low prices - some under $200. Yet they never seem to be marketed
towards the TV market, just the PC monitor market. Would they work as
small HDTVs? What is the downside to using them in this way?

The differences I've seen are the computer monitors, even the ones
used for photo editing do not have near the contrast ratio of the TV
sets and as computer monitors are normally viewed from pretty much
straight on all that I've seen had less than half the useful viewing
angle of the new TV sets.

With my TV I can move so far to the side the image is no longer useful
(178 degrees and I believe it), but it does not change either color
tint or contrast. I doubt you will find many new LCD computer monitors
with useful viewing angles that approach much more than 60 degrees.

Most LCD computer monitors will have only a fraction of the contrast
range of the new LCD TV displays.

This is a new monitor and it was not cheap. It's useful viewing angle
is wider than any of the others I tried and it must be about 120
degrees. At that point the contrast starts to go a bit off but the
color is still correct. OTOH I doubt the useful vertical viewing angle
is more than a total of 45 degrees. . Contrast? It's listed at 800:1,
but I only run the brightness at about 50% for comfortable viewing.
That reduces the contrast range to less than the 800:1.

Thanks, that helps a lot. Which brand and model is your new monitor?
What is its native resolution?

A lot of the inexpensive LCD monitors use a 1440x900 resolution. How
well do they behave when fed a typical HD signal - either 720p or 1080i?
And what about HDCP issues? I never see that mentioned in their ads.

On Mon, 04 Sep 2006 07:17:35 -0400, Jim Gilliland
wrote:

Roger wrote:
On Sun, 03 Sep 2006 17:50:52 -0400, Jim Gilliland
wrote:

I keep seeing inexpensive LCD widescreen PC monitors being sold at
rather low prices - some under $200. Yet they never seem to be marketed
towards the TV market, just the PC monitor market. Would they work as
small HDTVs? What is the downside to using them in this way?

The differences I've seen are the computer monitors, even the ones
used for photo editing do not have near the contrast ratio of the TV
sets and as computer monitors are normally viewed from pretty much
straight on all that I've seen had less than half the useful viewing
angle of the new TV sets.

With my TV I can move so far to the side the image is no longer useful
(178 degrees and I believe it), but it does not change either color
tint or contrast. I doubt you will find many new LCD computer monitors
with useful viewing angles that approach much more than 60 degrees.

Most LCD computer monitors will have only a fraction of the contrast
range of the new LCD TV displays.

This is a new monitor and it was not cheap. It's useful viewing angle
is wider than any of the others I tried and it must be about 120
degrees. At that point the contrast starts to go a bit off but the
color is still correct. OTOH I doubt the useful vertical viewing angle
is more than a total of 45 degrees. . Contrast? It's listed at 800:1,
but I only run the brightness at about 50% for comfortable viewing.
That reduces the contrast range to less than the 800:1.

Thanks, that helps a lot. Which brand and model is your new monitor?
What is its native resolution?

A lot of the inexpensive LCD monitors use a 1440x900 resolution. How
well do they behave when fed a typical HD signal - either 720p or 1080i?
And what about HDCP issues? I never see that mentioned in their ads.

In order to hook up a computer monitor directly to a cable box using
DVI, the monitor must have HDCP. I recently got the LG L204WT:
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/LG-Mo...oductDetail.do

In order to get it to work to work directly with the cable box, it was
necessary to disable 1080i on the box. 720p works fine, but the
picture is slightly stretched vertically due to the 16X10 resolution
of the monitor.

When I use my AIR2PC PCI card as the video source, the picture is
perfect and in the correct 16X9 ratio.

Jeff OTF wrote:


A lot of the inexpensive LCD monitors use a 1440x900 resolution. How
well do they behave when fed a typical HD signal - either 720p or 1080i?
And what about HDCP issues? I never see that mentioned in their ads.

In order to hook up a computer monitor directly to a cable box using
DVI, the monitor must have HDCP. I recently got the LG L204WT:
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/LG-Mo...oductDetail.do

In order to get it to work to work directly with the cable box, it was
necessary to disable 1080i on the box. 720p works fine, but the
picture is slightly stretched vertically due to the 16X10 resolution
of the monitor.

That's useful info. So it doesn't handle 1080i at all - even though it
has 1050 lines of vertical resolution. Which suggests that the cheaper
900 line displays that I've been seeing may have even more limitations.

Your LG looks like a pretty nice monitor for the price (under $350).

Jim Gilliland wrote:

I keep seeing inexpensive LCD widescreen PC monitors being sold at
rather low prices - some under $200. Yet they never seem to be marketed
towards the TV market, just the PC monitor market. Would they work as
small HDTVs? What is the downside to using them in this way?

In no particular order:

1. Can you get the signal into the monitor?
Not all have composite, Y/C or even DVI, much less HDMI.

2. Aspect ratio control, or rather the lack thereof.
My (discontinued) hp f2304 monitor has composite and
Y/C input, but stretches everything to fill the screen,
which was OK the one time I used it to watch a 16:9 DVD,
but makes it impossible to watch 4:3 content.

3. And about that 16:9 ... PC w/s LCDs tend to be 16:10
rather than 16:9, which you may or not notice.

4. Response time. Although my LCD is nominally a 16ms
screen, I see outlines of window frames for a good 30
seconds after closing them. Didn't, however, notice any
ghosting/tails/smear while watching the DVD.

5. Re-sampling of SDTV to whatever raster the LCD uses,
and the quality thereof.

One reason monitors tend to be much cheaper than
comparable TVs is due to tariffs and anti-dumping rules.
The bottom line is so steep for TVs that imported
camcorders routinely lack TV tuners here, whereas
the same model in Asia has TV capability.

So yes, you can build an LCD TV from a monitor and
a mostly-dead VCR for much less than a comparable
integrated LCD TV :-)

--
Regards, Bob Niland
http://www.access-one.com/rjn email4rjn AT yahoo DOT com
NOT speaking for any employer, client or Internet Service Provider.

rjn wrote:
Jim Gilliland wrote:

I keep seeing inexpensive LCD widescreen PC monitors being sold at
rather low prices - some under $200. Yet they never seem to be marketed
towards the TV market, just the PC monitor market. Would they work as
small HDTVs? What is the downside to using them in this way?

All good questions/comments, some of which I can answer, others not.

In no particular order:

1. Can you get the signal into the monitor?
Not all have composite, Y/C or even DVI, much less HDMI.

They all seem to have DVI and VGA inputs. And my set top box has a VGA
output.

2. Aspect ratio control, or rather the lack thereof.
My (discontinued) hp f2304 monitor has composite and
Y/C input, but stretches everything to fill the screen,
which was OK the one time I used it to watch a 16:9 DVD,
but makes it impossible to watch 4:3 content.

Good question. If you can't set it to 4:3 mode, then it isn't very
practical.

3. And about that 16:9 ... PC w/s LCDs tend to be 16:10
rather than 16:9, which you may or not notice.

Same there, you'd need to be able to force it to 16:9.

4. Response time. Although my LCD is nominally a 16ms
screen, I see outlines of window frames for a good 30
seconds after closing them. Didn't, however, notice any
ghosting/tails/smear while watching the DVD.

Even the cheapest LCDs these days are boasting response time of 8ms, and
some go down to 5ms.

5. Re-sampling of SDTV to whatever raster the LCD uses,
and the quality thereof.

Right. I have no idea how, or even if, these monitors handle the
resampling. And not just from SD, but from the various modes of HD.

Thanks for posting this response. I especially hadn't considered that
it might not be possible to set the monitor to 4:3 or 16:9 mode. It may
turn out that these monitors can handle these issues without difficulty,
but these are definitely questions that need to be answered.