TV or Monitor?? Hard buying decision!

[steve10765]

i sit about 5 feet away from my 32 inch tv which i use my pc on. it works great, and its only 720p and yours is 1080p! i would get the monitor if you sat a little far away

 

[Rawan AbuSalman]

Yeah TV as a monitor is a bad idea as the resolution just sucks, and perhaps more importantly the dot pitch is horrible. Unless you will only use the computer as a games (with controller) and media machine, otherwise monitor is the only sensible choice - also would be a bit of a waste of any half decent graphics card.

I wouldn't say the resolution of a TV as a monitor "sucks".

While I'm no expert in the matter, and have not compared a TV and a monitor side-by-side, I could give my own experience; I've been using a 720p 32" Samsung LCD with my desktop. I got it several years ago, when LCDs were just coming out (and were quite expensive; I paid for that more than what a much larger 1080p LED costs today). So I can only imagine how much better a much newer 1080p LED would be.

Maybe if put side-by-side next to a monitor, the resolution on the monitor might be better. Maybe. Maybe not. I cannot argue with that. But what I can say is I find nothing wrong with the resolution, and it certainly doesn't suck (at least by my standards). When I use computers with monitors, I notice no difference in resolution (again, out of memory, not side-by-side. But then again, if my LCD TV "sucked", I should be able to notice how significantly better a monitor is, even out of memory).

While some might argue that 32" for a computer monitor is "too big", I have gotten used to it. I find it weird when I work on smaller monitors. And it doubles as a TV, which is a plus for me. I'm sometimes working on my PC and watching a movie/a football game in a PIP window in the corner of the screen.

Again, not an expert opinion. Just an opinion. Hope it helps.

 

[PP Mguire]

It's not resolution of modern TVs, it's pixel pitch and sharpness. In most cases, it's a 1080p picture on 32+ for a TV or 21+ for a PC LCD. People don't realize that a 1920x1080 picture is the same on a 21" as it is on a 40". When you stretch the picture out the sharpness goes down due to the pixel pitch being lower because you are stretching the pixels further out. A TV is meant to be placed further back for comfortable viewing and companies expect this to be able to make their panel a lower quality and you wont notice it. Most people can get by and not even notice, but for people like me it is very noticeable and I feel like I need glasses looking at a TV that is 2ft in front of me.

As for resolution, anything not 1080p on a TV is going to look worse due to stretching an even smaller picture to a bigger screen. 1280x720 vs 1920x1080 is a huge difference.