Christmas is coming and my daughter’s monitor gets a little dimmer every day. She’s comfortable with a smallish monitor, say 17" or smaller. For that size, I can get either a dedicated monitor or a TV with a VGA input on sale for about the same price.
She doesn’t game – the toughest thing she’d use the monitor for would be watching videos. Is there any real reason NOT to go ahead and get a TV? I know a small TV won’t give a true 1080p, probably not more than 720. Is that going to be a problem when watching from arm’s length?
An LCD monitor is going to be cheaper as it lacks the tuner circuitry of a television. Since it has lets parts, less can go wrong. Get the monitor is what I say.
Put your monitor on a resolution of 1280x720, and use it for a few days. If you’re comfortable with it, then go for the TV. But honestly, at that small of a size, there’s no reason not to get the monitor. You’ll get higher quality at the same price. What do you want in a TV that a computer monitor doesn’t offer? Inputs?
A 17" display with 720p resolution (1280 x 720) would be on the very low side for a monitor. My 12" monitor has better resolution than that. What this means, essentially, is that computer stuff may appear slightly pixelated and rather humongous. It won’t be unusable, but for the same amount of money you can get a much better monitor (able to display more of a webpage, more of a high-res picture, etc., and it’ll look generally “sharper”). Videos are actually less noticeable (IMO), though having a high-res monitor coupled with HD videos will make them look better too. That will only matter if you watch videos above 720p, naturally.
If you get a TV over a monitor, you’re essentially paying for:
TV-tuning capabilities
Integrated speakers
(Possibly) additional inputs
TV-specific aspect ratios (16:9 as opposed to the more common 4:3 or 16:10 for computer monitors)
(Possibly) a remote control
If you don’t need those things, monitors are probably a better idea. Essentially: Are you actually going to watch TV on it? If so, it makes sense. If not, just get a monitor.
I have a Samsung 20" LCD TV and Monitor combined in my bedroom and it works a treat, including using design packages on it. I can’t see a reason not to get the combo for your daughter.
Actually, I don’t understand the push towards higher resolution monitors. My 17 inch CRT still is running on 800x600 because 1024x768 makes things too small, and bumping up the fonts or the DPI messes up way too many programs. Working at 720p doesn’t seem to be a problem at all.
Depending on who’s selling what on any given day, I can often find a smallish TV on sale for a better price than the same size monitor. But I am getting a vibe here that a monitor is optimized for a computer, while a TV only approximates it. Is that correct?
I don’t shop for TVs a lot, but our modern LCD has computer support natively, so maybe if you have a small LCD it would be adequate. We had our computer hooked up to our previous CRT television, and that was blurry even at its native resolution with a SVCD input. Since we do most of our video with DVDs or streaming, the fact that we bought a full-blown TV rather than a monitor of the same size was probably a waste of money.
I set up a small 23" samsung tv as a monitor at my parents house. it has 1080p resolution and looks great as a pc monitor and tv. cost around $200 on sale at officemax. Chalk me up as one who doesn’t get super high resolutions. my pc monitor is an old crt which can do a max of 2304 x 1440 and I still use 1280 x 800 unless I’m gaming.