TV as monitor

[jtdragon]

I've use my 60" rear projection Mist. C9 with no problem. Running a 460 GT card. FR not a issure with rear projection or projectors.

[Tigger29]

i appreciate the replies.  The reason I'm thinking TV is that i can get size for a lower cost and I don't have to install a tuner card into the PC.  

This is the only game I plan on it so i don't want to make it sound like i'm a hard core gamer looking for great clarity.  The monitor I'm playing now is only a 60Hz max running at a native 1680x1050.  How bad would a 1080p be in comparison to that? Since I'm mostly concerned with a cost effective and substantial upgrade in size, are there any good monitors out there to consider?

A 1080p television will have a resolution of 1920X1080 and *should* be able to support 60Hz.  60Hz yields 60FPS and is plenty enough for Aces High (your eyes probably won't notice anything higher).  TV's that claim to be 120Hz or 240Hz do this by other means of image processing and personally I don't understand how it is any more than marketing hype because television is only broadcast at 24Hz anyway.  Don't fall for the hype... save your money and image/color quality is MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than the Hz rating.

Many people have successfully used HDTV's as computer monitors just make sure it has an extra DVI and/or HDMI connector.  Also make sure it has a "GAMING MODE" so that you can be sure there's no input lag.  Lastly BEFORE BUYING do your research as some TV's work much better for this than others.

[skorpion]

i used to have my 32" flatscreen as a monitor, never really had any problems with it because it had a PC-gaming mode on it, and was typically running full eye-candy on 60 FPS.


it was a spectronIQ LED/LCD tv in case of any of you wanting to know.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

A 1080p television will have a resolution of 1920X1080 and *should* be able to support 60Hz.  60Hz yields 60FPS and is plenty enough for Aces High (your eyes probably won't notice anything higher).  TV's that claim to be 120Hz or 240Hz do this by other means of image processing and personally I don't understand how it is any more than marketing hype because television is only broadcast at 24Hz anyway.

Due to the nature of LCD screens a 24hz image would seem completely jerky and unpleasant especially in fast movements. That's why an image processing unit is calculating interpolated frames between the real frames to smooth the movements hence the '200hz' rating. So while it may make the moving tv picture smoother it introduces a big unnecessary processing overhead to a computer image that you don't want. That's why 'gaming mode' or all enhancement off mode is best for gaming.

[Tigger29]

Due to the nature of LCD screens a 24hz image would seem completely jerky and unpleasant especially in fast movements. That's why an image processing unit is calculating interpolated frames between the real frames to smooth the movements hence the '200hz' rating. So while it may make the moving tv picture smoother it introduces a big unnecessary processing overhead to a computer image that you don't want. That's why 'gaming mode' or all enhancement off mode is best for gaming.

Exactly which is why I mentioned "do this by other means of image processing" and not into further details as it's not really relevant here other than to talk about how it can cause input lag.  Personally I own an "old school" 60hz 1080p television (48") and it has a beautiful picture.  I paid $700 for it two years ago.  My uncle spent a couple of grand on a similar TV except that it is a 120hz setup and it's smoothing processing simply drives me insane.  It's almost too smooth to be believable and annoys me to death.  Personally I like the 60hz (technically 24hz) better.  For the record I've never heard of a TV that supported 200hz.. only 120hz or 240hz.. at least not here in the U.S.

The way it works is this.  Since TV is broadcast at 24hz and since most LCD's are 60hz and since 24 does not go into 60 it has to redraw the frames unevenly.  I forget exactly how it works but IIRC it draws one frame twice and the next frame three times then the next twice and so on.  This causes it to be a bit less 'smooth' because every other frame is slightly longer than the last.  On a 120hz TV since 24 DOES go into 120 it can simply repeat each frame five times which smooths things out even more but really is no different than simply being 24hz.  On top of that further technology is used to create virtual frames in between... so for example it will take the first frame and draw it then wait for the next frame and calculate the difference between the two and create a new frame based on that and throw it in between the two.  Since it has to wait for the next frame before it can display the virtual in-between frames this causes an amount of input lag which is not friendly with gaming.

Also since this processing is done virtually this means that the TV itself can't really support a 120hz or 240hz input.  Usually they are still capped at 60hz (the speed is advertised as double or quadruple because it includes the virtual frames that it creates).  Of course there are exceptions but these tend to be very expensive.

[gyrene81]

*hijack* i'd like to know where you guys are coming up with this 24Hz frequency. as i understand it, that is the the motion picture recording frequency to film, not the playback or broadcast freqency. 

[FBLazy1]

I recently just started using a 27" HDTV for my monitor with the vga cable. I went from a 20" crt monitor with only 60fps max to a 27" hdtv with 75fps. 

[MrRiplEy[H]]

For the record I've never heard of a TV that supported 200hz.. only 120hz or 240hz.. at least not here in the U.S.

PAL/SECAM that we use in Europe is 50hz.

Lines and refresh rate

NTSC color encoding is used with the system M television signal, which consists of 29.97 interlaced frames of video per second, or the nearly identical system J in Japan. Each frame consists of a total of 525 scanlines, of which 486 make up the visible raster. The remainder (the vertical blanking interval) are used for synchronization and vertical retrace. This blanking interval was originally designed to simply blank the receiver's CRT to allow for the simple analog circuits and slow vertical retrace of early TV receivers. However, some of these lines now can contain other data such as closed captioning and vertical interval timecode (VITC). In the complete raster (ignoring half-lines), the even-numbered or 'lower" scanlines (Every other line that would be even if counted in the video signal, e.g. {2,4,6,...,524}) are drawn in the first field, and the odd-numbered or "upper" (Every other line that would be odd if counted in the video signal, e.g. {1,3,5,...,525}) are drawn in the second field, to yield a flicker-free image at the field refresh frequency of approximately 59.94 Hertz (actually 60 Hz/1.001). For comparison, 576i systems such as PAL-B/G and SECAM uses 625 lines (576 visible), and so have a higher vertical resolution, but a lower temporal resolution of 25 frames or 50 fields per second.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

*hijack* i'd like to know where you guys are coming up with this 24Hz frequency. as i understand it, that is the the motion picture recording frequency to film, not the playback or broadcast freqency. 

Yeah it's called 24p cinema mode and it exists due to the problems Tigger explained

Exactly which is why I mentioned "do this by other means of image processing" and not into further details as it's not really relevant here other than to talk about how it can cause input lag. 

Actually you said:

personally I don't understand how it is any more than marketing hype because television is only broadcast at 24Hz anyway.  Don't fall for the hype...

Which is why I thought you probably needed an explanation.

The way it works is this.  Since TV is broadcast at 24hz and since most LCD's are 60hz and since 24 does not go into 60 it has to redraw the frames unevenly.

Cinemas use 24 hz refresh, TV image has always been 25 (PAL) or 29,97 (NTSC) frames per second. Because CRT televisions display interlaced image, every other line in the image gets drawn at a time so double refresh of 50/60 is required to show a full image at 25/29,97 fps.

[morfiend]

I was thinking that with the newer TV's and HDMI that it might make sense to combine the TV and PC monitor in my fun room.  What I need to know is how would a game like AHII play on a TV serving as a monitor?  What would I need to consider?

Thanks!

 I use a 47in. LG TV as a monitor,it's 120hz unit but runs at 60 hz on my pc. I use a standard VGA connector from my VC,I also have a second monitor plugged into the system but rarely use it as I've grown to like the larger text when surfing the web.
 Something to consider is the distance you sit from it and it's size.Go too big and you have to sit so far back it negates to larger screen,I was going to get a 55 inch model but would have to have sat about 8 feet to see it properly,the 47 at 5 to 6 feet seems to fit me quite nicely.

 All the fancy 120/240 hz TV's wont work at anything but 60 hz when run in "PC" mode but some look better when viewing TV,so get the best contrast and brightness you can find,mine just happens to do the 3d thing as a bonus!