Using a 32 inch HD TV as a PC monitor, good idea?

[wellingtonsteve]

So, at the moment I have two 19 inch non-wide flatscreen monitors hooked up to my PC. I'm considering replacing on of them with one of these.. http://www.sony.co.uk/product/t32-ex-series/kdl-32ex503. A 32" LCD HDTV. I don't have my own TV at the moment, and have had bad experiences with TV Tuner cards (and no particular desire to record TV on the PC or do other media PC type things) so this to me seems like a good idea. I also watch a lot of DVDs etc. on the PC which doesn't look great on a 5:4 ratio screen.

Being an HD TV, it has HDMI inputs, and a decent (IMHO anyway) resolution - 1920x1080 so I see no reason why it shouldn't work as a PC monitor. I was just wondering if anyone here has experience of doing this, and knows whether it really will look as good as a deadicated monitor?

Thanks

[J the Ninja]

TVs don't display things the same way a monitor would, at least not by default. They overscan, meaning they cut off the edges of the picture. (It's a TV thing....long story, google it). This means the sides of your desktop get cut off. The TV might have a mode to disable overscan (often called 1:1 pixel ratio) and there are tools to correct for it in your video cards output, so it is definitely something that can be gotten around, but you should know what you are getting into. Read the manual for the TV first.

The other thing is how far you will be sitting for reading text and such on this monitor. 1920x1080 is the res normally used for 23-25" in displays, not 32. It's going to display things kind of big and fuzzy compared to the way a monitor would, since it is meant for displaying video. This may not be as big of a deal if you have a normal display for text and such, depends on what you are doing with it.

I know several people happily using HDTVs as monitors, but it's not for everyone nor does it work well with every TV. Research, research, research. (Googling "sony kdl-32ex503 computer monitor" or something like that might be a good start)

[Hawknc]

I use a 40" HDTV as a monitor - not what I prefer for web-browsing and reading text, but fantastic for games and video. J's spot on about it cutting off the edges though, I might have to look up the correction tools to fix it.

[wellingtonsteve]

Thanks for the advice. I've actually managed to try one on a laptop since, and it did cut the edges off but I found an option in the TV settings to fix that and it looks pretty good. So I think I will go ahead with it.. thanks for the help!