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bearmick

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Has anyone had experience with running a PC through a TV instead of a monitor? I've heard some reports saying the image sucks and the speed can be compromised on gaming because the picture is designed for a smaller, monitor-sized screen. Others say they've had no slow down and the pic is great.
 
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bearmick said:
Has anyone had experience with running a PC through a TV instead of a monitor? I've heard some reports saying the image sucks and the speed can be compromised on gaming because the picture is designed for a smaller, monitor-sized screen. Others say they've had no slow down and the pic is great.
Click to expand...

If the PC has the interface to go out to the TV.... such as HDMI out to an HDMI port on the TV or similar with DVI or VGA.... there should be no difference from that and using a regular computer monitor.

A computer monitor or a TV are really both just display components that interpret an input they accept...

One of our gaming bros on here uses a huge TV hooked up to his desktop rig.... Jester maybe? He could speak to it better.
 
HeHateMe

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I have a 40inch flat screen from GATEWAY that's like 0ver 10 years old and isn't even HD (lol) and I have no problem hooking that ***** up to my laptop. you have to fiddle with the resolution on the computer a bit but it works great.
 
LordKOTL

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I'm doing that on 2 of my PC's. The one in our bedroom has HDMI running from the PC straight to a 40" TV. Sound is on a separate circuit via the motherboard.

For my main HTPC, I'm running HDMI out over to a 5.1 headunit, and then HDMI to a 46" TV. Sound is coming from the graphics card over the HDMI and is pushed throught the 5.1 headunit, which strips out the sound and the video is passed on to the TV.

Whether or not the image "sucks" depends on the connection you're using and the TV itself. If you're trying to run sound and video, go with HDMI. If you're trying to run just video, go with HDMI, DisplayPort (if the TV has it), or DVI (if the TV had it). I would not recommend the old VGA standard unless that's the only option you have.

There is no real "video" slowdown that inherent to running it over a TV itself. There are things from both the TV and Video Card side you'll have to tweak, like how it displays color: my 40" was hypersaturated, my 46" was fine. However, my 46" had over/underscan issues. All of those can be corrected via AMD's Catalys Control Center or Nvidia's Control Panel.

Assuming you're running it for gaming, chances are you are not running onboard video. It's possible to do so, but you might run into perfomance issues that are inherent with onbord video itself. No mater what you run, though, make sure you disable the onboard audio chipset--unless you're going to pipe sound over the HDMI, then enable it and disable all other sound outputs.

Finally--one thing to realize is that games are in general designed for a monitor up-close. For a few games I have run, the subtitles or any other in-game context can be hard to read unless you have eyes of a hawk. Alice: Madness Returns is a prime example. On a 24" screen, text 1/10" high is fairly easy to read from about 2' away. That same text on a 46" screen is about 2/10" high, but you may be looking at it from 10-15 feet away.
 
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HeHateMe said:
I have a 40inch flat screen from GATEWAY that's like 0ver 10 years old and isn't even HD (lol) and I have no problem hooking that ***** up to my laptop. you have to fiddle with the resolution on the computer a bit but it works great.
Click to expand...
Antique collector?
 
xer0h0ur

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I hate the appearance of a computer desktop @ 1920x1080 (1080p) resolution over a TV connected to a PC (using HDMI). Some people have no problem with it but it looks like shit to me. The only connection I would even consider is HDMI or better. DVI would be a last resort backup and VGA is just peasant shit. In reality if I was going to run a big screen TV on a computer it would be a 4K TV and nothing else since it runs a significantly higher and much better looking resolution (3840 x 2160). If you're trying to use it for gaming then you will likely suffer from input lag unless you're splurging on a high end TV. It also probably wouldn't be a good idea to go with a 4K screen if you plan on gaming since your framerate will be limited to your input's bandwidth rate which for HDMI 1.4 is no better than 30 frames per second @ 4K. I have no idea if any TVs have Displayport yet but Displayport 1.2a supports 60 frames per second since its a higher bandwidth connection, so does HDMI 2.0.

So all in all if you're gaming look for an HDTV with a 120Hz or higher refresh rate, high pixel density panel, and as low of a response time as you can afford. This is of course assuming connecting through HDMI.

Clearly you want to know for sure what your video card supports in terms of connections before you go buying a TV. You need to know what your limitations are. Otherwise it would be stupid to buy something like a TV with HDMI 2.0 and expecting it to be working at its potential with a video card that only does HDMI 1.4.
 
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^this guy and his massive setup. :rolleyes:

I do agree though. If you're gaming, stick with a monitor. No reason not to, and it will give you the best performance possible. Even the lower end ones are great nowadays.
 
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I don't mean to brag or anything but I just finished setting my cousin up with his Forex trading six monitor setup. Its a fuckin beast.

eyefinity.jpg


Note this is just Netflix on IE stretched over the 6 monitors. Its not in full screen.
 
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What input lag? I think the problem there is using stuff to smooth the motion on TVs or if there's some other bottleneck. I'm getting no lag whatsoever. Be it AMD-based graphics, Nvidia-based graphics, or whether or not audio is ganged over HDMI.

If there was an issue, then the response between console and PC would be noticiable. ;)

Seriously I think you have to ask yourself how you're going to use the setup. In general I have everything text and otherwise scaled on my HTPC to accomiodate sitting 15' away (look at it like this--if you have a 24" monitor it would be like standing 7' from it so you scale everything up). As such, I don't do any real work on it--its for gaming and TV/movies. My bedroom one I do work on--and that one is scale for sitting closer--like 4'-6' away (even though it gets some TV I don't game on it much it at all). Plus, if you're sitting close to a large monitor it will get pixellated unless you're running 4k (and dedicated monitors that large tend to be expensive). So make sure you're setting it up for a specific use.

And yes, keep in mind not all games scale text stuff up properly. :)
 
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I'd say xero is pretty much dead on. If you want to hook your PC up to a big screen TV for gaming purposes, I'd say a separate game system would cost you a ton less in the long run, when you consider all the high end equipment/hardware required to make it perform well from a PC to your TV. Only things that look better from a PC on a big screen are your high res pics and HD videos and you can just chromecast those things.
 
Tater

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xer0h0ur said:
I don't mean to brag or anything but I just finished setting my cousin up with his Forex trading six monitor setup. Its a fuckin beast.


Note this is just Netflix on IE stretched over the 6 monitors. Its not in full screen.
Click to expand...

Sweet set up you put together there.
 
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Thanks. Not going to lie, I was jelly. Once we had it wrapped up last night I must have played around on it for like 2 hours just seeing how much shit I could have running at once on that much monitor real estate. He was one happy hamburger.
 
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Doesn't work for gaming cause input lag and cause TVs are almost never above 30-60Hz or some shit unless you are spending serious money. So that would basically restrict you to 30-60 frames per second. Which is bullshit. Modern monitors can run at 144Hz without spending crazy money.

Even if you don't care about the Hz, input lag can be real bad.

If you have a nice gaming setup, a TV is gon nullify a lot of that money you spent.
 
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xer0h0ur

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Its all about the connection botfly. The panel itself might be bad to the fuckin bone and easily capable of a high refresh rate but if the connection's bandwidth can't fuckin handle it then you just can't go past the refresh rate limit of the connection.
 
bearmick

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Spartan said:
If you want to hook your PC up to a big screen TV for gaming purposes, I'd say a separate game system would cost you a ton less in the long run
Click to expand...

I already use my TV for my xbox.

I ended up buying an all-in-one PC tonight. Compact enough for my coffee table if I want to get on here or play WGT while I'm watching TV.
 
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The only golf game I ever played was Albatross18 until they took down the USA servers. It was cartoony and Asian as **** though.
 
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