TV as a computer monitor?

So a something my company does is the “Drive for Gold” program and you can build up points to “purchase” things on a website somewhere. Well they decided to end the program Sept 30th and I have to cash in. They don’t have a huge selection of stuff and some of it is fairly expensive, but what they have a lot of are flat screen TVs and I have enough points for up to a 40” TV.  

I have an office in my house I’m setting up to actually use, well, as an office. I figured I could use some of the points for a Monitor for my computer seeing that I have a 15” square flat screen from a decade ago. 

I know TVs as computer monitors are nothing new, but does anyone have any recommendations as what I should look for, what size is good for a desk, stay away from, etc? 

Thanks. 

I'm using a 21" Hitachi TV right now. It was $89 at Brandsmart. It just sits on my desk next to my laptop, works great. Eventually I'm going to hook my SNES to it for break time.

Any kind of modern large flat-panel TV will make a fine computer monitor. If it's a smaller one the resolution might be lower than you'd like (I'd say you want at least 1080p for anything beyond a compact laptop monitor these days), but that's the only pitfall to watch out for.

The only problem with a something as large as a 40" "monitor" is going to be the need to sit back from a bit so it looks ok.

I use dual 27" monitors in my home office.

I think the line between "TV" and "monitor" is pretty blurry these days....

1988RedT2 said:

I think the line between "TV" and "monitor" is pretty blurry these days....

Indeed, the major difference is now that a TV has a TV tuner built in.

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

I'd agree with that, at least if you're talking about standard rectangles (ie, no curved high-refresh rate gaming monitors or similar).

My advice would be to make sure that the computer and monitor speak the same input/output for video so you can actually drive it, and not to go too big for the resultion. For example you probably don't want a 40" 1080p monitor sitting on your desk if it's too close to your eyes. 40" 4k on the other hand...

1988RedT2 said:

I think the line between "TV" and "monitor" is pretty blurry these days....

I agree. As far as I can tell, the only differences seem to be that TV's have speakers and are generally bigger than monitors - and the only reason for that is because of what Z31 was saying. My eyes are 8-25 feet away from a TV, but only 2 feet away from a computer monitor.

Like Tim said, definitely look for an option with 4K resolution--unless your eyesight is poor, you'll feel silly with giant icons and huge text on a 40" 1080p desktop.

It depends on several things, notably whether your computer is also a decade old. Search out and read a few articles on it, and pay attention to the dpi, the refresh rate and the connection types. A 40" 1080p tv is not going to have sharp text or images as a computer monitor, but a 40" 4K would be ok. I think 27" is nearly overkill for desk use.

But worst case, free tv, right?

I used a 32" 1080p TV as a monitor for a good while, but I did sit further back from it. Maybe you can get two smaller TVs? (Then you have to figure out if your computer has the inputs for 2 screens...or use one as a monitor and the other as a TV)

Make sure it is in "game mode" or whatever similar mode.  Outside of this, many TVs have a very long input response time - like >100ms which combined with a mouse will result a special kind of madness.

I use my old 42" Panasonic Viera 1080p plasma as a computer monitor:

It works really well. The computer I have hooked up to it is a 2014ish Dell XPS tower with a Nvidia Geforce GTX 745. It's nothing great, but the Nvidia drivers help it display properly on the TV. It even identified the model of TV and optimized the display through the HDMI input somehow. I use it like a TV, both with the PC hooked up and when I'm gaming on it, meaning I sit on the couch to use it.

Only issue with driving some of the TV's is native resolution. If you want to drive a 40' monitor or a 24' at 4K you need a beefy video card. If you don't care about refresh rate and don't game on it them go hog wild using a TV. 

In reply to wearymicrobe :

Yeah, gaming on 4k will need a beefy graphics card.

BoxheadTim said:

In reply to wearymicrobe :

Yeah, gaming on 4k will need a beefy graphics card.

For most modern AAA titles, gaming at 4k is simply not possible with a reasonable frame rate as far as I know.

For a long time, I used a 32" Sanyo TV in my office at work.  As a theater tech director, I'm constantly looking at PDFs of blueprints, demo photos, schematics, etc.  Big TV was nice.

Then they went through and bought us all nice All-in-ones.  Dangit... back to 19".  I could put my AIO under the desk and DV out to the TV, but nah.

At home I sometimes cast to my 55" 4K HDR TV.  Now THAT'S nice.

I saw the title and came here looking for Commodore 64 content.  Disappointed 

ProDarwin said:

BoxheadTim said:

In reply to wearymicrobe :

Yeah, gaming on 4k will need a beefy graphics card.

For most modern AAA titles, gaming at 4k is simply not possible with a reasonable frame rate as far as I know.

It is you just have a BOSS game card like the new 2080 Ti or two of them. But it's only the hardcore that do things like building $5k gaming computers.

You are right, a 2080 Ti will (barely) push 60fps 4k for modern games.  With a card below that it simply appears out of reach unless you are playing a low system requirement game**.  SLI isn't supported by all cards, and isn't supported by a lot of games, so getting 2 of them doesn't necessarily result in an improvement.

**Usually free to play/subscription games/games with a berkeleyload of DLC/games I hate

ProDarwin said:

You are right, a 2080 Ti will (barely) push 60fps 4k for modern games.  With a card below that it simply appears out of reach unless you are playing a low system requirement game**.  SLI isn't supported by all cards, and isn't supported by a lot of games, so getting 2 of them doesn't necessarily result in an improvement.

 

**Usually free to play/subscription games/games with a berkeleyload of DLC/games I hate

I don't play the types of games that need that kind of HP. I just want to build another sim setup next year so I can get back into iRacing and maybe other casual stuff like the Sim City/Civilization type stuff. I'm not good at the shooters and don't plan on taking the time to get good at them.

ProDarwin said:

BoxheadTim said:

In reply to wearymicrobe :

Yeah, gaming on 4k will need a beefy graphics card.

For most modern AAA titles, gaming at 4k is simply not possible with a reasonable frame rate as far as I know.

It's possible with an unreasonably powerful video card that comes at an unreasonable price.

In reply to JoeyM :

Just for you. 

I've got a 42" Sony 4k sitting roughly 30-32" from me.  I use it as my only monitor.  Previously I had a hodgepodge of multiple monitors.  

Forza 7 works great at 60 fps on my AMD Vega 56 GPU.  Of course, for some reason Forza just works really well on Vega.  It, at least, seems targeted for 4k@60fps for midrange cards.

For working/web browsing, I usually find that I won't fullscreen or maximize windows because it's more or less too much real estate.  It's great to deal with multiple windows/documents at one time, though.

z31maniac said:

ProDarwin said:

BoxheadTim said:

In reply to wearymicrobe :

Yeah, gaming on 4k will need a beefy graphics card.

For most modern AAA titles, gaming at 4k is simply not possible with a reasonable frame rate as far as I know.

It is you just have a BOSS game card like the new 2080 Ti or two of them. But it's only the hardcore that do things like building $5k gaming computers.

I mention it because some tv screens that are 4K are native 4K and I somre require driving them that way from a PC. Most will let you push 2K and the internals will handle it just fine. 

FYI 

You can totally do 4K on a RTX2080TI. I can do it with my GTX1080TI but you cannot push everything to ultra or even max and AA eats performance as well. RTX eats performace as well. Since most people don't even game on 120hz monitors its a minor point though ow far you can push things. Allegedly ASUS is pushing out a 300hz screen later this year that is not for a laptop I cannot tell the difference between a 120/240 though.