Hopefully going to be buying myself a nice 32"Tv soon to use for my xbox etc as well as possibly using it for my monitor, whats the general concencious for using a TV as a monitor? Thinking of getting a 27" LG or Sammy tv, possibly spend a little extra and get a LED tv are the LED screens even worth the extra money?
The general consensus here will be not to use a TV for a monitor. Personally I've used a 23" samsung monitor / tv and it was fine, though due to the TN panel technology colour quality cannot compare to a proper IPS or PVA screen. However it was still ok without comparison. However go higher than 23" and due to the native resolution of TV's being limited to 1080p, the picture quality gets pretty rubbish. I wouldn't ever use 'just a TV' as a monitor and wouldn't choose to use any TV above 23" (correct size for 16:9 1920x1080)
make sure you buy 1080p TV's, as any lower (720p) you will be sick of its text fuzzyness, and bad image quality on PC.
If you do avoid using the HDMI input because I have found that the aspect ratio and zoom gets messed up. Keep to using a TV with a DVI input. I've always used a TV as a monitor because I used to have laptops and a 40" TV but now I use a 26" 1080 TV and it works perfectly.
On recent sets, that's almost always a driver/software issue and easy to fiddle with. Just make sure that the TV you buy is happy to accept computers. Some do actually state in the manual that they don't like it and I've seen that cause issues - especially with Panas. I run a 32" Tosh as my monitor for my main machine. I try not to browse for extended periods and I wouldn't dream of working on it, but it's awesome for gaming and media. However, if you don't NEED a TV, get a monitor. I use a TV coz the PC is in the lounge and it makes sense. Otherwise a monitor is always superior.
Your not the first asking these question around here. So I'll be short: -> Most TV's don't come with a color processor, and the colors are adjusted for the best movie/game setup and not actual color accuracy. -> Big screen, with big pixels due to the low resolution for it's size (1920x1080) with larger pixel density, means that text will be hard to read, and won't get a sharp image viewed up close. TV's are designed to be viewed from your sofa, not u close. -> LED TV's/screen's don't exists... ok they do.. its those: I don't think this is what you want. Stop using Apple marketing words that are aimed at people who don't even know what an LED light is. The real term is LED BACK LIGHT LCD display. Where as the name says it, its instead of using a CFL light bulb to illuminate the LCD screen (as the LCD doesn't produce light), it uses so call white LED lights. White LED's don't really exists. It's very light blue (blue'ish white), or very light yellow/orange (warm white). To get nice good white color, the best that we have today that doesn't cost your kidneys are high grade CFL light bulb, found in many good computer LCD monitors to professional grade. The best solution to get a very nice white, that we have today, is RGB LED, where you have mini red, green and blue LED's put very close together, so that the light mix and outputs a nice white. And usually you can adjust each color set of the LED's to get the best white possible. These LED groups are also scattered everywhere on the screen to provide a uniform back light. They are good for laptop due to their low power consumption.
