HDTV's and PC's any real problems?
Community Forums/General Help/HDTV's and PC's any real problems?
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| I've decided to get a prebuilt PC instead of trying to save a few bob by building a PC I will no doubt eff up at some point, most monitors for sale at PC world were the same size and resolution and TBH pants even if they were £90-£150. I had long decided to treat myself to a full HD TV at some point but never got round to it, I just had to find one with VGA in within my price limit, which at the time was Technica from Tesco's as I only had VGA on my much in need of junking 'temp' PC. Now I have upped my budget and had a browse in store as looking on line size meant nothing, I needed to see how big a 32" and above screen was and saw a nice 46" for £400 and a few near by for £20-£100 more. New PC's have HDMI out so I don't have to worry bout VGA anymore, just need a cable if none supplied, but are there any issues with refresh rates etc? Some list in ns, others in htz but the most list nothing at all (least on the little price/tech strip. Guy upstairs has an older 32" running on a modern(ish? he got the shop new cards recently but I have no idea the 'vintage') crossfire and says he has no issues, but are there any hidden suprises I need to factor in when looking for a giant piece of wall estate? |
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| It really depends on the tv, I have had one 100Hertz tv that on anything less than 100 hertz you get ghost images. For a idea of what I mean imagine watching a DVD with motion blur, with things like Bluray it was brilliant and there was no problems whatsoever just any DVD we had the motion blur. |
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| the £400 is 60, had a laugh though and looked at a 60" or more, 1024*768, erm no. Sadly there are quite alot of HD ready still being made, so some that look nice and affordable end up being around the same damn res as what I've got. |
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| I hook my laptop up to my TV via HDMI with no problems. I get full 1080p and have never had any issues regarding refresh rates, etc. |
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| One downside of using a HDTV as a monitor is that some of them have issues with certain PC resolutions, e.g. you may lose part of the screen into the overscan areas if you run 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 or other non-HDTV resolution. Not an issue for the desktop, but could be a problem with some older games. |
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| hmm not thought of that, older games being 4:3 and all, I had an old laptop that looked dog ugly outside of it's natural 1024 res Hog's of war was almosst tollerable HUD wise, the game was OK cos it was 3D. Startopia got it right though, it windowed itself when full screen so I had a black boarder around it, not zoomed in, but it was still crisp. Mind you I've not got many games as I had a pant's gfx card on my first dual core that Seti killed and it's replacement was just net worthy stop gap that I never replaced till that died too. Getting the PC this week, the TV however will have to wait till I've sorted out my room enough to set things up nice, so by then who knows maybe for £400 I can get a wee bit better gogglebox. Just weren't sure if modern PC's would enforce a minimum hz rate hence this thread looking out for unexpected side effects. Edit: I better double check that it actually has VGA out, don't want to get one of their titchy monitors too, cos id only have to dump it somewhere when I go big. |
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| e.g. you may lose part of the screen into the overscan areas if you run 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 or other non-HDTV resolution. I don't know if this is up to the brand, but I thought HDTVs don't have overscan. I set my TV's ratio to "Based on Program", an it fits the entire video frame the best way it can on its screen. You can even see the edge noise from TV content that would be hidden with overscan etc. I think it's best if no overscan is used: you're sure to not miss any bit at all of what you're seeing (some people call this OCD, I call it being thorough). |
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| Re: overscan or whatever you call it, i know that when I connect my netbook to the HDTV (using HDMI), most of the taksbar disappears of the bottom of the TV screen in the netbook's native 1366x768 resolution. (I'm assuming that the TV automagically interprets it as 720P, clipping off 48 pixels in the process. 24 from the top, 24 from the bottom) This is on a 55" Samsung 1080p TV, fwiw. Bottom line, there's definitely difference isn behaviour between monitors and (some) HDTV panels, even though the display panel itself has the same max. resolution. |
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| I would have thought that even laptop gpu's even intel onboard ones would support full HD if the secondary monitor allowed it and not just out put 1:1 but trim it as if it was 1280*720. Very odd. |
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| Samsung TVs seem to have a mode called JustScan you need to activate. I don't think all sets have this feature, but you can read more about it here: - What is JustScan? - Is JustScan available on my TV? EDIT: You should try the "Screen Fit" picture size option as well. I think this is the one that's analogous to my TV's "Based on Program". |
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| Well I shouldn't have worried about the hz thing, the monitor they recomend as a package 23" @ £120 is also 60 and it turns out the brand I was thinking of is Dixons own (they've ditched their japanese sounding one it seems, had a few of them in the 80's/90's). |
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| EDIT: You should try the "Screen Fit" picture size option as well. I think this is the one that's analogous to my TV's "Based on Program". This. "screen fit" is the correct setting on Samsung sets to ensure you don't get bits of the screen cut off. Only really old HD TVs should have any "overscan" issues that can't be fixed with the correct settings. |
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| Ginger Tea, you are in the UK right? Shouldn't TVs there be 50Hz or a multiple of 50Hz? |
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| If the PC has HDMI out and the TV has HDMI in (and it's not a stupidly expensive one running at 120 Hz or whatever) then it should be fine. No problems here, except for the fact that Nvidia has just stuffed up their drivers on my mini-PC via Windows Update and broken video acceleration. Grrr... |
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| surely (don't call me shirley) that old 50/60hz thing was valid only for pal/ntsc SD tv, seeing as everything is 1980*1080 for full HD regardless of country and all that jazz it's kinda moot. Turns out guy upstairs replaced his tv with a newer one and that is 60hz too and he said he had no issues. Just got back from buying an i7 and had a double look at TV's I didn't see it on the website, but for £50 more I can get a samsung 46" Dixons own brand or Samsung, tough decision ... not. I had a look at the back of it to see if the pc had VGA out as the website didn't say and I didn't want to fork out for a temp 23" @ £120 and funnily enough I did the maths PC with monitor one price, without £220 difference, they didn't have a monitor by that make for £220, I asked if I was derping my maths and the lady checked it out and was surprised to find it that much more, no hidden extras in that £100, it was just basically PC + Monitor + pay PC World £100 cos you are dumb. |
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| Also: keep in mind that DVI and HDMI are eletrically identical, it's just a different pin layout. You'll get much better image quality hooking up over DVI/HDMI than VGA. (You can either buy a cable that's DVI on one side and HDMI on the other, or grab a DVI->HDMI gender bender) |
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| Trust me it's going via HDMI once I get the telly VGA is only needed for this current monitor |
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| I think there are some other issues with the 50/60 Hz thing. Aren't your television shows broadcast at 50 Hz? Your DVD's are made to run at 50Hz? That is why I asked. I know in the US, our TVs are 60 Hz, 120Hz, 240Hz, etc. All multiples of 60Hz, because our stuff is made to work at that refresh rate. Even our DVD discs are encoded at 29.97 fps. So that they can be run at 60Hz without having to inject extra non existent frames which might make the video look choppy. If this isn't an issue anymore, then what do I know. I am an American, and I believe the universe revolves around me :) |
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| That is why I started this thread to see if anything snagged. Hmm perhaps that's why DVD's ghosted for ed in post #2 DVD's are pal/ntsc, but HDTV and blu ray are international and only get issues due to region lockouts? I'll ask guy upstairs how PAL DVD's fare on his 60hz set up, not that I'm aware of him having any NTSC ones to skew the results. |
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| Well I found out by accident (only cos I don't look) that this monitor is also 60hz so I don't need to ask upstairs about his 60hz and DVD's cos I've not had issues @ 60 on this. |
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| I think a lot of people are confused between the refresh rate that computers signal the monitor to update the screen display - and the scan frequency of the tv/monitor. PAL is suitable for 50Hz scan frequency which typically accepts about 29.5 refresh frames per second, whereas NTSC for 60Hz scan frequencies since these were based on the power-line AC frequency so that multiple signals (i.e. horiz/vert or sound/image etc.) could be sent together at precise phase differences |
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| Yes, but if you send a TV updating at 50Hz a signal that was done at 29.5fps, the TV is going to have to interpolate the other 20.5 frames. That would be OK, if it were sent 25 frames and had to interpolate the other 25, because that is an even amount and it will just show each frame for 2 screen updates. But with a 29.5 fps the TV has to interpolate 20.5 frames which isn't an even number, so it will be 2 frames sometimes and 1 frames about 20% of the time, which will cause it to look a little choppy. Correct? I am no expert, it is just my understanding of it, I may be off base here. What I do know, is I bought a 240Hz TV a few months back. And it smooths out those missing frames. The video looks SO much smoother, that it is unsettling at first, you have to get use to it. Everybody notices it who come over and watch my TV and haven't seen a TV with more than 60Hz refresh rate. |
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| Also, just to be clear. I am not saying the TV will or won't work for his computer. What I meant was that if he were trying to buy TV/monitor to use with his computer, that he might also want to WATCH TV on, then he may think about getting a TV that does 50Hz or 100Hz, etc... |
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| Have you seen what's on the UK TV these days? OK I have to admit I haven't ;) not had a TV in a decade, I just use BBC iPlayer for doctor who and qi |
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