Using LCD TV as PC Monitor

[Alan Plaid]

want to use an LCD TV as a monitor - 32" is all I have room for. If
anyone hear has experience of doing this and knows a little about
resolutions etc I would like some advice.

I went to PCWorld and persuaded them to connect my Netbook (Advent 4211C
or MSI Wind) to a LG LH5000, and we seemed to get a good picture at it's
native resolution 1920 x 1080 although at one point the picture was
shunted lightly to the right. It took a lot of persuasion to get them to
try and they did not really know what they were doing.

I also tried an LG LH3000 in a Comet - although I got a picture, the res
looked all wrong. The difference between the 5000 and the 3000 models is
that the 3000 runs at 50Hz while the 5000 runs at 100Hz - Does one need
at least 100Hz to use one with a PC ?

I noticed that even though the LH5000 produced a good looking picture, it
was being driven at 60Hz, any attempt to bump it up gave a no signal
error.

Anyway, any info or advice would be good.
I am not expecting a picture of the quality of a top notch Monitor, I am
actually just after achieving larger icons at a reasonable res. The
trouble with large pc monitors is that they seem to run very high native
resolutions.

Thanks for any help.

 

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

I also tried an LG LH3000 in a Comet - although I got a picture, the res
looked all wrong.

I'm using a 32" LH3000 here, with a Mac Mini as the media centre
(DVI->HDMI adapter). It's a bit funny about its resolutions - the
1080p and 720p both show black borders, as do various non-TV
resolutions. I eventually settled on 1360x768, which sizes perfectly
and makes the media player UI look fine too. I'm using it as a TV, not
a monitor, but I think it'd be okay from say 4 feet away.

I haven't played with the TV in order to persuade it to size the image
correctly in the 1080p mode, but a quick google showed that this sort
of thing seems to be pretty normal for some insane reason.

Cheers - Jaimie

 

[Alan Plaid]

I'm using a 32" LH3000 here, with a Mac Mini as the media centre
(DVI->HDMI adapter). It's a bit funny about its resolutions - the
1080p and 720p both show black borders, as do various non-TV
resolutions. I eventually settled on 1360x768, which sizes perfectly
and makes the media player UI look fine too. I'm using it as a TV, not
a monitor, but I think it'd be okay from say 4 feet away.

I haven't played with the TV in order to persuade it to size the image
correctly in the 1080p mode, but a quick google showed that this sort
of thing seems to be pretty normal for some insane reason.

Cheers - Jaimie

Hi Jamie - thanks for the reply. I tried the LH3000 (which has a 5oMhz
panel) yesterday, I did get a full screen image, but the picture looked
all wrong - like it does if you run an LCD in anything except it's
'native' resolution. That led me to try the LH5000 (which uses a 100Mhz
panel) which seemed to give a proper 1920 x 1080 display.

Obviously as you are a MAC user I am not sure how that compares to PC's -
I would imagine from what I saw yesterday that a 1360x768 would not look
great for me, but it might.

Thanks

 

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

Hi Jamie - thanks for the reply. I tried the LH3000 (which has a 5oMhz
panel) yesterday, I did get a full screen image, but the picture looked
all wrong - like it does if you run an LCD in anything except it's
'native' resolution.

Do you mean fuzzy, or out of proportion? Or both, of course!

Mine's a little fuzzy because of being used at the non-native res, but
it's in proportion and actually looks pretty good up close.

That led me to try the LH5000 (which uses a 100Mhz
panel) which seemed to give a proper 1920 x 1080 display.

Obviously as you are a MAC user I am not sure how that compares to PC's

Not a great deal if difference in this respect, no more than different
video card drivers in a PC offering different options.

I would imagine from what I saw yesterday that a 1360x768 would not look
great for me, but it might.

What signal are you passing to the panel, VGA or DVI/HDMI? If you're
stuck with VGA this alone may make a significant difference.

Cheers - Jaimie

 

[Borg]

I use mine through the HDMI out on the GFX card. Its great for films and
games but as for reading the text, forget it. I was very disappointed
with this. But it is a known Windows problem.

Using my Ubuntu box I get great text res.

 

[Alan Plaid]

Do you mean fuzzy, or out of proportion? Or both, of course!

Mine's a little fuzzy because of being used at the non-native res, but
it's in proportion and actually looks pretty good up close.


Not a great deal if difference in this respect, no more than different
video card drivers in a PC offering different options.


What signal are you passing to the panel, VGA or DVI/HDMI? If you're
stuck with VGA this alone may make a significant difference.

Cheers - Jaimie

Jaimie - thanks again for the reply.

Firstly, I was using the RGB VGA through a standard VGA cable - I am fairly
experienced with computer hardware and understand that cables and
connection types can make a difference but the problem I saw was to do with
resolution. If I set the monitor I currently use (an HP 22" L2208w - native
1680 x 1050) to 1360 x 768 (I have just done it as I type !) - then I see
that text now looks squidged and squeezed where the panel is having to
redistribute the pixels across the monitor as it is not running at a native
resolution. What I saw yesterdat was actually more 'jagged' than what I see
now but I think the type of effect is similar.

My feeling is I need a panel that I can run at it's native resolution -
when the LH5000 was running at 1920 x 1080 - the text looked crisp and
sharp when I first got it plugged in even though it was only driving the
panel at 60Hz - I had originally planned on using an LH3000 like yours if I
could run it at 1920 x 1080 - I now have a feeling that it is the limited
refresh rate (50Hz) that is stopping me doing that.

I am still unclear as to how the quoted TV refresh rate relates to PC's as
I could not get the LH5000 (with it's 100Hz) refresh to run when driven at
anything over 60Hz - I tried 75Hz, 85Hz and 100Hz but all gave a 'signal
out of range' (can't remember exactly what the TV said) type error.

Anyhow, I have tried emailing LG but no reply yet. Yours was the type of
experience I was after but I was hoping to find someone who had used the
default (native) resolution and could report success. PC Worl did not seem
tohave a lot of time for me to discover whether it worked properly or not.

Regards,

 

[Tony Houghton]

In <[email protected]>,

My feeling is I need a panel that I can run at it's native resolution -
when the LH5000 was running at 1920 x 1080 - the text looked crisp and
sharp when I first got it plugged in even though it was only driving the
panel at 60Hz - I had originally planned on using an LH3000 like yours if I
could run it at 1920 x 1080 - I now have a feeling that it is the limited
refresh rate (50Hz) that is stopping me doing that.

Surely all modern TVs support 60Hz as well as 50Hz.

I am still unclear as to how the quoted TV refresh rate relates to PC's as
I could not get the LH5000 (with it's 100Hz) refresh to run when driven at
anything over 60Hz - I tried 75Hz, 85Hz and 100Hz but all gave a 'signal
out of range' (can't remember exactly what the TV said) type error.

They probably only accept a 50Hz/60Hz signal and use internal picture
processing to interpolate the extra frames. That's if it even works on
external signals in addition to the internal tuner. I should think the
data in the MPEG encoding, which is only available to the TV if using
its inbuilt DVB decoder, would be quite helpful in constructing these
frames.

 

[doS]

you wont get true 1080 from vga,you need an HDMI connection...

 

[Chris French]

If I set the monitor I currently use (an HP 22" L2208w - native
1680 x 1050) to 1360 x 768 (I have just done it as I type !) - then I see
that text now looks squidged and squeezed where the panel is having to
redistribute the pixels across the monitor as it is not running at a native
resolution. What I saw yesterdat was actually more 'jagged' than what I see
now but I think the type of effect is similar.

My feeling is I need a panel that I can run at it's native resolution -
when the LH5000 was running at 1920 x 1080 - the text looked crisp and
sharp when I first got it plugged in even though it was only driving the
panel at 60Hz - I had originally planned on using an LH3000 like yours if I
could run it at 1920 x 1080 - I now have a feeling that it is the limited
refresh rate (50Hz) that is stopping me doing that.

It does sound like some sort of resolution problem.

I wonder if it was just an oddity with the particular video output and
the LH3000?

Not the same sort of size as the LH3000, but I have an LG M237WDP 23
inch monitorTV as LG call it )1920x1080 resolution. As a monitor it
works well. the text on both DVI and VGA inputs is nice and sharp.

I have two PC hooked up to it, one via DVI one via VGA. The one
connected via VGA will not work properly if I connect it to the DVI port
(via the cards DVI output obviously). The desktop area is bigger than
the screen area when set to the screens native res. so you only get to
see part of the desktop (though IIRC it would scroll the desktop
around) fiddle as I might I couldn't get them to play ball at all.

I gave up fiddling once I realised it worked the other way round. I
assume it's maybe some driver glitch or something

 

[Peter Hill]

want to use an LCD TV as a monitor - 32" is all I have room for. If
anyone hear has experience of doing this and knows a little about
resolutions etc I would like some advice.

I went to PCWorld and persuaded them to connect my Netbook (Advent 4211C
or MSI Wind) to a LG LH5000, and we seemed to get a good picture at it's
native resolution 1920 x 1080 although at one point the picture was
shunted lightly to the right. It took a lot of persuasion to get them to
try and they did not really know what they were doing.

Thanks to the shop staff being idiots, back in '83 I got a £80 80
column adaptor card for a 2nd mono screen with my Tatung Einstein from
Dixons for FREE. I asked about the 80 column card (needed for CP/M
they produced one from upstairs. The box had been opened so they must
have tried it but they didn't know it was 1v p-p video and not TV RF
so it didn't work. I used a B/W portable with the family video
recorder as a video to rf converter.

I also tried an LG LH3000 in a Comet - although I got a picture, the res
looked all wrong. The difference between the 5000 and the 3000 models is
that the 3000 runs at 50Hz while the 5000 runs at 100Hz - Does one need
at least 100Hz to use one with a PC ?

PC refresh is not same as TV. UK TV is 25 frames/sec interlaced, so it
scans top to bottom twice per frame = 50Hz. 100Hz TV stores the frame
and double scans. Double scan is completely idiotic for LCD, it's only
really any use for line scanned CRT where there is a bright spot from
newly scanned beam and image degrades bofore being refreshed. Even HD
doesn't run at 100Hz frame rate.
http://hometheater.about.com/od/televisionbasics/qt/framevsrefresh.htm

Old VGA runs at 60Hz non interlaced. Other common rates are 70Hz and
75Hz. Faster = smoother motion if the PC / graphics are up to it.

I noticed that even though the LH5000 produced a good looking picture, it
was being driven at 60Hz, any attempt to bump it up gave a no signal
error.

It may need to exit PC mode > TV mode and go back to TV to re-sync at
new frame rate? Or there may be other setup options on TV like WXGA
mode?

Otherwise select "Hide modes that this monitor can not display". The
graphics card gets info from VGA port on res and frequency of attached
monitor and can pass that to the windows monitor setup panel so will
exclude any that it can't display.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel

Anyway, any info or advice would be good.
I am not expecting a picture of the quality of a top notch Monitor, I am
actually just after achieving larger icons at a reasonable res. The
trouble with large pc monitors is that they seem to run very high native
resolutions.

Right click desktop. Appearance, advanced, check "use large icons".
But it's a bit of a PITA as all the icons wander around to refit.

Or to make all text and icons re-scale set DPI setting on "general"
tab.

 

[Flasherly]

Mine is sold without the tuner section for a monitor. 32" Olympia
I've had for ages running at 1360x768 60Hz, not long after big
flatpanels first became viable. Luckily my first model failed and was
replaced by the succeeding and stabler revision. Has time on it, 24/7
(w/ pwr-standby of course)...so that it does, as well a tuner,
although never used. Always wasn't this resolution, bearing in mind a
VGA connection to ATI Radeon AGP 96XX series, which eventually evolved
into 1360x768 OEM drivers provided by Omega. Same deal on a NEC 37"
across the room, built for mooies and a decent stereo, another AGP
Radeon and Intel Duron. Perfunctory XP install and hardly more, which
looks great for ready and steady, first-time-up. A commercial NEC
unit I lucked into, made for continuous 24-hour operation at airports
and such. Should theoretically last forever. $599US for the NEC two
years ago -- not sure what the politics behind that -- originally and
priced elsewhere $1200-1500 as it so happened.