20" + LCD Monitor as a TV

The Dell 20" Widescreen has the following connectors

VGA / DVI-D / S-video / Composite / 4 x USB 2.0

which means you could plug a tuner/settop box/TIVO into it by DVI or S-Video. If your Powerbook has DVI, then you would want a DVI Switchbox (fairly pricey) for the best quality on both TV and PBook. THe Dell also does a picture-in-picture thing for watching TV while you computer -- they don't specify but I would guess that that is only on the S-Video or Composite input -- I would be surprised if they do PIP with VGA and DVI.

You would have to deal with sound output separately.

Samsung and Sony have released TV/monitors with built in tuners. The sony 19" unit is part number MFMHT19S

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

You might went to check out viewsonic, they have a bunch of adapters to turn monitors into TVs, some even have HD and 5.1 surround sound capability.

http://www.viewsonic.com/products/t...ssors/vb50hrtv/

These are also on sale on ebay and occasionally on clearance on viewsonic's webpage so it might be worth a try.

I'm not sure, if you check around there are some other threads about this topic, you might want to check w/ Dell or Viewsonic too.

Sometimes you hear about blurring issues when people use LCD monitors as TVs, I don't know if it's a refresh rate issue but on my Dad's 19" Sony LCD w/ a PC tv tuner card the image is alright but nothing spectacular.

LCDs still suffer from a slow pixel response time, plus they can't display interlaced material properly. So they are not very good for sports broadcasts where the 60i or 50i video appears to have combing artifacts on the LCD.