LCD TV as monitor?

[believo]

Is it possible to use a LCD TV as a monitor wih my Macbook Pro? How does the quality compare to a traditional Apple Display?

thanks!

 

[Galley]

Is it possible to use a LCD TV as a monitor wih my Macbook Pro? How does the quality compare to a traditional Apple Display?

thanks!

If you can get it to run at is native resolution, it should look OK. I have a 19" Samsung, but I can't get it to run at 1440 x 900.

 

[wako]

How does the quality compare to a traditional Apple

it will look like crap depending on what you get. From personal experience and opinion, i thought 24'' 720p screen LOOKED TERRIBLE. The 50'' 1080p looked terrible as well...


The only thing that I ever could stand was a 32'' 1080p screen. This actually happens to be the smallest screen size for a 1080p TV. So if you are in the market, thats the only thing I would ever get.



some of you might be wondering of WHY it looks bad. Well honestly it is because of resolution and screen size. a 720p is 1280x720 i believe. If you stretch that onto a 24'' TV which normally that resolution is for 12-13'' screens, you can imagine how badly it will look. Same thing with 1080p. 1080 is 1920x1080 and right now the closest to that is 1920x1200 on 24'' screens. Unfortunately there are no TVs that is 24'' that is 1080p. If you bloat it up on a 50'' screen naturally all that stretching of the image would make it look like crap.

 

[Aenoxi]

it will look like crap depending on what you get. From personal experience and opinion, i thought 24'' 720p screen LOOKED TERRIBLE. The 50'' 1080p looked terrible as well...

The only thing that I ever could stand was a 32'' 1080p screen. This actually happens to be the smallest screen size for a 1080p TV. So if you are in the market, thats the only thing I would ever get.
QUOTE]

B@ll@x.
Modern flat panels can look fantastic provided you use DVI/HDMI at their native res (running them at other resolutions is not recommended as the interpolation can look grim). The idea that you absolutely have to match dpi with a dedicated monitor in order to be useable is laughable.

I run 2 mac minis on large flat panels:

My old G4 runs on a 32" LCD TV with 1280x768 native resolution. The display is driven digitally via a DVI to HDMI converter. At native resolution (note, most 720p sets are not natively 720p and you should not use 720p as a res unless you are ure they are as the interpolation can look nasty) the display is crisp and extremely usable.

My intel Mini runs a 60" 1080p plasma (native resolution 1920x1080) again digitally via a DVI to HDMI. It took some tweaking to get the native resolution out of the mini, but it looks awesome now - that's with pixels 4 times the size of what you consider to be the bare minimum acceptable.

And yes, I use both screens for a wide variety of applications including WP, photoshop, web browsing and gaming. I haven't died yet, my eyes are not bleeding and I am very happy with both set-ups.

OP would be well advised to note that some LCD TVs will screw around with color saturation if you run them over HDMI - which can be a bit of a pain. This varies from manufacturer to manufacturer - your best bet is to ask if you can plug in a laptop in the store.