I did. Resolution and refresh rate incompatibilites appear. Initially my ATI 9600 Pro would install Windows 98 just fine, but when its 3.2 or 3.4 drivers were installed, it would send a 640 x 480 @ 120 Hz signal to the LG C1, which had no idea what to do with it other than say the signal format was invalid, which made the system unusable because I never found a way to change those settings via a way that didn't load the display driver. I then switched to a FX 5500 on 56.64 drivers and found some resolutions were incompatible despite being an option (not being able to use 1600 x 1200 made me angry), but mainly HDTV resolutions (720p, 1080p etc) would make the TV behave like nothing was connected to it. It wouldn't even say the format was invalid. Absolutely bizarre. Also 120 Hz was selectable, but the signal was always @ 60 Hz. And selecting GPU scaling didn't work, again making the TV think nothing was connected to it if the setting was applied.
Some older Dell Ultrasharp Monitors were "Hybrids". My Ultrasharp from 2008 for example has normal monitor stuff, but also TV stuff. It has displayport, HDMI and VGA inputs, but it also has S-Video, component and cinch video like a TV. For Audio there is a soundbar add on and it has picture in picture with one button. And it all comes in a 1920x1200 16:10 Format with a nice stand.
I agree, I am about 80% happy with my 50" 4K TV as a monitor. I love the picture quality and the price I paid (got it used for only $200 USD several years ago). But I am jealous of the silky-smooth gameplay people get from high refresh rate monitors. I will probably upgrade to another 50" 4K TV in the next few years, this time making sure to get one that is 120Hz.
With Custom Resolution Utility you don't need to restart the PC everytime. You can use the restart exe they provide which will restart your GPU drivers. This is especially useful if you're using a CRT monitor and you're trying to find the proper resolution and refresh rate combo.
Given all the cruft they add to modern TVs, I'm far more likely to use a monitor as a TV than a TV as a monitor. Last time I bought a TV, it took me (no joke) two hours to turn all that crap off and set things up to look like it all should-- this had to be done once for every input AND every app! :/
You are right, but with Android TV, the advantage is that (for now) you can debloat your TV with ADB and have a very responsive experience as a result. However, I totally agree with you that having all that stuff in the firmware of a freaking TV nowadays is a nightmare compared to older "dumb" models that I loved just for that. But you can still (again, for now) totally disregard "smart" capabilities, not connect the TV to Internet and use it as an old "dumb" TV with other connected device to do the "heavy lifting" in a more controlled way by the user.
One of the reasons TVs are so cheap is that those app vendors subsidize the cost. It's much like how pre-installed software worked during the heyday of PC sales, late 90s through mid-00s. Only, you don't get the option to wipe and reformat a TV.
Nice. I've considering buying a TV for my PC but had 'not so pleasant experience' before. I know there may be some setting that I may need to configure. Thank you for sharing. Will try these later.
If you are considering using a TV as a 4K monitor, verify that it can accept YUV4:4:4 or RGB. Many years ago my employer got a good deal on 4K TVs. Only later did we realize that the most they could do at 4K was YUV 4:1:1 and the color fringing on terminal text was quite noticeable.
Thank you for this video! I started using a 4K TV as a monitor about a year ago, replacing a dual monitor setup. But the fringes on text made me think the TV didn't really use 3840 pixels across, like how a '720p' projector I bought two years ago turned out to really be 1024 pixels across and this really showed up on text. But your explanation of the ClearType issue matched the problem I was seeing, and trying Better ClearType Tuner myself confirmed the use of BGR pixels and finally fixed it.
I have done a lot of research about getting a new TV as a monitor as I want features that really only high end TVs have.. At least for moment. The one thing that comes up time and time again, is that a lot of high end TVs use a non-standard pixel layout, Normal is RGB, but things like OLED is WRGB, meaning an extra colour in the pixel and therefore the displayed text on screen may not be displayed in a crisp way as ClearType / Cleartext hasn't been updated to take this into account. This is even worse on Quantum Dot display, Neo QD or OLED QD for example, they are very different layout of colours in a triangle, with one large Green and a smaller Red and Blue underneath, this leads to a visible green outline on text, you can hide this to a degree with text scaling, but not ideal. I would strongly suggest anyone getting a TV for anything outside Pure Gaming to make sure and test them first, it is not a simple 1 for 1 replacement to a monitor. All that being said, I have a cheaper 4k Samsung as my 2nd display and has worked well as my "media" monitor, while my work monitor is a proper monitor.
My LG C2 OLED TV uses WRGB and here's my experience: Text definitely doesn't look as good as a typical LCD with a standard subpixel grid, BUT it's roughly 90% as good. I use my TV for design work so i'm very picky and care a lot about this sort of stuff, but it really isn't a big issue and doesn't bother me much. I've also tried QD-OLED and that is absolutely awful for monitor use. It's not just text, it's the *entire* desktop. The triangle shaped subpixels of QD-OLED make everything look like there's a chromatic aberration filter applied to the whole screen (those awful filters you see in so many modern games which replicate poor quality camera lenses for some bizarre reason). It's around the edges of desktop icons, window borders, text, UI... Everything has it. It's dramatically worse than WRGB and i'd never recommend QD-OLED for monitor use. I could even notice it in any games i tried, especially the UI and menus, although it's not as obvious. But as for WRGB, all the benefits of OLED more than make up for the tiny reduction in text rendering quality. When you use options like Windows Scaling (mine is set to 175% on a 77" TV) it becomes even less noticeable and generally looks good.
I do have a TCL 55" 4K TV. It looks decent for the price, which was less than $300. That said, it doesn't have a very good backlight I can easily tell. Depending on the image, you can easily see the bleed around the edges. Most of the time, no, but on occasion, yeah.
You probably have the 4-series. The 5-series slapped. At least until they changed to Google & China started nerfing the panel calibration profile on exports
One nice thing about TCL is the image quality of the analog inputs, if your model has them. The component inputs are one of the best I've ever seen (32" TCL TV from 2019 with 1080p panel), even better to my taste when I compared against a couple of Panasonic and LG TVs. The PlayStation 2 looks fantastic on component signal, AND TCL supports 240p over component! So PS1 games also run and look great. Very compatible and scales nicely to a 1080p panel. One bad commonly known issue with TCL is that the backlit and/or related circuitry goes haywire quite easily. It is usually the led strips themselves, a resistor in the motherboard or finally but rarely the motherboard. If your TV goes black then it's easy to tell if it's the backlit by using a flashlight. I'm seriously thinking to use a 3rd party externally powered led strip just grafted into the TV.
It does have composite, but I didn't test the input. Also didn't test the analogue tuner, curious if it would pickup old home computers? My previous TV is also TCL and it's now over 10 years old I believe...
I have used 32' TV's as monitors for 10 years now. The 1st one was a Polaroid 32' Tv I used for a SVGA monitor. The last 6 years I have used 32' Element (Walmart) TV's and yes I have 4 of them. My media TV/Monitor is now a 50' Visio and all of them are running HDMI. The one on the workbench I use for HDMI and VGA. While the speaker's are crap on their own, I run my audio out of the TV's into my old Durabrand 5.1 amps (3) with the TV speakers as a low volume front channel as it were. Sad to say that the VGA input has been removed from the TV's a while back and they are all HDMI now, but I have a spare one saved for the bench when I replaced with the 50' Tv... Lol I'm old and anything above 1080p is wasted on me as I can't see the difference anyway... Lol So all those 4K tiny pixels are a waste to me... 📺🤣 Anyway Awesome video! LLAP 🖖
Options here in the Philippines are also a bit limited but I will have to check further based on your recommendations. I do not play games and now just use a 15.6 laptop screen and really would like a larger screen.
12:08 VRR was also a must-have for me when I got a "TV as a monitor" 1.5 years ago, because I just hate tearing. In the end I got an LG C1, because the HDR presentation and the 120 Hz support in combination are just insanely good and I doubt there was a better monitor at that time, maybe even today.
I've been using a very cheap (~$100) 32 inch TV with 720p resolution for retro gaming and arcade play. Works lovely with most Win98 games and there has not been a lot of negatives with the active adapting of VGA to HDMI (connected to sound output). TV speakers are decent, so I completely agree with your assessment. These cheap TVs seem to also like having composite connectors too. Great video!
It's logical to reduce the size of the gaming window since you sit so close to it, and using the full resolution for desktop applications gives you much more space to work with, so it's the best of both worlds. And thank you for the 2 applications, I didn't know about them and they will certainly be useful.
windows has a built in 'adjust cleartype text' utility too that shows you different texts for you to choose if you're not technically oriented, you just choose from few textboxes on which it looks best to you several times.
@@BilisNegra I think that's the first a-b test of the series of choices it makes you do looking at the pixels it makes you choose between which includes small l's with b swapped between the two samples. if the cleartype system didn't have the rgb bgr variation the more advanced tuner wouldn't probably let you adjust that either.
YES. I use a Vizio 32" as a monitor and I love the added real estate and beautiful image and sound. I highly recommend it. This was super informative though.. I have some settings I need to check after watching this. The RGB part was all news to me. Great video.
I’ve been using a 32” 1080p TV as a monitor for years simply because I had it spare & it’s served me fine. Sure a proper monitor would be better but it’s doing fine for my purposes.
I've been using TVs as monitors for nearly 15 years. I mostly use them as a HTPC, but I did use a smaller flat TV for a desktop replacement. Overall, they are great for watching media, playing most games, and good for browsing the internet. The biggest issue I've experienced is that usually TVs display some less common resolutions such as 900p or 768p worse than monitors, and on few TVs they won't display them at all. The other drawbacks are that some games would have unreadable text (to me) when played on a TV, and some games are designed for keyboard and mouse in mind which is not ideal when you are sitting on a sofa/couch, then again those are drawbacks when using a TV that is far from me.
I always solved that problem with wireless keyboards and mice. Also simply don't use uncommon resolutions. ;) Nah, that's flippant. In reality, 768p is the bane of my existence. That resolution has annoyed me since Mechwarrior 2. To be clear, none of the following involves trying to feed a 768p signal to a TV. I'm just ranting about this resolution in an unrelated way. Feel free to ignore the rest of this. First my PC wasn't fast enough to run the mode well. Actually it didn't even run 640x480 well. Also my 15" CRT could barely display that mode clearly. Some time later, I got a laptop with a 15" LCD, but it had a crappy scaler and I think 640x480 was kind of ugly on it... also too slow for 1024x768... Then 15" LCD monitors came out and it was sharp because that was its native resolution, it had a decent scaler for the low res modes, and I think I had a PC that could run it at 768p, somewhat, but by then no one was playing online. Fast forward to playing MW2 in DOSBOX today, and I can't for the life of me set it up so it will happily and cleanly display all three modes - 320x200 for the cinematics, 640x480 for the interface, and 1024x768 for the game. It wants you to set up the resolution to one mode so I set it to 1280x960 with a 2X nearest neighbor scaler so I can run it at 640x480 internally and the subsampling of YUV 4:2:0 doesn't screw up the clarity of a QSV-powered video capture. But 2048x1536 is a non-starter for QSV (I think), but definitely with my 1080p display. So yeah, eff 768p.
Get a tv with bluetooth capabilities and your keyboard, mouse, and headphone issues go away. The LG B2 OLEDS are fairly priced. I use one as my daily driver for home entertainment and for pc gaming. It handles all of the resolutions of games with ease (most likely helped by having an Nvidia 3080TI connected to it). Someone said stop using uncommon resolutions and I agree. The only place I seemed to find uncommon resolutions are in options for ripping my own movies to keep in a digital library. I don't find those resolutions in any modern games from the last 15 years. So use common resolutions only. VIZIO makes a decent QLED line of TVS, and TCL does also if one is looking to save a buck. You can find 43in TVS with 120Hz refresh rates relatively easy. I am considering one for my office setup.
Something extremely important to consider, is to avoid still bright images like the plague. Switch your theme to dark on Windoze or Linux, install Dark Reader (Static mode) or Midnight Lizard for your internet browser, change your desktop wallpaper to a dark one, if you are watching a movie and need to pause it, pause it during a dark frame. If you need to leave the room for more than five minutes, use a screensaver or just turn the TV off. Also, don't forget to set your TV backlight setting to 50 or at least 65. You will have a huge monitor that will live forever and without any bright spots. Been using my old LG 3DTV as a monitor since 2014, still working like a champ in 2023.
For the average user a TV is a great solution, you get a bigger screen than a monitor, better speakers and potentially a few other connectivity options. Depending on how big your desk is and how far away you sit I would say 32" - 40" is the sweet spot. I tried with a 55" TV and you had to move your head in FPS games which is a disadvantage. I'm back with a 32" 4K monitor for now though as I found one at a good price and use a soundbar so I get great sound too. I would probably stuck with TVs but it seems its very hard to find a 32" - 40" TV that has 4K support, if they did I would have gone with another TV as it's slightly cheaper at the same screen size I find.
I don't like TVs as PC Monitors because the entire Picture looks wrong and weird. I always bought high end TVs, my current TV is a Sony KD55XD9305 which is a high end Led LCD TV from 2016 with 4K Resolution but the Picture doesn't look good at all when a PC is connected. I rather prefer Monitors for everything, Even Consoles look better on a PC Monitor. When I connected my Xbox One on an old CRT Monitor it was the best Picture I've ever seen. 1. CRT Monitor 2. LCD Monitor 3. LCD TV Those are my preferences in the correct order, but I still rarely use a CRT Monitor. BTW: Also the PPI is important to me, to low PPI is a no go like 1080p on 55 inch is horrible, don't get me started with 1080p on 75 inch ;)
Actually, the best audio delivery--when used with any source--is had with a good component stereo system. I recall the 6-speaker/5-channel setup I used in my room, which included a pair of tune-able 3-way floor speakers w/12" poly cone & foam surround woofers. The receiver had a "bass boost" function that negated the need for a sub-woofer rather well, while a pair of Bose compact "reflectors" handled the rear channels. The result was that when a friend poked his head in, as I was streaming Christmas carols, he got a look of impressed surprise to his face. BTW: My "monitor" is a 4K 65" JVC... which hangs upon the wall, as I sit across the room on my bed.(Gotta love Bluetooth accessories!😉)
i wish for BGR displays you could just give up two pixels of width and have like a 3838x2160 resolution that just shifts the subpixel pattern a little. it wouldn't make much difference for resolution but it would just make text look better and more compatible. also, bear in mind that it makes a difference in games - anti-aliasing is aware of subpixels and BGR will confuse it, making edges look more jaggy.
Windows has built-in tool for setting different sub-pixel types. Windows supports RGB, BGR and their vertical variants to. Mac OS doesn't use sub-pixel smoothing at all. Mac OS has no UI scaling it can only do integer values 1x, 2x, 3x etc. For values in between it renders image at higher resolution and downscales it. You can see that in 13,3" Macbooks. They have 2560x1600 resolution, but their configured to work as 1440x900 points, so Mac OS is rendering image at 2880x1800 and scales it to 2560x1600.
Oh you use a TCL Model, one of the Worst Companies i know. Bad LED´s LCD Screen, it is a bad China Produkt. I had already repaired som TCL TVs Replace the LEDs
I have one, and it has ugly color, even with pure over the air broadcast signals. The fleshtone rendition isn't natural at all, and it emits a high pitched noise when it's on.
If you want over the air TV, try a coax cable with just the center copper wire exposed at the other end for a few inches. If you are in a city, you will be surprised at how many channels you get. You can easily switch between TV and Monitor with the input. Also put a BeeLink computer on the back a few years ago and that has run a lot since a few years ago. 1080p 24" TV. Nicely done and informative video, by the way!
First let me say this is a great video topic. You gave me some ideas to improve my experience. Oh boy... last year I bought a Sony X85J 50" TV (4K LED Native 120HZ)- I wanted 4k and 120hz for some future proofing even though my new PC with the 3060 Ti is not really a 4k graphics card (except for older games), and that Sony was the cheapest option I could find with HDMI 2.1. Sigh. I ended up buying a Display Port to HMDI 2.1 adapter so the TV and GPU would even communicate (after googling the issue and discovering lots of people having issues with NVidia GPUs and Sony Bravia TVs). Then a month later I tried again and it worked without the adapter. ??? But I had lots of other issues- if my PS5 was on and it went to sleep I would lose audio on my PC unless I unplugged and plugged the HDMI cable back up (same issue on my PS5 if my PC went to sleep while using TV speakers but worked with headphones). I've been scouring the settings to try and make it better.. but things have bene getting better. I wonder if NVidia updated the drivers for better smart TV support and/or if Sony updated their firmware? IDK. I do know if I had a UA-cam channel.. that would have easily been several videos worth of content with me pulling my hair out. Looks like you already did that though (sorry.. too easy joke. I'm j/k. Us old guys still blessed have hair need to be nice). And I like the idea of running the game in a smaller native window versus stretching- especially with my 50" TV. I like to sit back and game with a controller (like my PS5) when I play PC games too.. so the screen size it not a terrible issue except when I game older games that require mouse and keyboard to play effectively. Sucks because those are the games easiest to run at 4k. Lol. Oh- the Sony Bravia has excellent speakers fwiw. But it was a bit pricey.. it should have excellent speakers.
Whenever there are new interface standards, oh boy, issues galore and it sometimes takes a new hardware generation to iron out things. I'm late to the 4K party and happy to see things just work basically. Not sure about HDMI 2.1 only the latest GPUs support it and I'm a budget guy, so maybe in a few years 😅
For Windows you've got to get Microsoft Power Toys and the Fancy Zones tool. It let's you create custom zone sizes and snap Windows into them. I use a TV at my stand up desk and split it up into the equivalent of 3 vertical monitors. Or you could make a smaller centre zone for playing games in windowed mode. I love it.
I did play with the fancy zones tool but couldn't really find a good use. I use Window snap mostly, snapping windows into the 4 corners. I would love to have a snap that resized a window to 1080 or 1440 or something like that.
For those interested... Here is a breakdown... Pixels Per Inch (PPI) determines how crisp the display will look to you, on screen, at a given resolution. Higher PPI values are better and offer more clarity. Resolutions 3840 x 2160(16:9) = 2160p = 4K UHD 3840 × 2400(16:10) 4K UHD+/WQUXGA 2560 x 1440(16:9) = 1440p = 2K QHD/WQHD 2560 x 1600(16:10) QHD+/WQXGA 1920 x 1080(16:9) = 1080p = Full HD 1920 x 1200(16:10) Full HD+/WUXGA 1280 x 720(16:9) = 720p = HD 1280 x 800(16:10) HD+/WXGA === 3840 x 2160 (4K) @ 83" = 53.08 PPI @ 77" = 57.22 PPI @ 65" = 67.78 PPI @ 55" = 80.11 PPI @ 48" = 91.79 PPI @ 42" = 104.90 PPI @ 41" = 107.46 PPI @ 40" = 110.15 PPI ( Max recommended size for 4k gaming ) @ 32" = 137.68 PPI @ 27" = 163.18 PPI @ 24" = 183.58 PPI @ 15.6" = 282.42 PPI 2560 x 1440 (2K) @ 42" = 69.93 PPI @ 40" = 73.43 PPI @ 32" = 91.79 PPI @ 27" = 108.79 PPI ( Today's standard ) @ 24" = 122.38 PPI @ 15.6" = 188.28 PPI @ 13.3" = 220.84 PPI 1920 x 1080 (1080p) @ 42" = 52.45 PPI @ 40" = 55.07 PPI @ 27" = 81.59 PPI @ 24" = 91.79 PPI ( Where the average PC monitor was before 1440p was a thing. ) @ 23" = 95.78 PPI @ 21.5" = 102.46 PPI @ 20" = 110.15 PPI ( Max recommended size for 1080p gaming ) @ 17" = 129.58 PPI @ 15.6" = 141.21 PPI @ 13.3" = 165.63 PPI ( Where we were before 1080p was a thing. ) 1280 x 1024(5:4) @ 19" = 86.27 PPI @ 17" = 96.42 PPI ( Most common size back then, late 90's LCDs. ) 1280 x 720 (720p) @ 42" = 34.97 PPI @ 40" = 36.72 PPI @ 27" = 54.39 PPI @ 17" = 86.39 PPI @ 15.6" = 94.14 PPI @ 14" = 104.90 PPI @ 13.3" = 110.24 PPI ( Max recommended size for 720p gaming ) Valve's Steam Deck 1280 x 800 @ 7" ( 16:10 Aspect ratio 720p ) = 215.63 PPI Nintendo Switch - Uses a dynamic resolution that varies from game to game so PPI will vary based on the game and what resolution the game is able to output to the smaller portable screen. OLED Model 7" screen @ 1280 x 720 = 209.80 PPI Launch Model 6.2" @ 1280 x 720 = 236.87 PPI Lite Model @ 5.5" @ 1280 x 720 = 267.02 PPI
I wonder how long that will last. I have a 19” Dell 190S laying. It has bad viewing angles as a TN panel and CCFL backlight versus LED and the colors aren’t accurate compared to my Asus ProArt PA248QV. The Asus is 1920x1200 16:10, pretty nifty, but I’m curious how good 1440p or 4K looks and I need a 16:9 monitor for consoles, too… I got an Xbox Series S just collecting dust. I’d rather have a PS5 as buying digital games on Xbox isn’t cheap nor convenient with my real address not being selectable with Microsoft. I have to use a fake billing address and it screws up my card. It’s just the PS5 is some hulking behemoth that costs twice as much, they need to come up with a slim version and fast.
I have that Eizo. It is great. Only little minus is lack of 50hz option for PAL regions. (It is my PS2 emulation display). And yes, it was expensive.... It is also industrial level quality display. Zero backlight bleeding.
@@retro_ed746 thank you for your input, I hope to own one in the near future. It will work perfectly across the range from Dos to WinXP. Too bad I just bought NEC EA193Mi, an IPS/19"/LED/5:4/1280*1024, w/DVI-D and D-Sub. Frankly, can't wait to test both especially at Dos.
I pwn the TLC 50" 4k w/ HDR w/ Roku, which I don't use Roku. After 3 months 1 HDMI imput FAILED. On warranty but why be bothered it's a cheap TV. I use it mostly for the PS5 and it looks nice with a PC stream too. Cheap TV but looks good ans fast response time for me is a WIN WIN for gaming. It's good for gaming at least. LIVLRG
I've been using a tv as my main monitor for about ten years. Love it overall, but it can definitely be annoying when it comes to resolution options for games.
I also own a TCL TV similar to yours but I don't use it as a monitor, what I use instead is a 2009 Samsung HDTV, via VGA since it's the only mod that allows the screen to turn off to save some power. Are there any settings I need to be aware of? Game Mode makes the image really dark and the sound becomes garbled. The resolution I use is 1360x768, but I think the native is 1920x1080, however setting that on the PC causes everything to be badly scaled, messing around with scaling settings doesn't help too much and gave me some eyestrain after a while. Great video as always, Phil. Take care. :)
I’ve using a 43” Vizio TV as a monitor myself for the last couple of years and I’m perfectly happy with it. I run 1080p for my games at 60FPS, and it’s great. It is a “smart” TV but it’s an older model that just… works. It doesn’t have nearly as much hassle and crud as new, current Smart TVs. Hopefully, when it comes time to replace the thing, there will still be models that are relatively basic for this purpose. That, or maybe we’ll have monitors that are 40” and under $700 USD (staring at you, Aorus FV43U).
Interesting review. I eas thinking that this TV might be useable as a monitor for sn Intel NUC. But, S-0-O MANY AMAZON REVIEWERS report Black Screen/No Audio permanent failures within 1 year, due to TCL power board failures & poor TCL SUPPORT, that I am put-off on the brand, totally.
Basically what I did with my old 32" Samsung 'smart' tv when I built my retro gaming space in a corner of the basement. I also plan on running cables so both of desktops can switch from my dual monitors to my 4k uhd tv
This CRU utility solved a long standing issue i had with my laptop. That being that it had 2 refresh rate options, 120hz and 48hz. And it had this option that turned the refresh rate down while on battery, which makes sense but going from 120hz to 48hz is too jarring. But also it caused problems with some games that wanted a not 120hz refresh, i had one that wanted 60hz, and since 48 is closer to 60 than 120 is it would set that run at 48fps and be running at only 80% of full speed it was weird. I was able to remove the 48hz option and install a 60hz option and now it's perfect. Thank you so much Phil! And thank you so much ToastyX!
Been using a 4K 55inch OLED for a monitor since 2017. Never going back. The only disadvantage people never tell you is that there is nowhere to have a camera. So if you work from home or stream people will be looking at the side of your head.
@@philscomputerlab it most certainly will, but the view angle that you get from it is atrocious. It seems to be a problem with bigger monitors in general.
Ahh I get it now, it will look like from to high up or from too low. Yea that makes sense with a large screen and apart from sitting further away to reduce the angle, not much you can do I think.
I use a TV for my main monitor, a 55" OLED. I'm quite happy with it, but it's used primarily for games. My secondary monitor is where I do most of my productivity and web browsing to avoid any image retention issues with the OLED. Some people would be hesitant to use 55", but I find it quite enjoyable to be so immersed in what's going on.
I have a 43" TCL Roku TV with HDR and it is fantastic as a monitor. using fancy zones on Windows makes it 4 21" monitors. have had it since 2020 and I would highly recommend. I wired the TV headphone out to bose computer speakers so any of the 3 computers I have connected play the sound to the Bose speakers. I have no issues with text display. Looks great
I'm using my Philips HDTV as a PC monitor since around 9 years now and haven't had huge issues with it. Because it has a PC Mode in the settings, the picture is as good as on a standard HD monitor with almost no inputlag and the sound of the speaker is really good for my taste (it's a slightly thicker TV, that has nice speakers build in). Only issue now, is that after all these years, the brightness of the Monitor has gotten darker, but it is something i would expect after 10 year of use.
Great video. Back when 32" LCD computer monitors were quite expensive, I bought a cheap 32" TV for my PC. It was great... now that I have a 32" 2k monitor which I got at a great price, I use the 32" TV in the kitchen. :) And thanks to HDMI and RetroTinks, I can use my SNES and Genesis on my PC monitor. :) My computer desk is quite old and has a "portal" that won't put much larger than a 40" in the cubby hole. One day I might get a new desk, but this one has been so great, I don't want to change it. :) Plus it's too heavy to move without dismantling it. :) It would be nice though, to have a 4K TV on my computer desk... :)
Another thing I used to do was turn it into ultrawide. Set up a custom resolution for 21:9 with back bars top and bottoms. Was great for football games as I could see more of the pitch and where my players were!
I've been using a 46" Sharp TV as a monitor since 2006 and it works perfect. I also have a 52" Sharp as a monitor in another room. They both work great. Streaming using a TV only sucks compared to using a Computer for the internet link.
I use TV's with a still very useful VGA connector. Sure they are native 720 give or take. What I have issues with is a mismatch in true resolution tables between the Tv, operating systems and graphics drivers. Then there is the overscan hassles that can occur when using SBC's that have limited or poorly written generic graphics software. I would like to see the TV format to go to 16:10, or 5:3 Instead of follow the way too wide movie theater format. Remember the days when a 4:3 image would be fill a screen, Then wide-screen movie bars. Now there is UHD bars on the HD TV. Using TV's for a PC monitor is a good idea especially if they are early HDMI in my opinion.Not many people can say they can use a Rpi 3 b+ on a 60 inch Mitsubishi Rear projection 4:3 TV using composite and be perfectly happy with it. I can get it to appear to have 1024x768 resolution. It also has no LCD screen door appearance. I still game on CRT TV's because it looks better to me.
I have 3 TV's around the house and all of them have an old desktop PC plugged into the back of them which I find very useful.The only one with a slight issue is my JVC 40" android TV which displays the screen slightly to large.I drag each browser or program in a bit to overcome this as I haven't been able to do it via settings.I have a 65" Samsung TV in living room with a 2014 HP Pavillion 500 series plugged into the back which works perfectly. I use an HDMI splitter from amazon to swap from PC to Xbox due to lack of HDMI inputs on TV.also display port to HDMI adapters to connect the older PC's. Its a lot better use of old PC's rather than just dumping them. Editing to say I sorted JVC settings by manually adjusting the screen via properties/advanced setting.
I am using a 65“ Panasonic industrial plasma display as a monitor and tv. The downside is that it is just 1080p and pretty power hungry. On the positive side it works reliably without any defect since more than 15 years and it keeps me warm on cold winter days
G'day Phil, I have a LG 42" 3D (1080p) Tv connected to a PC in my bedroom, it was my lounge room Tv until my old bedroom tv died & I upgrade the lounge room to an LG 55" C1. I have not bothered with any setting but after watching this video I will look into it.
@PhilsComputerLab I've been running Dual displays since 2007 and usually use a TV as the secondary display. This is so I can have my PC and game systems all plugged in at one location. 4k is nice, but I have found that for gaming a 27" 1440p display for the primary display and a 1080p TV for the secondary is perfect for most gaming situations.
I've been using TVs as monitors for years now (and even before the rise of 'smart tvs' ) just by connecting them to an android box and a radio-controlled keyboard-pad (mainly Logitech ones). Conversely, an Android software emulator allows me to use my windows 10 lenovo 27" touchscreen desktop to have a real touchscreen tv at my desk. In both configurations (tv as monitor, monitor as tv), the idea is to use the most relevant interface. And on the strictly software point of view, stay as far as possible away both of win or mac-OS web browsers and smart-tv OS (including androidTV). The best compromise being pure Android OS with the right apps.
Watching the video and can't get rid of the feeling that it's Steve Balmer speaking... 🙃🙃Well, when I walk through electronics supermarkets I always look closely at pixels. There is always such a zoo diversity of everything might be in TV panels. 😮😮🤣🤣
Cool! Great video as always! I never think of BGR inversion in TV screens! But I knew about this PC thing. Even on TVs which does not have direct image settings, there is often an option, to give a name for you HDMI and other sockets. Well, I thought, what does that changes? And yes it changes everything. It is not for user to distinguish where you plug console and where PC. This is really how TV actually works with the socket. I renamed my HDMI to PC and image become vivid and without any distortion, input lag was also much lower.
At least in the US it was very hard to find a good sub 50" TV. All the development and new tech is in the large screens (50"+). I only had room for 44" max. Found an acceptable VA that I'm happy with, but there really wasn't any other options. It's a bit ridiculous that it would have been cheaper and the panel would have been better if I could have gotten a 50"+ TV. Basically, the smaller TVs are bit of a crapshoot. Takes a lot more research to get a good one.
yeah been running a 55" 4K TV for monitors for years, it's great, can snap multiple windows in various orientations for multitasking.. or just watch a movie a 3070 TI seems to have no problem running most games at 4k 60FPS, though you do notice that the latency isn't as good as a 1ms gaming monitor, I'd still rather run 2 4k TV's than one of each for how much I game
I got a 32 inch TV i connect with PC via VGA which means no sound but i don't want crap TV sound so i put audio into the stereo system via auxiliary then get nice loud bassy spacious stereo.
I currently use a Samsung smart TV as a monitor (both for work and gaming). I made this decision just because I don't have space for two big displays (TV and computer monitor) and also to avoid redundant expending. The VA panel itself is very good , but the problem is the Samsung garbage software. What I hate the most is the constant unrequested annoying distractions, garbage bloatware with new apps autoinstalling themselves and changing my setups constantly , and specially annoying adds apppearing everywhere, even in the menus!, and those menus appear every time you power on or wake up the tv, either you want it or not. Also the lack of Display Port, the agressive dimming when rescaling a window, the HDR software glitches all over the place, and the garbage "image enhancements" bs reactivating on every update and every new input selection... and the tv stupidly fighting with my projector for AVR control... not to mention the "glossy" visual fatigue Vs matte coating.... In summary Samsung managed to convert a great panel into a permanenty annoying experience. So for my next upgrade I'm planning to go the opposite route, to buy a "dumb" monitor and also use it as a TV (probably an Asus 42", which is a glossy LG TV repurposed as a monitor ). A monitor always display the signal that is connected and that's it. In exchange I will need a PC connected most of the time, and to fine tune Windows OS and applications manually , but at least I'll get back control of what can I do or not do with my f. display. And what is sure is that I'll never buy another Samsung TV in my live.
I stared using 47"as a monitor 11 years ago, when I bought then new 3D LG. And it is still running as a UA-cam viewing panel, being connected to a PC. I switched back to a 24" budget Dell monitor with matte screen.
Finally a face to the voice! Maybe I'm oddly late to notice but no complains from here. Thinking you gathered quite a big public with only your hands, I can see how millennials will start building their 486 retro computers with your friendly face to guide them. I wish there was someone to do the same for me to build a proper PDP-11 or something.
You made this video too complicated. I use a TV as a second monitor on my laptop. I don't know about your TV, but mine is an insignia TV from Best Buy, and I am in the USA. Furthermore, I have an old friend that every time his desktop has a problem, he calls me over to look at it. I told him to buy a laptop and a TV to use as a monitor. Now every time he has a problem with his computer, he brings it to me and I fix. I don't have to do any special settings with my window's laptop, hook up an HDMI cable. It depends on how to use, mine I use as extender monitor, I can browse the Web while play video in the second monitor (TV). I set it up and windows remember every time I boot my computer. TV as a monitor is a good option to use a laptop as a desktop. It turns a laptop into a desktop in seconds. Plug the HDMI cable to have desktop, remove to work as laptop. The only setting from TV is to select the source for a simple use, click on the TV remote and select input, choose the correct HDMI, because most TVs has more than one port. For windows, right-click on the computer screen then display settings, there are three options, extend these displays, show only on 1, show only on 2. To use only the laptop, just keep the TV off.
3:35 Unless you're playing something like turn-based RPGs or simulation games, I wouldn't recommend using analog inputs on a modern TV for gaming due to high latency, which is even higher latency than what's normally present on the average TV. An external upscaler is a better way of interfacing old consoles with modern TVs.
I used an old LG 49", it worked very good. So pleased that I got a TCL for another system. Big mistake! Powertools zones make for a very nice windows experience on the screen. Much better thanntwo or three smaller screens.
I've been using a tv as a monitor since about 2008 with an old 47LG70. They're great in that you don't have to sit next to them. I use mine with my recliner and a piece of shelving board as a keyboard/mouse tray. I've had a few others but I picked up a 49nano85una most recently about two years ago. It's gsync compatible. Supports HDMI 2.1 and can display 4k at 120Hz. Lastly it has rudimentary HDR which can really brighten things up if your settings are right. I paid 600usd for it. I mounted it to the wall with a set of arms that gives me everything but pivot and height adjustment.
Been running a pc tv since w xp with vga. W7 with hdmi. Same. Turn off all tv settings. Sit on couch with control to relax or pull up card table to kb m.
I used a fairly low price LG 4k 43" TV as a monitor for a while. It turned out is wasn't actually native 4k due to the WRGB pixel layout. From what I could understand, it meant it only had three quarters of the 3840 pixels on the horizontal axis as it had to fit in the white subpixels. I now use a 1440p curved ultrawide monitor as I work from home, it provides a much sharper image.
I use a Sony A80J 65" for a monitor on a PC, runs at 4K120hz and with a LP 1650 it's even alright for light gaming! I would love one of those RTX A2000 cards though...
It is rediculously more cost-effective to use a TV as a monitor. For the same price, one gets a larger screen surface area, built-in speakers, and smart TV streaming apps. Resolution, frame rates, and other settings are not significantly better on a dedicated monitor at mainstream price points. For most people who use a desktop PC at home, this is the way to go.
The TV space is kind of a mess right now. HDMI 2.1 as a standard has been diluted by a bunch of TVs which only partially support the technology; only supporting 40Gbps, no 4:4:4, no VRR, etc. Also, as you discovered, anything less than IPS or OLED will have viewing angle issues... and of course OLED has burn in. Also features like screen turn-off for inactivity aren't supported on TVs. Once you take all that into consideration, you can either accept the TVs shortcomings, or decide to spend more, or even get an actual monitor. I bought a 32" 1440p monitor as a stopgap for a few years while waiting for standards to mature (DP 2.0), and product offerings to improve. That being said, you are spot on about that 44-48" UHD (not 4k) being the sweet spot.
I've been using a 4K 49-inch curved Samsung TV as a monitor since 2017 and it's been pretty great. Without the curve, 49 inches is probably a little too big for how close it is but with the curve it's just right for me. The LCD is getting worn out in spots where my static window layouts are and I'm going to miss it when I have to replace it.
it is generally a bad idea to use a large tv as a monitor because is very uncomfortable to see all the screen at once being so up close and also there is input lag, monitors are lagless while tv's even on game/pc mode always lag.
in my opinion if a person ends up turning the head while using the PC in order to see the sides and/or the corners of the TV/Monitor, then he made the wrong purchase, he bought something too big to be put on a too close position. clear demostration is the "need" to play a videogame in a letterbox to better enjoy it, which is the same as having a smaller screen.
I'm looking to upgrade back to a desktop computer later this year, from my current gaming laptop, and I've contemplated using a TV as a monitor for the larger screen size for flight simming. The pointers in this video are very useful for that. Thank you!
I been using my living room tv as a computer monitor ever since computers could output to hdmi and keyboards and mice could be wireless. Couch computing is awesome. And most optical mice will work just fine on the arm of the couch. I also put my phone hdmi'd to the tv whenever i end up playing a phone game, thanks to nearly universal compatibility of usb c docking stations. But, you know, grats on putting a tv on your computer desk LOL so inovative man, you are blowing people's minds, i'm sure.
I've been doing this for roughly a full decade now, although you have some advantages that I don't, for example I'm not using a smart tv, I'm using old fashioned no network television system. But it's not too old that I can use an HDMI hookup to my PC. But I've been happy with it for this full decade, and I haven't thought of upgrading it either, it's an LED screen, and the reason why I got it was because someone convinced me to get it based off of what I was thinking of using, you see I thought that it would be cool if I got a projector, because I can make the screen as big as I want, problem with projectors especially at the time, they didn't last for very long, and the person who convinced me to get a TV instead recommended getting an LED screen specifically because it'll last much longer. The weird thing is I have seen people use smart screens, and I've noticed a lot of smart screens tend to die after 3 to 5 years, for example my mom she's gone through two separate smart screens, and that's within the 10-year bracket of my TV that's not a smart TV, something seems to be wrong with those Smart TVs where they don't last quite as long they're just not as resilient, I wish I knew what was wrong with them so that it could be fixed, but it's kind of bizarre they always seem to last three to five years, I keep wondering how much longer my TV will last, I mean there was a point in time when I was just using the light on my TV to create light in my room because I rarely use my overhead light in my room, but I have my TV set to turn itself off after a certain period of time to conserve the life of it, but I can't remember how many hours this thing was rated at, all I know is it was a crazy high number that I doubt I'll ever see the day, but who knows technology tends to go bad after a while including cell phones, nowadays cell phones have the problem with their battery dying the phone will still run, but the battery when it runs at the end of its cycle life, it's pretty much over at that point, this is why I don't like the built-in batteries and devices, with the older devices you could easily remove that battery for a new one and you could allow that device to last a lot longer, because believe it or not your device will actually last a fairly long period of time, but a lot of phone companies that make these cell phones pretty much engage in what's called planned obsolescence, and I've seen this on a few of my phones, they end up getting really slow after a while, you can do everything you can to make that not happen, but there's a limit to how long you can make the tech last. And that's just smartphones were talking about.
I use a cheap TCL TV as a primary monitor (3 monitor setup) with HDMI pass-through from my Atmos reciever> It works fairly well, and makes watching movies or playing video games fairly pleasant. There are some hiccups (mainly when turning TV on and off, due to pass-through), but things like the clear-type tuner really does help text clarity, and I find it worthwhile.
@@philscomputerlab I got it for about USD375 here in Sweden and inspired by your video I connected a laptop with a resolution of 3200x1800@24Hz and the picture looked sharp without any tweaking. So I have no complaints, although I will only use it as a TV.
I have two desktop computers, one in my living room, and one in my office, both connected to TV monitors. Very happy with both. I had little trouble setting the resolution on both, you just have to experiment with it a bit if you don't like the "recommended" settings. It wasn't as involved as the "tweaks" in the video, which may be desired for gaming.
I use an LG 4K TV as a monitor for my living room multimedia computer setup. I took some of your advice and changed the video settings to "Game" mode. I have a datacolor SpiderX to properly calibrate the colors and brightness etc so now it looks really good!
Next episode: Connecting your 4K TV to a Windows 98 machine.
It was running DOS in a previous video just fine 😅
@@philscomputerlab Yea but now we gotta fiddle with the Nvidia or ATI drivers in 98.
Fiddling is what we do best 😃
@@philscomputerlab but can you fiddle on the roof?
I did. Resolution and refresh rate incompatibilites appear.
Initially my ATI 9600 Pro would install Windows 98 just fine, but when its 3.2 or 3.4 drivers were installed, it would send a 640 x 480 @ 120 Hz signal to the LG C1, which had no idea what to do with it other than say the signal format was invalid, which made the system unusable because I never found a way to change those settings via a way that didn't load the display driver.
I then switched to a FX 5500 on 56.64 drivers and found some resolutions were incompatible despite being an option (not being able to use 1600 x 1200 made me angry), but mainly HDTV resolutions (720p, 1080p etc) would make the TV behave like nothing was connected to it. It wouldn't even say the format was invalid. Absolutely bizarre.
Also 120 Hz was selectable, but the signal was always @ 60 Hz. And selecting GPU scaling didn't work, again making the TV think nothing was connected to it if the setting was applied.
Some older Dell Ultrasharp Monitors were "Hybrids". My Ultrasharp from 2008 for example has normal monitor stuff, but also TV stuff. It has displayport, HDMI and VGA inputs, but it also has S-Video, component and cinch video like a TV. For Audio there is a soundbar add on and it has picture in picture with one button. And it all comes in a 1920x1200 16:10 Format with a nice stand.
I wish 16 : 10 1920x1200 monitors were still made.
Sign me up for a 40 inch if 120hz!
I agree, I am about 80% happy with my 50" 4K TV as a monitor. I love the picture quality and the price I paid (got it used for only $200 USD several years ago). But I am jealous of the silky-smooth gameplay people get from high refresh rate monitors. I will probably upgrade to another 50" 4K TV in the next few years, this time making sure to get one that is 120Hz.
With Custom Resolution Utility you don't need to restart the PC everytime. You can use the restart exe they provide which will restart your GPU drivers. This is especially useful if you're using a CRT monitor and you're trying to find the proper resolution and refresh rate combo.
Given all the cruft they add to modern TVs, I'm far more likely to use a monitor as a TV than a TV as a monitor. Last time I bought a TV, it took me (no joke) two hours to turn all that crap off and set things up to look like it all should-- this had to be done once for every input AND every app! :/
Funny how they spend so much time on processing features and we turn them all off 😅
@@philscomputerlab There are people that actually likes all the processing crap, no joke! 🤣🤣
You are right, but with Android TV, the advantage is that (for now) you can debloat your TV with ADB and have a very responsive experience as a result. However, I totally agree with you that having all that stuff in the firmware of a freaking TV nowadays is a nightmare compared to older "dumb" models that I loved just for that. But you can still (again, for now) totally disregard "smart" capabilities, not connect the TV to Internet and use it as an old "dumb" TV with other connected device to do the "heavy lifting" in a more controlled way by the user.
One of the reasons TVs are so cheap is that those app vendors subsidize the cost. It's much like how pre-installed software worked during the heyday of PC sales, late 90s through mid-00s. Only, you don't get the option to wipe and reformat a TV.
that is why I prefer to be 'dumb' with my tv
I have been using TV as monitor for last 10 years with no problem
Nice. I've considering buying a TV for my PC but had 'not so pleasant experience' before. I know there may be some setting that I may need to configure.
Thank you for sharing. Will try these later.
If you are considering using a TV as a 4K monitor, verify that it can accept YUV4:4:4 or RGB. Many years ago my employer got a good deal on 4K TVs. Only later did we realize that the most they could do at 4K was YUV 4:1:1 and the color fringing on terminal text was quite noticeable.
Thank you for this video! I started using a 4K TV as a monitor about a year ago, replacing a dual monitor setup. But the fringes on text made me think the TV didn't really use 3840 pixels across, like how a '720p' projector I bought two years ago turned out to really be 1024 pixels across and this really showed up on text. But your explanation of the ClearType issue matched the problem I was seeing, and trying Better ClearType Tuner myself confirmed the use of BGR pixels and finally fixed it.
I have done a lot of research about getting a new TV as a monitor as I want features that really only high end TVs have.. At least for moment. The one thing that comes up time and time again, is that a lot of high end TVs use a non-standard pixel layout, Normal is RGB, but things like OLED is WRGB, meaning an extra colour in the pixel and therefore the displayed text on screen may not be displayed in a crisp way as ClearType / Cleartext hasn't been updated to take this into account. This is even worse on Quantum Dot display, Neo QD or OLED QD for example, they are very different layout of colours in a triangle, with one large Green and a smaller Red and Blue underneath, this leads to a visible green outline on text, you can hide this to a degree with text scaling, but not ideal. I would strongly suggest anyone getting a TV for anything outside Pure Gaming to make sure and test them first, it is not a simple 1 for 1 replacement to a monitor. All that being said, I have a cheaper 4k Samsung as my 2nd display and has worked well as my "media" monitor, while my work monitor is a proper monitor.
It's a rabbit hole 😫
My LG C2 OLED TV uses WRGB and here's my experience: Text definitely doesn't look as good as a typical LCD with a standard subpixel grid, BUT it's roughly 90% as good. I use my TV for design work so i'm very picky and care a lot about this sort of stuff, but it really isn't a big issue and doesn't bother me much. I've also tried QD-OLED and that is absolutely awful for monitor use. It's not just text, it's the *entire* desktop. The triangle shaped subpixels of QD-OLED make everything look like there's a chromatic aberration filter applied to the whole screen (those awful filters you see in so many modern games which replicate poor quality camera lenses for some bizarre reason). It's around the edges of desktop icons, window borders, text, UI... Everything has it. It's dramatically worse than WRGB and i'd never recommend QD-OLED for monitor use. I could even notice it in any games i tried, especially the UI and menus, although it's not as obvious.
But as for WRGB, all the benefits of OLED more than make up for the tiny reduction in text rendering quality. When you use options like Windows Scaling (mine is set to 175% on a 77" TV) it becomes even less noticeable and generally looks good.
@@Serial_Thriller I will bring a USB microscope to the shop next time I'm shopping for a TV 😅
I do have a TCL 55" 4K TV. It looks decent for the price, which was less than $300. That said, it doesn't have a very good backlight I can easily tell. Depending on the image, you can easily see the bleed around the edges. Most of the time, no, but on occasion, yeah.
You probably have the 4-series. The 5-series slapped. At least until they changed to Google & China started nerfing the panel calibration profile on exports
One nice thing about TCL is the image quality of the analog inputs, if your model has them. The component inputs are one of the best I've ever seen (32" TCL TV from 2019 with 1080p panel), even better to my taste when I compared against a couple of Panasonic and LG TVs. The PlayStation 2 looks fantastic on component signal, AND TCL supports 240p over component! So PS1 games also run and look great. Very compatible and scales nicely to a 1080p panel.
One bad commonly known issue with TCL is that the backlit and/or related circuitry goes haywire quite easily. It is usually the led strips themselves, a resistor in the motherboard or finally but rarely the motherboard. If your TV goes black then it's easy to tell if it's the backlit by using a flashlight. I'm seriously thinking to use a 3rd party externally powered led strip just grafted into the TV.
It does have composite, but I didn't test the input. Also didn't test the analogue tuner, curious if it would pickup old home computers? My previous TV is also TCL and it's now over 10 years old I believe...
I have used 32' TV's as monitors for 10 years now. The 1st one was a Polaroid 32' Tv I used for a SVGA monitor. The last 6 years I have used 32' Element (Walmart) TV's and yes I have 4 of them. My media TV/Monitor is now a 50' Visio and all of them are running HDMI. The one on the workbench I use for HDMI and VGA.
While the speaker's are crap on their own, I run my audio out of the TV's into my old Durabrand 5.1 amps (3) with the TV speakers as a low volume front channel as it were.
Sad to say that the VGA input has been removed from the TV's a while back and they are all HDMI now, but I have a spare one saved for the bench when I replaced with the 50' Tv... Lol
I'm old and anything above 1080p is wasted on me as I can't see the difference anyway... Lol
So all those 4K tiny pixels are a waste to me... 📺🤣
Anyway Awesome video!
LLAP 🖖
Options here in the Philippines are also a bit limited but I will have to check further based on your recommendations. I do not play games and now just use a 15.6 laptop screen and really would like a larger screen.
12:08 VRR was also a must-have for me when I got a "TV as a monitor" 1.5 years ago, because I just hate tearing.
In the end I got an LG C1, because the HDR presentation and the 120 Hz support in combination are just insanely good and I doubt there was a better monitor at that time, maybe even today.
I've been using a very cheap (~$100) 32 inch TV with 720p resolution for retro gaming and arcade play. Works lovely with most Win98 games and there has not been a lot of negatives with the active adapting of VGA to HDMI (connected to sound output). TV speakers are decent, so I completely agree with your assessment. These cheap TVs seem to also like having composite connectors too. Great video!
and you get those TVs that record Live TV
It's logical to reduce the size of the gaming window since you sit so close to it, and using the full resolution for desktop applications gives you much more space to work with, so it's the best of both worlds. And thank you for the 2 applications, I didn't know about them and they will certainly be useful.
windows has a built in 'adjust cleartype text' utility too that shows you different texts for you to choose if you're not technically oriented, you just choose from few textboxes on which it looks best to you several times.
I know, but I doubt any of the variations in the samples include subpixel inversion (BGR instead of RGB), so it might not be very useful with a TV.
@@BilisNegra I think that's the first a-b test of the series of choices it makes you do looking at the pixels it makes you choose between which includes small l's with b swapped between the two samples.
if the cleartype system didn't have the rgb bgr variation the more advanced tuner wouldn't probably let you adjust that either.
YES. I use a Vizio 32" as a monitor and I love the added real estate and beautiful image and sound. I highly recommend it. This was super informative though.. I have some settings I need to check after watching this. The RGB part was all news to me. Great video.
I’ve been using a 32” 1080p TV as a monitor for years simply because I had it spare & it’s served me fine. Sure a proper monitor would be better but it’s doing fine for my purposes.
10/10 Tipp. Thanks.
I've been using TVs as monitors for nearly 15 years. I mostly use them as a HTPC, but I did use a smaller flat TV for a desktop replacement. Overall, they are great for watching media, playing most games, and good for browsing the internet. The biggest issue I've experienced is that usually TVs display some less common resolutions such as 900p or 768p worse than monitors, and on few TVs they won't display them at all. The other drawbacks are that some games would have unreadable text (to me) when played on a TV, and some games are designed for keyboard and mouse in mind which is not ideal when you are sitting on a sofa/couch, then again those are drawbacks when using a TV that is far from me.
I always solved that problem with wireless keyboards and mice.
Also simply don't use uncommon resolutions. ;) Nah, that's flippant. In reality, 768p is the bane of my existence. That resolution has annoyed me since Mechwarrior 2.
To be clear, none of the following involves trying to feed a 768p signal to a TV. I'm just ranting about this resolution in an unrelated way. Feel free to ignore the rest of this.
First my PC wasn't fast enough to run the mode well. Actually it didn't even run 640x480 well. Also my 15" CRT could barely display that mode clearly. Some time later, I got a laptop with a 15" LCD, but it had a crappy scaler and I think 640x480 was kind of ugly on it... also too slow for 1024x768... Then 15" LCD monitors came out and it was sharp because that was its native resolution, it had a decent scaler for the low res modes, and I think I had a PC that could run it at 768p, somewhat, but by then no one was playing online.
Fast forward to playing MW2 in DOSBOX today, and I can't for the life of me set it up so it will happily and cleanly display all three modes - 320x200 for the cinematics, 640x480 for the interface, and 1024x768 for the game. It wants you to set up the resolution to one mode so I set it to 1280x960 with a 2X nearest neighbor scaler so I can run it at 640x480 internally and the subsampling of YUV 4:2:0 doesn't screw up the clarity of a QSV-powered video capture. But 2048x1536 is a non-starter for QSV (I think), but definitely with my 1080p display.
So yeah, eff 768p.
Get a tv with bluetooth capabilities and your keyboard, mouse, and headphone issues go away. The LG B2 OLEDS are fairly priced. I use one as my daily driver for home entertainment and for pc gaming. It handles all of the resolutions of games with ease (most likely helped by having an Nvidia 3080TI connected to it).
Someone said stop using uncommon resolutions and I agree. The only place I seemed to find uncommon resolutions are in options for ripping my own movies to keep in a digital library. I don't find those resolutions in any modern games from the last 15 years. So use common resolutions only.
VIZIO makes a decent QLED line of TVS, and TCL does also if one is looking to save a buck. You can find 43in TVS with 120Hz refresh rates relatively easy. I am considering one for my office setup.
Mine is a Xiaomi 32in 1080p bought in 2019 for about $179. External speakers and wired ethernet.
Something extremely important to consider, is to avoid still bright images like the plague. Switch your theme to dark on Windoze or Linux, install Dark Reader (Static mode) or Midnight Lizard for your internet browser, change your desktop wallpaper to a dark one, if you are watching a movie and need to pause it, pause it during a dark frame. If you need to leave the room for more than five minutes, use a screensaver or just turn the TV off. Also, don't forget to set your TV backlight setting to 50 or at least 65. You will have a huge monitor that will live forever and without any bright spots. Been using my old LG 3DTV as a monitor since 2014, still working like a champ in 2023.
For the average user a TV is a great solution, you get a bigger screen than a monitor, better speakers and potentially a few other connectivity options.
Depending on how big your desk is and how far away you sit I would say 32" - 40" is the sweet spot. I tried with a 55" TV and you had to move your head in FPS games which is a disadvantage. I'm back with a 32" 4K monitor for now though as I found one at a good price and use a soundbar so I get great sound too.
I would probably stuck with TVs but it seems its very hard to find a 32" - 40" TV that has 4K support, if they did I would have gone with another TV as it's slightly cheaper at the same screen size I find.
Yea 43" is the smallest size, but like I said, go up to 50" and higher you get better value and more options. Many models are not available as 43"...
The TV manufacturer spelled your channel's name acronym wrong. It's not TCL, it's PCL!
😅😅😅
Cool vid guide, thx for making it👍
I don't like TVs as PC Monitors because the entire Picture looks wrong and weird.
I always bought high end TVs, my current TV is a Sony KD55XD9305 which is a high end Led LCD TV from 2016 with 4K Resolution but the Picture doesn't look good at all when a PC is connected.
I rather prefer Monitors for everything, Even Consoles look better on a PC Monitor.
When I connected my Xbox One on an old CRT Monitor it was the best Picture I've ever seen.
1. CRT Monitor
2. LCD Monitor
3. LCD TV
Those are my preferences in the correct order, but I still rarely use a CRT Monitor.
BTW: Also the PPI is important to me, to low PPI is a no go like 1080p on 55 inch is horrible, don't get me started with 1080p on 75 inch ;)
Actually, the best audio delivery--when used with any source--is had with a good component stereo system. I recall the 6-speaker/5-channel setup I used in my room, which included a pair of tune-able 3-way floor speakers w/12" poly cone & foam surround woofers. The receiver had a "bass boost" function that negated the need for a sub-woofer rather well, while a pair of Bose compact "reflectors" handled the rear channels. The result was that when a friend poked his head in, as I was streaming Christmas carols, he got a look of impressed surprise to his face.
BTW: My "monitor" is a 4K 65" JVC... which hangs upon the wall, as I sit across the room on my bed.(Gotta love Bluetooth accessories!😉)
When I got my screen tvs were the only ones with the feature set I wanted anyways. OLED,120hz,4k
i wish for BGR displays you could just give up two pixels of width and have like a 3838x2160 resolution that just shifts the subpixel pattern a little. it wouldn't make much difference for resolution but it would just make text look better and more compatible. also, bear in mind that it makes a difference in games - anti-aliasing is aware of subpixels and BGR will confuse it, making edges look more jaggy.
Windows has built-in tool for setting different sub-pixel types. Windows supports RGB, BGR and their vertical variants to.
Mac OS doesn't use sub-pixel smoothing at all. Mac OS has no UI scaling it can only do integer values 1x, 2x, 3x etc. For values in between it renders image at higher resolution and downscales it. You can see that in 13,3" Macbooks. They have 2560x1600 resolution, but their configured to work as 1440x900 points, so Mac OS is rendering image at 2880x1800 and scales it to 2560x1600.
@@Leeki85 the issue is it often doesn't work.
40 years ago, I ran my C-64 exclusively on my TV.
😆😆😆
Oh you use a TCL Model, one of the Worst Companies i know. Bad LED´s LCD Screen, it is a bad China Produkt. I had already repaired som TCL TVs Replace the LEDs
I have one, and it has ugly color, even with pure over the air broadcast signals. The fleshtone rendition isn't natural at all, and it emits a high pitched noise when it's on.
If you want over the air TV, try a coax cable with just the center copper wire exposed at the other end for a few inches. If you are in a city, you will be surprised at how many channels you get.
You can easily switch between TV and Monitor with the input. Also put a BeeLink computer
on the back a few years ago and that has run a lot since a few years ago. 1080p 24" TV.
Nicely done and informative video, by the way!
First let me say this is a great video topic. You gave me some ideas to improve my experience.
Oh boy... last year I bought a Sony X85J 50" TV (4K LED Native 120HZ)- I wanted 4k and 120hz for some future proofing even though my new PC with the 3060 Ti is not really a 4k graphics card (except for older games), and that Sony was the cheapest option I could find with HDMI 2.1. Sigh. I ended up buying a Display Port to HMDI 2.1 adapter so the TV and GPU would even communicate (after googling the issue and discovering lots of people having issues with NVidia GPUs and Sony Bravia TVs). Then a month later I tried again and it worked without the adapter. ??? But I had lots of other issues- if my PS5 was on and it went to sleep I would lose audio on my PC unless I unplugged and plugged the HDMI cable back up (same issue on my PS5 if my PC went to sleep while using TV speakers but worked with headphones). I've been scouring the settings to try and make it better.. but things have bene getting better. I wonder if NVidia updated the drivers for better smart TV support and/or if Sony updated their firmware? IDK. I do know if I had a UA-cam channel.. that would have easily been several videos worth of content with me pulling my hair out. Looks like you already did that though (sorry.. too easy joke. I'm j/k. Us old guys still blessed have hair need to be nice).
And I like the idea of running the game in a smaller native window versus stretching- especially with my 50" TV. I like to sit back and game with a controller (like my PS5) when I play PC games too.. so the screen size it not a terrible issue except when I game older games that require mouse and keyboard to play effectively. Sucks because those are the games easiest to run at 4k. Lol.
Oh- the Sony Bravia has excellent speakers fwiw. But it was a bit pricey.. it should have excellent speakers.
Whenever there are new interface standards, oh boy, issues galore and it sometimes takes a new hardware generation to iron out things. I'm late to the 4K party and happy to see things just work basically. Not sure about HDMI 2.1 only the latest GPUs support it and I'm a budget guy, so maybe in a few years 😅
@@philscomputerlab Needed HDMI 2.1 for 4k 120 HZ (PS5).
For Windows you've got to get Microsoft Power Toys and the Fancy Zones tool. It let's you create custom zone sizes and snap Windows into them. I use a TV at my stand up desk and split it up into the equivalent of 3 vertical monitors. Or you could make a smaller centre zone for playing games in windowed mode. I love it.
I did play with the fancy zones tool but couldn't really find a good use. I use Window snap mostly, snapping windows into the 4 corners. I would love to have a snap that resized a window to 1080 or 1440 or something like that.
@@philscomputerlab try using the canvas layout when creating a new template. It allows you to make any window sizes you want with over lapping etc
Doing it myself for the time being. Cheap 32 in. TCL from Walmart, but still full HD.
For the best 4k TV experience you will want a 40" or smaller 4k TV. Any bigger and you start to lose clarity due to the lower PPI on a bigger screen.
For those interested... Here is a breakdown...
Pixels Per Inch (PPI) determines how crisp the display will look to you, on screen, at a given resolution. Higher PPI values are better and offer more clarity.
Resolutions
3840 x 2160(16:9) = 2160p = 4K UHD
3840 × 2400(16:10) 4K UHD+/WQUXGA
2560 x 1440(16:9) = 1440p = 2K QHD/WQHD
2560 x 1600(16:10) QHD+/WQXGA
1920 x 1080(16:9) = 1080p = Full HD
1920 x 1200(16:10) Full HD+/WUXGA
1280 x 720(16:9) = 720p = HD
1280 x 800(16:10) HD+/WXGA
===
3840 x 2160 (4K)
@ 83" = 53.08 PPI
@ 77" = 57.22 PPI
@ 65" = 67.78 PPI
@ 55" = 80.11 PPI
@ 48" = 91.79 PPI
@ 42" = 104.90 PPI
@ 41" = 107.46 PPI
@ 40" = 110.15 PPI ( Max recommended size for 4k gaming )
@ 32" = 137.68 PPI
@ 27" = 163.18 PPI
@ 24" = 183.58 PPI
@ 15.6" = 282.42 PPI
2560 x 1440 (2K)
@ 42" = 69.93 PPI
@ 40" = 73.43 PPI
@ 32" = 91.79 PPI
@ 27" = 108.79 PPI ( Today's standard )
@ 24" = 122.38 PPI
@ 15.6" = 188.28 PPI
@ 13.3" = 220.84 PPI
1920 x 1080 (1080p)
@ 42" = 52.45 PPI
@ 40" = 55.07 PPI
@ 27" = 81.59 PPI
@ 24" = 91.79 PPI ( Where the average PC monitor was before 1440p was a thing. )
@ 23" = 95.78 PPI
@ 21.5" = 102.46 PPI
@ 20" = 110.15 PPI ( Max recommended size for 1080p gaming )
@ 17" = 129.58 PPI
@ 15.6" = 141.21 PPI
@ 13.3" = 165.63 PPI
( Where we were before 1080p was a thing. )
1280 x 1024(5:4) @ 19" = 86.27 PPI
@ 17" = 96.42 PPI ( Most common size back then, late 90's LCDs. )
1280 x 720 (720p)
@ 42" = 34.97 PPI
@ 40" = 36.72 PPI
@ 27" = 54.39 PPI
@ 17" = 86.39 PPI
@ 15.6" = 94.14 PPI
@ 14" = 104.90 PPI
@ 13.3" = 110.24 PPI ( Max recommended size for 720p gaming )
Valve's Steam Deck
1280 x 800 @ 7" ( 16:10 Aspect ratio 720p ) = 215.63 PPI
Nintendo Switch - Uses a dynamic resolution that varies from game to game so PPI will vary based on the game and what resolution the game is able to output to the smaller portable screen.
OLED Model 7" screen @ 1280 x 720 = 209.80 PPI
Launch Model 6.2" @ 1280 x 720 = 236.87 PPI
Lite Model @ 5.5" @ 1280 x 720 = 267.02 PPI
One monitor still in production is pretty pricey but worth taking a look at: Eizo S2133, a 21" IPS 4:3 1600*1200.
Perfect for Retro 😍
I wonder how long that will last. I have a 19” Dell 190S laying. It has bad viewing angles as a TN panel and CCFL backlight versus LED and the colors aren’t accurate compared to my Asus ProArt PA248QV. The Asus is 1920x1200 16:10, pretty nifty, but I’m curious how good 1440p or 4K looks and I need a 16:9 monitor for consoles, too…
I got an Xbox Series S just collecting dust.
I’d rather have a PS5 as buying digital games on Xbox isn’t cheap nor convenient with my real address not being selectable with Microsoft. I have to use a fake billing address and it screws up my card.
It’s just the PS5 is some hulking behemoth that costs twice as much, they need to come up with a slim version and fast.
I have that Eizo. It is great. Only little minus is lack of 50hz option for PAL regions. (It is my PS2 emulation display). And yes, it was expensive....
It is also industrial level quality display. Zero backlight bleeding.
@@retro_ed746 thank you for your input, I hope to own one in the near future. It will work perfectly across the range from Dos to WinXP.
Too bad I just bought NEC EA193Mi, an IPS/19"/LED/5:4/1280*1024, w/DVI-D and D-Sub.
Frankly, can't wait to test both especially at Dos.
I use a LG C1, it is awesome. You just need to use dark mode for most stuff.
I pwn the TLC 50" 4k w/ HDR w/ Roku, which I don't use Roku.
After 3 months 1 HDMI imput FAILED.
On warranty but why be bothered it's a cheap TV.
I use it mostly for the PS5 and it looks nice with a PC stream too.
Cheap TV but looks good ans fast response time for me is a WIN WIN for gaming. It's good for gaming at least.
LIVLRG
I've been using a tv as my main monitor for about ten years. Love it overall, but it can definitely be annoying when it comes to resolution options for games.
I was wondering what an e5-2697 v2 had to do with this video when I realized I had 2 in my computer.
Working on next project 😅
I also own a TCL TV similar to yours but I don't use it as a monitor, what I use instead is a 2009 Samsung HDTV, via VGA since it's the only mod that allows the screen to turn off to save some power. Are there any settings I need to be aware of? Game Mode makes the image really dark and the sound becomes garbled.
The resolution I use is 1360x768, but I think the native is 1920x1080, however setting that on the PC causes everything to be badly scaled, messing around with scaling settings doesn't help too much and gave me some eyestrain after a while.
Great video as always, Phil. Take care. :)
I’ve using a 43” Vizio TV as a monitor myself for the last couple of years and I’m perfectly happy with it. I run 1080p for my games at 60FPS, and it’s great. It is a “smart” TV but it’s an older model that just… works. It doesn’t have nearly as much hassle and crud as new, current Smart TVs.
Hopefully, when it comes time to replace the thing, there will still be models that are relatively basic for this purpose. That, or maybe we’ll have monitors that are 40” and under $700 USD (staring at you, Aorus FV43U).
Interesting review. I eas thinking that this TV might be useable as a monitor for sn Intel NUC.
But, S-0-O MANY AMAZON REVIEWERS report Black Screen/No Audio permanent failures within 1 year, due to TCL power board failures & poor TCL SUPPORT, that I am put-off on the brand, totally.
Interesting, I thought TCL was one of the better budget brands? I picked it because my old TCL is still working after 10 years LOL So
Basically what I did with my old 32" Samsung 'smart' tv when I built my retro gaming space in a corner of the basement.
I also plan on running cables so both of desktops can switch from my dual monitors to my 4k uhd tv
This CRU utility solved a long standing issue i had with my laptop. That being that it had 2 refresh rate options, 120hz and 48hz. And it had this option that turned the refresh rate down while on battery, which makes sense but going from 120hz to 48hz is too jarring. But also it caused problems with some games that wanted a not 120hz refresh, i had one that wanted 60hz, and since 48 is closer to 60 than 120 is it would set that run at 48fps and be running at only 80% of full speed it was weird. I was able to remove the 48hz option and install a 60hz option and now it's perfect. Thank you so much Phil! And thank you so much ToastyX!
Awesome 😍
Been using a 4K 55inch OLED for a monitor since 2017. Never going back. The only disadvantage people never tell you is that there is nowhere to have a camera. So if you work from home or stream people will be looking at the side of your head.
Webcam doesn't fit onto the top?
@@philscomputerlab it most certainly will, but the view angle that you get from it is atrocious. It seems to be a problem with bigger monitors in general.
Ahh I get it now, it will look like from to high up or from too low. Yea that makes sense with a large screen and apart from sitting further away to reduce the angle, not much you can do I think.
I use a TV for my main monitor, a 55" OLED. I'm quite happy with it, but it's used primarily for games. My secondary monitor is where I do most of my productivity and web browsing to avoid any image retention issues with the OLED. Some people would be hesitant to use 55", but I find it quite enjoyable to be so immersed in what's going on.
I use a c1 48" as my only monitor, 1 year in no sign of burn in.
I have a 43" TCL Roku TV with HDR and it is fantastic as a monitor. using fancy zones on Windows makes it 4 21" monitors. have had it since 2020 and I would highly recommend. I wired the TV headphone out to bose computer speakers so any of the 3 computers I have connected play the sound to the Bose speakers. I have no issues with text display. Looks great
I'm using my Philips HDTV as a PC monitor since around 9 years now and haven't had huge issues with it. Because it has a PC Mode in the settings, the picture is as good as on a standard HD monitor with almost no inputlag and the sound of the speaker is really good for my taste (it's a slightly thicker TV, that has nice speakers build in). Only issue now, is that after all these years, the brightness of the Monitor has gotten darker, but it is something i would expect after 10 year of use.
Great video. Back when 32" LCD computer monitors were quite expensive, I bought a cheap 32" TV for my PC. It was great... now that I have a 32" 2k monitor which I got at a great price, I use the 32" TV in the kitchen. :) And thanks to HDMI and RetroTinks, I can use my SNES and Genesis on my PC monitor. :)
My computer desk is quite old and has a "portal" that won't put much larger than a 40" in the cubby hole. One day I might get a new desk, but this one has been so great, I don't want to change it. :) Plus it's too heavy to move without dismantling it. :) It would be nice though, to have a 4K TV on my computer desk... :)
Another thing I used to do was turn it into ultrawide. Set up a custom resolution for 21:9 with back bars top and bottoms. Was great for football games as I could see more of the pitch and where my players were!
Great tip!
I've been using a 46" Sharp TV as a monitor since 2006 and it works perfect. I also have a 52" Sharp as a monitor in another room. They both work great. Streaming using a TV only sucks compared to using a Computer for the internet link.
I use TV's with a still very useful VGA connector. Sure they are native 720 give or take. What I have issues with is a mismatch in true resolution tables between the Tv, operating systems and graphics drivers. Then there is the overscan hassles that can occur when using SBC's that have limited or poorly written generic graphics software. I would like to see the TV format to go to 16:10, or 5:3 Instead of follow the way too wide movie theater format. Remember the days when a 4:3 image would be fill a screen, Then wide-screen movie bars. Now there is UHD bars on the HD TV. Using TV's for a PC monitor is a good idea especially if they are early HDMI in my opinion.Not many people can say they can use a Rpi 3 b+ on a 60 inch Mitsubishi Rear projection 4:3 TV using composite and be perfectly happy with it. I can get it to appear to have 1024x768 resolution. It also has no LCD screen door appearance. I still game on CRT TV's because it looks better to me.
I had a 37 inch LGHDTV+ on my PC for years. I've sold it recently since I no longer like how much space it took.
I have 3 TV's around the house and all of them have an old desktop PC plugged into the back of them which I find very useful.The only one with a slight issue is my JVC 40" android TV which displays the screen slightly to large.I drag each browser or program in a bit to overcome this as I haven't been able to do it via settings.I have a 65" Samsung TV in living room with a 2014 HP Pavillion 500 series plugged into the back which works perfectly.
I use an HDMI splitter from amazon to swap from PC to Xbox due to lack of HDMI inputs on TV.also display port to HDMI adapters to connect the older PC's.
Its a lot better use of old PC's rather than just dumping them.
Editing to say I sorted JVC settings by manually adjusting the screen via properties/advanced setting.
I am using a 65“ Panasonic industrial plasma display as a monitor and tv. The downside is that it is just 1080p and pretty power hungry. On the positive side it works reliably without any defect since more than 15 years and it keeps me warm on cold winter days
G'day Phil,
I have a LG 42" 3D (1080p) Tv connected to a PC in my bedroom, it was my lounge room Tv until my old bedroom tv died & I upgrade the lounge room to an LG 55" C1.
I have not bothered with any setting but after watching this video I will look into it.
@PhilsComputerLab
I've been running Dual displays since 2007 and usually use a TV as the secondary display. This is so I can have my PC and game systems all plugged in at one location. 4k is nice, but I have found that for gaming a 27" 1440p display for the primary display and a 1080p TV for the secondary is perfect for most gaming situations.
I've been using TVs as monitors for years now (and even before the rise of 'smart tvs' ) just by connecting them to an android box and a radio-controlled keyboard-pad (mainly Logitech ones). Conversely, an Android software emulator allows me to use my windows 10 lenovo 27" touchscreen desktop to have a real touchscreen tv at my desk. In both configurations (tv as monitor, monitor as tv), the idea is to use the most relevant interface. And on the strictly software point of view, stay as far as possible away both of win or mac-OS web browsers and smart-tv OS (including androidTV). The best compromise being pure Android OS with the right apps.
Watching the video and can't get rid of the feeling that it's Steve Balmer speaking... 🙃🙃Well, when I walk through electronics supermarkets I always look closely at pixels. There is always such a zoo diversity of everything might be in TV panels. 😮😮🤣🤣
Cool! Great video as always! I never think of BGR inversion in TV screens!
But I knew about this PC thing. Even on TVs which does not have direct image settings, there is often an option, to give a name for you HDMI and other sockets. Well, I thought, what does that changes? And yes it changes everything. It is not for user to distinguish where you plug console and where PC. This is really how TV actually works with the socket. I renamed my HDMI to PC and image become vivid and without any distortion, input lag was also much lower.
At least in the US it was very hard to find a good sub 50" TV. All the development and new tech is in the large screens (50"+). I only had room for 44" max. Found an acceptable VA that I'm happy with, but there really wasn't any other options. It's a bit ridiculous that it would have been cheaper and the panel would have been better if I could have gotten a 50"+ TV.
Basically, the smaller TVs are bit of a crapshoot. Takes a lot more research to get a good one.
yeah been running a 55" 4K TV for monitors for years, it's great, can snap multiple windows in various orientations for multitasking.. or just watch a movie
a 3070 TI seems to have no problem running most games at 4k 60FPS, though you do notice that the latency isn't as good as a 1ms gaming monitor, I'd still rather run 2 4k TV's than one of each for how much I game
I got a 32 inch TV i connect with PC via VGA which means no sound but i don't want crap TV sound so i put audio into the stereo system via auxiliary then get nice loud bassy spacious stereo.
I currently use a Samsung smart TV as a monitor (both for work and gaming). I made this decision just because I don't have space for two big displays (TV and computer monitor) and also to avoid redundant expending. The VA panel itself is very good , but the problem is the Samsung garbage software. What I hate the most is the constant unrequested annoying distractions, garbage bloatware with new apps autoinstalling themselves and changing my setups constantly , and specially annoying adds apppearing everywhere, even in the menus!, and those menus appear every time you power on or wake up the tv, either you want it or not. Also the lack of Display Port, the agressive dimming when rescaling a window, the HDR software glitches all over the place, and the garbage "image enhancements" bs reactivating on every update and every new input selection... and the tv stupidly fighting with my projector for AVR control... not to mention the "glossy" visual fatigue Vs matte coating.... In summary Samsung managed to convert a great panel into a permanenty annoying experience.
So for my next upgrade I'm planning to go the opposite route, to buy a "dumb" monitor and also use it as a TV (probably an Asus 42", which is a glossy LG TV repurposed as a monitor ). A monitor always display the signal that is connected and that's it. In exchange I will need a PC connected most of the time, and to fine tune Windows OS and applications manually , but at least I'll get back control of what can I do or not do with my f. display. And what is sure is that I'll never buy another Samsung TV in my live.
I'm using TV as PC monitor 1080p or 1K. Cost effective. Maybe later 4K. thx for the advice.
I stared using 47"as a monitor 11 years ago, when I bought then new 3D LG. And it is still running as a UA-cam viewing panel, being connected to a PC. I switched back to a 24" budget Dell monitor with matte screen.
Finally a face to the voice! Maybe I'm oddly late to notice but no complains from here. Thinking you gathered quite a big public with only your hands, I can see how millennials will start building their 486 retro computers with your friendly face to guide them. I wish there was someone to do the same for me to build a proper PDP-11 or something.
You made this video too complicated. I use a TV as a second monitor on my laptop.
I don't know about your TV, but mine is an insignia TV from Best Buy, and I am in the USA.
Furthermore, I have an old friend that every time his desktop has a problem, he calls me over to look at it.
I told him to buy a laptop and a TV to use as a monitor. Now every time he has a problem with his computer, he brings it to me and I fix.
I don't have to do any special settings with my window's laptop, hook up an HDMI cable.
It depends on how to use, mine I use as extender monitor, I can browse the Web while play video in the second monitor (TV). I set it up and windows remember every time I boot my computer.
TV as a monitor is a good option to use a laptop as a desktop. It turns a laptop into a desktop in seconds. Plug the HDMI cable to have desktop, remove to work as laptop.
The only setting from TV is to select the source for a simple use, click on the TV remote and select input, choose the correct HDMI, because most TVs has more than one port.
For windows, right-click on the computer screen then display settings, there are three options, extend these displays, show only on 1, show only on 2.
To use only the laptop, just keep the TV off.
3:35 Unless you're playing something like turn-based RPGs or simulation games, I wouldn't recommend using analog inputs on a modern TV for gaming due to high latency, which is even higher latency than what's normally present on the average TV. An external upscaler is a better way of interfacing old consoles with modern TVs.
I used an old LG 49", it worked very good. So pleased that I got a TCL for another system. Big mistake! Powertools zones make for a very nice windows experience on the screen. Much better thanntwo or three smaller screens.
I'd prefer some older 4K TV because older ones will also have RGB SCART and probably VGA.
4:39: Obviously! Everyone knows that RGB makes PCs faster.
I've been using a tv as a monitor since about 2008 with an old 47LG70. They're great in that you don't have to sit next to them. I use mine with my recliner and a piece of shelving board as a keyboard/mouse tray. I've had a few others but I picked up a 49nano85una most recently about two years ago. It's gsync compatible. Supports HDMI 2.1 and can display 4k at 120Hz. Lastly it has rudimentary HDR which can really brighten things up if your settings are right. I paid 600usd for it. I mounted it to the wall with a set of arms that gives me everything but pivot and height adjustment.
Been running a pc tv since w xp with vga. W7 with hdmi. Same. Turn off all tv settings. Sit on couch with control to relax or pull up card table to kb m.
I used a fairly low price LG 4k 43" TV as a monitor for a while. It turned out is wasn't actually native 4k due to the WRGB pixel layout. From what I could understand, it meant it only had three quarters of the 3840 pixels on the horizontal axis as it had to fit in the white subpixels.
I now use a 1440p curved ultrawide monitor as I work from home, it provides a much sharper image.
Interesting, haven't heard of this issue yet...
I use a Sony A80J 65" for a monitor on a PC, runs at 4K120hz and with a LP 1650 it's even alright for light gaming! I would love one of those RTX A2000 cards though...
It is rediculously more cost-effective to use a TV as a monitor. For the same price, one gets a larger screen surface area, built-in speakers, and smart TV streaming apps. Resolution, frame rates, and other settings are not significantly better on a dedicated monitor at mainstream price points. For most people who use a desktop PC at home, this is the way to go.
The TV space is kind of a mess right now. HDMI 2.1 as a standard has been diluted by a bunch of TVs which only partially support the technology; only supporting 40Gbps, no 4:4:4, no VRR, etc. Also, as you discovered, anything less than IPS or OLED will have viewing angle issues... and of course OLED has burn in. Also features like screen turn-off for inactivity aren't supported on TVs.
Once you take all that into consideration, you can either accept the TVs shortcomings, or decide to spend more, or even get an actual monitor. I bought a 32" 1440p monitor as a stopgap for a few years while waiting for standards to mature (DP 2.0), and product offerings to improve.
That being said, you are spot on about that 44-48" UHD (not 4k) being the sweet spot.
I've been using a 4K 49-inch curved Samsung TV as a monitor since 2017 and it's been pretty great. Without the curve, 49 inches is probably a little too big for how close it is but with the curve it's just right for me. The LCD is getting worn out in spots where my static window layouts are and I'm going to miss it when I have to replace it.
I've used a TV as a second monitor before. Don't think I've ever used one as the primary though.
it is generally a bad idea to use a large tv as a monitor because is very uncomfortable to see all the screen at once being so up close and also there is input lag, monitors are lagless while tv's even on game/pc mode always lag.
in my opinion if a person ends up turning the head while using the PC in order to see the sides and/or the corners of the TV/Monitor, then he made the wrong purchase, he bought something too big to be put on a too close position.
clear demostration is the "need" to play a videogame in a letterbox to better enjoy it, which is the same as having a smaller screen.
You can use a TV as a monitor, but I find it's better as a secondary....TV's really aren't monitors and won't act like one.
I'm looking to upgrade back to a desktop computer later this year, from my current gaming laptop, and I've contemplated using a TV as a monitor for the larger screen size for flight simming. The pointers in this video are very useful for that. Thank you!
Flight simming on a 65in OLED using the whole screen is amazing. Any game looks beyond fantastic on a good OLED.
I been using my living room tv as a computer monitor ever since computers could output to hdmi and keyboards and mice could be wireless. Couch computing is awesome. And most optical mice will work just fine on the arm of the couch.
I also put my phone hdmi'd to the tv whenever i end up playing a phone game, thanks to nearly universal compatibility of usb c docking stations.
But, you know, grats on putting a tv on your computer desk LOL so inovative man, you are blowing people's minds, i'm sure.
I still use a 1080i tv in my room. Connected my ps4 not main pc though
I don't see any reason to use TV as a monitor unless someone doesn't have a separate TV for movie watching, and they want to use TV for both purposes.
I use my 65" led tv as a monitor for my android box. Love it. Its just the right size.
I've been doing this for roughly a full decade now, although you have some advantages that I don't, for example I'm not using a smart tv, I'm using old fashioned no network television system. But it's not too old that I can use an HDMI hookup to my PC.
But I've been happy with it for this full decade, and I haven't thought of upgrading it either, it's an LED screen, and the reason why I got it was because someone convinced me to get it based off of what I was thinking of using, you see I thought that it would be cool if I got a projector, because I can make the screen as big as I want, problem with projectors especially at the time, they didn't last for very long, and the person who convinced me to get a TV instead recommended getting an LED screen specifically because it'll last much longer.
The weird thing is I have seen people use smart screens, and I've noticed a lot of smart screens tend to die after 3 to 5 years, for example my mom she's gone through two separate smart screens, and that's within the 10-year bracket of my TV that's not a smart TV, something seems to be wrong with those Smart TVs where they don't last quite as long they're just not as resilient, I wish I knew what was wrong with them so that it could be fixed, but it's kind of bizarre they always seem to last three to five years, I keep wondering how much longer my TV will last, I mean there was a point in time when I was just using the light on my TV to create light in my room because I rarely use my overhead light in my room, but I have my TV set to turn itself off after a certain period of time to conserve the life of it, but I can't remember how many hours this thing was rated at, all I know is it was a crazy high number that I doubt I'll ever see the day, but who knows technology tends to go bad after a while including cell phones, nowadays cell phones have the problem with their battery dying the phone will still run, but the battery when it runs at the end of its cycle life, it's pretty much over at that point, this is why I don't like the built-in batteries and devices, with the older devices you could easily remove that battery for a new one and you could allow that device to last a lot longer, because believe it or not your device will actually last a fairly long period of time, but a lot of phone companies that make these cell phones pretty much engage in what's called planned obsolescence, and I've seen this on a few of my phones, they end up getting really slow after a while, you can do everything you can to make that not happen, but there's a limit to how long you can make the tech last. And that's just smartphones were talking about.
I use a cheap TCL TV as a primary monitor (3 monitor setup) with HDMI pass-through from my Atmos reciever>
It works fairly well, and makes watching movies or playing video games fairly pleasant. There are some hiccups (mainly when turning TV on and off, due to pass-through), but things like the clear-type tuner really does help text clarity, and I find it worthwhile.
Funnily enough I bought the exact same TV last week to use as a bedroom TV. :)
Nice! How are you finding it?
@@philscomputerlab I got it for about USD375 here in Sweden and inspired by your video I connected a laptop with a resolution of 3200x1800@24Hz and the picture looked sharp without any tweaking. So I have no complaints, although I will only use it as a TV.
I use a TV as a monitor, and have done for as long as I can remember.
You can get a centre stand and get rid of those splayed feet.
I have two desktop computers, one in my living room, and one in my office, both connected to TV monitors. Very happy with both. I had little trouble setting the resolution on both, you just have to experiment with it a bit if you don't like the "recommended" settings. It wasn't as involved as the "tweaks" in the video, which may be desired for gaming.
If game res is 1080p it will scale better to 4k. Integer scaling.
I use an LG 4K TV as a monitor for my living room multimedia computer setup. I took some of your advice and changed the video settings to "Game" mode. I have a datacolor SpiderX to properly calibrate the colors and brightness etc so now it looks really good!
I have been using TV's as monitors for almost 20 years now.