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computer/Tv combo help!

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--- Quote --- But in your case bonnie, I woulda bought a big ole digital plasma for home. And keep the computing seperate.
--- End quote ---


I agree with TMAN!   Over a year ago....I purchased a killer monitor.  Paid a hair under 800 bucks for it. It's a 19" Sony high def monitor,made for the computer.  It has split screen etc etc.  When I purchased it,I thought it would be great on sundays,to watch the games in high def,while foolin around on puter.  The picture is GREAT!  I had it hooked up for a little over 2 months,as far as cable and high def etc. Was paying about 8 dollars a month for the high def box.

My experience....I didn't watch the games and use computer much at the same time...so over-all,it was a waste of money. After football season last year,I returned the high def receiver/converter.  For me,multi-tasking TV and computer on same monitor,wasn't what I thought it would be as far as convenience.

When I compute/internet etc presently...I do either 1 OR the other,without distractions,and the same can be said as far as watchin football.

If I was you,I would purchase a 42" Plasma (that's what we have)  with high def capability! DO NOT purchase a ED monitor!(extended definition). It doesn't offer the high resolution that a true high def TV does.  The brand we purchased was/is a Panasonic. It's been a little over 2 years since we purchased it,and the picture is still as good as the day we bought it.

P.S. ...  I love my wife,as she loves football just as much,and maybe even more,than me :)

Bonibelle:
Well I am pretty much stuck with the computer...and about $600.00 went into that darn screen...I'd have to find somewhere to unload
my 32 inch TV to accomodate a new 42" TV...guess may just wait a little while for the TV...I should have posted this before I orderd the computer...

I love football too, Auto, but my husband is so pasionate about his Eagles that he often ruins it for me...He is really out of control sometimes and I end up hiding somewhere so I can enjoy the game without my "extra commentator"...Maybe I won't tell him about the monitor capabilty to play TV...he will think I am on the computer..and I can watch the game in peace when he gets all crazy... ;)
thanks for all your help, I just made a bad decision... :-/

dkersten:
OK, lemme throw in my 2 cents since not only do I work on computers as my daily job now, but I was in audio/video for 10 years before I did this.

First, let me point out that it all comes down to personal preference.  Even though the arguments I came up with for myself may be sound for me, they dont work for everyone, so dont take what I did as what you should do.

I look at it this way:  it is MUCH more comfortable for me to sit in the family room in a leather recliner watching a movie or TV than to sit in my computer room.  Many times when I watch a movie on DVD, more than one family member joins me, and only one person can fit in my little office, so it makes sense for me to have a theater room and a seperate computer room.

I have a 48" rear projection mitsubishi hdtv in the family room downstairs, which is where I set up my home theater.  I could have (and can still) added a computer to the system for added features, but I dont think I would ever use those features.  The local cable service provided a DVR (digital video recorder) with dual tuners for cable service, and a DVD player, even a good one, will cost less than $100 these days.  The only thing I cant do in that room is listen to my music from my computer, which I wouldnt do in that room anyway, or watch slideshows and whatever from my computer, which I also wouldnt do.  I can edit and burn video in my office and take the dvd into the theater room to watch if I want.

I have a 24" dell widescreen on my computer in my office, and bought a 17" wide phillips lcd TV to put next to it if I want to watch TV in there as well.  I have had TV tuner cards in the PC but I never used them.  I have a cable box in that room as well so I can set shows that I like to record there, and transfer them to my computer quite easily if I want to put them on DVD.  I have been known to download a movie now and then and if I dont feel like burning it to dvd, I can always watch it on the 24" widescreen.  I have 5.1 audio on the computer, and it sounds quite good.  So if I want that option, I have it, but to be honest, that is not why I bought the 24" widescreen (paid $745 for it from Dell).  I only watch a movie in there when I am bored and my wife isnt around to watch it.

Upstairs I put up a 32" lcd above the fireplace after I completed a living room renovation.  It was kind of an afterthought but I figured that a formal living room didnt really fit my family lifestyle, and after spending a chunk of money on the renovation I wanted to use the room.  The size is perfect for the room, and once again, we have a cable box with dual tuner and DVR in it there.  The TV can be seen from the dining room, so we removed the 13" tv from the counter, which the kids used quite often.

For me, I have no reason to have the computer as a media center, just because I wouldnt use it.  The 48" mitsubishi rear projection tv cost me $1500 4 years ago.  Most rear projections are LCD or DLP now, but you can get a really good looking DLP in 50+ inches for around $1500-$2000 from costco these days.  The 32" lcd cost me $1500 as well, but can be had for around $1100 now, and the same brand 37" can be had for 1400 at costco right now.  

Now, as far as cable goes, Comcast does pretty much the same thing my local company does for service and hardware.  If you just plug in the cable to your new computer, you can get the first 60 channels and nothing else.  These are the analog channels and the rest of the channels require an addressable digital tuner.  Many TV's support cable cards now, but I have not seen a tuner than supports digital cable (or hd cable) without a box.  The dual tuner setup you bought is a good way to go as far as digital video recording (TiVo style) but since you will have to have 2 cable boxes to take full advantage, it probably wont work well.  You can get the motorola dual tuner DVR box from Comcast which will do everything your computer will do concerning TV media.  It is also unlikely that the dual tuner media center you bought is NOT HD compatible.  This means that you cannot record HD channels on your computer.  There is a LOT to the whole computer tuner HD thing, and lets just say that its still very undeveloped technology.

Now, this doesnt necessarily mean that you wasted your money.  The dual tuners probably arent gonna do you a whole lot of good, but the 24" monitor is something that you dont need to be watching movies to enjoy.  I am very happy with mine.  You will still have a lot of options for incoming video, and the nice thing is you should have all the authoring tools you will need to convert older video formats to DVD.  While windows media edition isnt required for this stuff, it can make it easier if you are not very computer savvy.  

Since I am running out of room here I will make another post about LCD vs Plasma vs rear projection.

badval:

--- Quote ---Well I am pretty much stuck with the computer...
--- End quote ---

Not really.  If it hasn't been delivered yet, just call Dell & change the order.  If it has been delivered, call them & tell them it doesn't fit your needs & would like to return it & then buy whatever you feel would fit you better.  If it has been delivered, you'll probably have to pay return shipping.  If it hasn't, it shouldn't cost you anything.

I work for Dell BTW & people cancel & change orders all the time.  If you look at the refurb website (dell outlet), you'll see at most times at least 1/2 of what's on there are "previously ordered new".  That means someone ordered it, it was built, then the customer decided to change/cancel, or it couldn't be delivered for some other reason.

You can take the money you save getting exactly what you want/need in the PC & put that toward a nice high def TV of your choice.    

dkersten:
OK, concerning TV's:

In my opinion, LCD is the way to go.  Plasma is nice as it will be brighter, have a higher contrast, and a softer image.  LCD is a little sharper, and can be too sharp, and the blacks are not as good.  Some people will argue about LCD's having ghosting or smearing images because of the slower response times, but I have installed and viewed $75,000 projection TV's and let me say that I dont see an issue with them.  A cheap LCD with a crappy upconverter might have compression issues which will lead to tiling where you see a bunch of squares on the screen.  However, digital cable will do this often, and it wont have anything to do with the TV when it comes from your cable box.  Sometimes in fast action sequences you might also get some tiling or artifacting (artifacting is when little bits of video seem to freeze and not be in the right place after a couple frames).  Most times this is once again from the source rather than the TV, but some LCD tvs handle this worse than others.  Most times this is from the upconversion process, which is when you take an NTSC tv signal (from any non-hd source such as your cable box or dvd) and the upconverter in the tv changes it from however many lines of resolution to a format that can be outputted to the LCD panel.  NTSC has 480 lines max, but digital cable is usually compressed so much that you are lucky to get 240 lines, and analog cable usually is around 320 lines.  DVD's have a solid 480 lines of resolution, and a newer DVD player with an upconverter will bump that to 720 or 1020 lines.  With all that conversion going on, there are a lot of places things can go bad and result in a bad image.  Plasma is a softer image so it doesnt show the problems as much.

The problem is that most people end up watching DVD's or regular analog or digital TV channels as opposed to HD content.  The result is looking at a sometimes horrible quality picture and blowing it up to 32, 40, or even 50 or 60 inches.  A good TV will be able to use different filters to make that image much better looking.  My 48" mitsubishi is the entry level for that model and didnt have a really good upconverter, and the noise filtering is not that good, so the image on the analog channels is horrible.  My 32" lcd has a great noise filter and a good upconverter and the image on the analog channels is pretty darn good.  

As I said, plasmas do have a tendency to burn in, which is where you get a permanent image sort of ghosted onto your screen.  This will happen if you play a console video game a lot where parts of the screen are static and dont change.  This can also happen if you watch a channel like ESPN a lot and the logo is always in the bottom corner, or there is a news bar at the bottom of the screen.  LCD's wont burn in ever.  Plasmas these days are better, with life expectancies up to 50,000 hours for the panel.  Burn in is the biggest issue.  

One thing you have to watch for though is on cheaper models, where the image might be every bit as good as the more expensive models, the features might not be as good.  Vizio is a newer brand that has an excellent image.  Consumer reports rated them high.  However, there are basically 3 modes to watch them in:  zoom, where the image is just zoomed to fit a 4:3 to the 16:9 screen; stretch, where the image is stretched to fit, so everything looks wide and squashed; and standard, where they put black bars on the sides so that you are watching a 4:3 in 4:3.  Zoom chops off the top and bottom, and if you have a digital channel with 240 lines of resolution, you are chopping off another 40 lines which leaves you with a horrible picture.  Stretch leaves the lines of resolution but stretches the image so it is bad.  4:3 standard looks right but you have a smaller image and more importantly, the bars will burn in on a plasma.

Better TV's will have more options, including stretches that also zoom a little so that you have a full image with less extremes of the downsides, or a stretch that leaves the middle the right aspect ratio but stretches the sides a little more to fit.  Even better, a good TV will have an auto option that detects if the picture is letterboxed so it can zoom in, or whatever and give you a good picture for any format.  

HDTV has many modes, and to me, they all look good.  1020p is the best, and blu-ray dvd players use that mode.  However there are almost no dvd's out for this format, and the players are expensive.  HD-DVD is supposedly coming out with a 1020p format but same scenario, expensive players and few movies.  So to be honest, most LCD's can do 1020i even though it is downconverted, but there is no reason to spend extra to get the 1020p right now.  It will be 3 to 5 years before 1020p is really even a mainstream choice, and it will still be limited and expensive by then.  

As far as projectors go, LCD projectors are, in my opinion, all pretty bad.  I have never seen one I really like.  DLP projectors arent bad, but tend to be a little more expensive.  However you can find decent DLP projectors now in the 50+ inch range for under $2000.  They will not have the latest DLP technology, but once again, you will likely be watching a very low resolution image, and if you do watch HD (espn monday night football in HD rocks), the image will still be unbelieveably good.  

One more quick note on TV's, HDMI cables are expensive, so dont forget that when shopping.

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