So I need a little help getting caught up on the newest display technology and input/output interfaces. It's been nearly three years since I purchased a video card for my main PC and it's been nearly five years since I purchased a new monitor for the same PC. Suffice it to say I am a little behind the times and out of the loop on display related topics.
About a month ago I was working on my PC in my home office and I look over at my 22'" LCD TV that I had left in the room when I converted the spare bedroom into and office. My intent was to leave the TV in the room because I thought I might like to have it on now and again while I am doing something in the office. Well, I rarely have ever turned it on. So the thought occurs to me that maybe I could use it for my PC monitor and retire my 17" 4:3 LCD to my other PC that still had a big space hogging CRT hooked up to it. I had noticed that the HDTV had a VGA port on it when I bought it. I hooked it up to my video card wondering if it would even look good because it's not really made for PC's. I was pleasantly surprised at how good my Windows desktop looked and also surprised at how good games looked on it.
Fast forward a few weeks. I finally buy a game that actually started making my video card have fits at the resolutions I like to play games at. So I buy a new Radeon 5670 to get me by for a few months until I see what new video card I want when I build a new PC. I install the new card and I notice it has an HDMI port on it. So does the HDTV. I figure if the graphics look as good as they do through an old VGA port, then they should look even better through HDMI. So I grab a HDMI cable from a store the next day, take it home, plug it into the video card and monitor and voila! The graphics look like crap. Icons on my desktop are small and blurry. The refresh rate seems abnormal and hurts my eyes. I have tried reinstalling the drivers for the video card and adjusting every setting I can think of under display properties and Catalyst. Was I wrong to think that HDMI would work from the PC to and HDTV? Wouldn't this be the interface I would want to use if I were to use the video card for an HTPC?