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I'm moving back to the United States, and with that the nice 56 inch 1080p TV is coming out of storage.

I'm using a 19 inch 1680x1050 monitor at the moment and I really get the feeling I need more space and gaming on the HD 4870 isn't reaching its potential.

I managed to, uh, "secure it" as the auxiliary TV, and we will keep the nice 36 inch for regular TV watching. So anyways, what experiences do you have with running a large TV as your main display? I already have a perfect table nearby for keyboard/mouse, which I figure is optimal distance.

What various tweaks do you have to use, I understand Vista has some pretty good font settings to get things to work alright.

My only other concern is how does a HD 4870 handle running at a TV's refresh rate and display, do I have to worry about anything here or is it pretty much good to go?

Edit: Thanks for any help in advance

4870 deals with 1080p pretty well. I use a 37" 1080p screen and I'm happy with it. I also have a 4870 1gig.

56" is not going to look good if you are close to it, but if you are 8 feet away or so you will prolly like it as a display.

Games and movies will be great, but text might look rough.

honestly, it's not a good idea.
A bigger TV does not mean better resolution or a better viewing experience.
A lot of people don't get this. 1080p? Who cares, higher resolution monitors have been around for quite a while. Don't fall for the media hype.
when you are sitting at a desk, a huge TV in your face may actually be out of your full perception.
what I would do is get a 24"-ish 1920x1200+ ws computer LCD or use your old 19" and then hook up the HDTV as a 2nd monitor for viewing movies and games. Some games might require the HDTV to be the main monitor to work in full screen, I believe WoW is like this. but you can just switch and stretch your desktop.

You shouldn't have any problems. I use a wireless keyboard and mouse with my living room PC. I place a mousepad on the couch beside me.

i use a 42lg70 for my main display. its a 42 inch 1080p LG lcd. i have the 120hz option turned on, it helps a tad in games and once you get used to it, youll never go back to standard for hd movies. it sits about three feet from my face and i typically lean back in my computer chair and kick my feet up to watch movies. as far as gaming goes... i had to turn on LCD Overdrive on in CCC. before that it was hopeless... i have a 4850+e5200+4gb ram and it runs anything for an average gamer fine. i have a small studio apartment and rarely spend time in front of the tele except to kick it with guests. for a main display my HDTV does great, as long as im not planning to get into some intense counter strike source scrims or anything.


in short, i love it. just dont expect to do any super competitive gaming on it. i <3 1080p movies with pseudo 120hz interlacing. its kind of creepy when you first use the option, but ive never turned it off since the first time i turned it on an i game on a regular basis on it. though i do consider occasionally using this as my tv and using a crt for gaming again... but its usually a fleeting thought when i get pissed at CSS.

120Hz refresh would be great for watching 1080/24p Blu-ray movies without any telecine judder. This should be the closest that you can get to the movie theater presentation of the films at their original 24 Hz frame rate.

Thanks for all the response, I'm not going to be 3 feet away.

Sorry I think I should have been a little clearer about the TV.

Its a Sony rear-display with their lcos technology that they call SXRD. This means there is no spacing between pixels so actually bigger is better here. Also, I can't find specific response time but the technology is supposedly known for 120 hz or higher.

I know the 4870 can drive a 1920x1080 at decent frames, but I'm wondering if anyone knows specific about how TV's handle hdmi inputs. They usually run at a native refresh rate and scale everything up to it, like blu-ray is only 24 frames a second but it just displays every frame 5 times. So how does it handle varying frame rates during games?

Thanks for the info shaq, my TV supposedly does response time better than lcds so maybe it will do fine with overdrive in CCC.

And yes the entire point for me to use the TV as a main display is to postpone buying a monitor until 30" 2500x1600 displays are in the $300 range, at least under $500.

HurgyMcGurgyGurg wrote:

Thanks for all the response, I'm not going to be 3 feet away.

Sorry I think I should have been a little clearer about the TV.

Its a Sony rear-display with their lcos technology that they call SXRD. This means there is no spacing between pixels so actually bigger is better here. Also, I can't find specific response time but the technology is supposedly known for 120 hz or higher.

I have an SXRD. Fine TV for movies and gaming, but it sucks for computing due to SSE and the overscan that comes with any RP TV.

SSE in this context meaning? (Sorry, I know, google is my friend, blah blah)

Also, re the 30" price estimate, when do you think that'll be?

grantmeaname wrote:

SSE in this context meaning? (Sorry, I know, google is my friend, blah blah)

Wikipedia is another friend.

Or it could be a typo and he meant SDE instead. Both are image issues though.

SSE = Silk Screen Effect. A sparkly effect noticed on most rear projection TVs due to the use of high gain screens to enhance contrast and viewing angles. It's noticeable when bright or light colors are displayed on screen.

SXRD technology does not have SDE (Screen Door Effect) because the pixel structure of SXRD is much closer together than LCD. Some of the perceived sharpness of LCD is actually due to the relatively large spaces between the pixels.

I've used a 47'' Samsung 1080p LCD with my old 8800GT a couple of times at home before and it was great!! Gaming at 1920x1080 looks how gaming should always look like, and i never had a problem with reading text, it all looked sharp and defined.

I guess, my only real concern with using LCD TVs as PC monitors is definitely the luminosity, the brightness.

I don't know if this is the product of my parents telling me, when I was very young, never to watch television (old CRTs) too close because that would hurt my vision (I still don't know how or why. . maybe this is a good mythbusters theme here hehe). For me, maybe its cliche but, using an LCD TV as a PC monitor at the distance we are used to view our PC monitors is to hurt my vision (I mean, LCD TV full brightness).

That is something I would definitely take into account, since typing a Word document with a white background with an LCD TV at full brightness would be like staring continuously at a bright light bulb, this has to have some kind of impact. . I'm not an expert so I don't really know, please correct me if I'm wrong!

As far as I know, the old "you'll ruin your eyes" thing is a myth parents tell their kids because they just don't know any better. Maybe it was true back in 1948 with old black and white CRTs, but I really doubt it...otherwise, there'd be legions of blind baby boomers out there.

At any rate, any LCD TV worth a damn is going to have an adjustable backlight, and some even have "low power" settings to further reduce luminosity.

I use a Vizio 32 inch 1080p hdtv as my main computer monitor. I use HDMI to connect it to my Radeon HD 4850. I had to crank up the overscan in the Catalyst Control Center, but once I did that, it looks perfect. Also had to change the pixel format to 4:4:4 with Limited RGB. Those are the best settings to use with my Vizio.

I also own a 4870 1GB with a 32 inch Toshiba HDTV, as my main monitor,Works surprisingly well actually.The gaming oh man!!!! COD 4 is most fantastic. I have a wireless mouse and keyboard and i can play while sitting on my couch,the most relaxed gaming ever!

olingphilo wrote:

I also own a 4870 1GB with a 32 inch Toshiba HDTV, as my main monitor,Works surprisingly well actually.The gaming oh man!!!! COD 4 is most fantastic. I have a wireless mouse and keyboard and i can play while sitting on my couch,the most relaxed gaming ever!

Will be doing the same thing when I get my upgrade this summer (albeit I've got a Samsung), I have used it for a couple of clients as a seperate monitor. Did notice text was a little small for my taste (was at 96 DPI from ~5-6 ft, didn't try 120). Although I will be running Vista until 7 comes out, and the client was running XP. Any specific settings you prefer that I should know about?