The Ultimate TV/Monitor

I am currently shopping for the same thing and the best I have found so far is the Samsung 242MP LCD. It has a 1900x1200 resolution, a 1000:1 contrast ratio, DVI, component, AV, and cable inputs, TV and FM tuners and detachable speakers. The street price is around $1500.

What is your ideal resolution?

Maybe you could use a regular monitor and hook up one of these to it?

I have a Dell 2405 LCD, a 24" LCD with DVI and VGA inputes for my computers, plus RCA, S-Video, and Composite video inputs. You can switch between them with a button on the front, watch a video source PIP while on the computer, do split screen, etc. 1920x1200 resolution, USB and memory card readers, it's worked quite well for me, I have two computers, a cable box, and a DVD player hooked up to it. Price will vary with available coupons, but I think you should be able to find one for about $900-$1000.

Resolution:
I'm thinking at least 1920 or higher.

Elgato:
I've tried usb/firewire video boxes with game consoles and it's not all that great. It would be much better to simply switch the input on the screen instead of going through an OS.

Oh, and a thought I didn't mention in the post. Apple needs to wake up and start including more inputs with their monitors. I'm all for simplicity and clean design, but good lord -- a 30" LCD monitor that doesn't have any input other than DVI is just wrong. Come on Dell -- give me a 30" just like the 24".

I've looked into this - you're not the first person to want to use these new super-duper HD displays with AV gear and the new consoles. The problem is, the next-gen HD stuff needs to be compatible with HDCP - yup, copy protection - to make sure you're not pirating HDTV streams or HD DVDs. That's all part of the next-generation Intel processor platform, and that's, I suspect, I big reason behind the Intel switch, because Apple doesn't want to be shut out of HDTV convergence on the desktop. For what it's worth, Eric Lin from Gefen (makers of HD / DVI conversion cables and boxes, etc.) addresses this topic here.

Sorry, just to clarify - if you need a display that will work with HD cable boxes and HD-DVD players (using the HDMI connector type, most likely) it'll need to be a "trusted" HDCP device. Game consoles will likely be more forgiving and not require HDCP, offering analog and plain old DVI connections - but single link DVI only.

Here's a monitor from Viewsonic. Having watched it at the store, I have say that even though it might match some of the higher costing displays in some specs, it still looks very nice. It's also a relative steal.

Hi,

I was looking for something similar but i don't think what I bought matches your resolution requirements for the mac. It's a 37" LCD Westinghouse Digital monitor. No tuner but it supports 1080p. It's max computer resolution is 1920 x 1080. I've had it for 2 weeks now and my ibook looks awsome on it and the HDTV looks awsome too. I'm not waiting around for the PS3 though, I'll get an xbox 360 first then the PS3. Cant let the pixels go to waste!

See ya.
Joe

My wife and I went down this path earlier in the year.
We wanted a monitor/TV to hook up to a Mac Mini (via DVI) in the living room. We had our digital set-top box (SD but the TV supports HD) the Mini and a DVD/CD shelf system to connect to it.
We ended up getting a Philips 23" LCD. It looks gorgeous with the Mini -- aluminium front and gloss white back with rounded corners. I think Philips was eyeing off Apple when they designed it. There is also a 26" version in aluminium or black.
The catch was (and I have heard this is the case with other TVs as monitors) getting it to work with the Mini.
Out of the box the Mini and the monitor were just not talking to each other. The Mini was sending what it thought was the right resolution etc (930 x something else weird) and the TV would choke on it.
The fix was to select the monitor setting with a standard monitor cable and then switch to DVI.
All was good until I upgraded to OSX 10.4. The Mini would not keep the monitor settings when I switched to DVI.
I resorted to a third party solution -- DisplayConfigX -- to override the monitor preferences and all is fine now. Everything looks stunning!
Sorry to be long winded but I thought I should point out one of the pitfalls (and hopefully a solution) of using what are essentially TVs as computer monitors. Once I got over the initial problems the results were well worth it.

this is a great deal for the Dell 2405 24" that was mentioned earlier:

http://www.bensbargains.net/ktalk/1129413398,71034,.shtml

deal might be dead now, but it'll come back again probably towards the end of October

Good links all around. Interestingly, the Samsung noted at the top of the page is nearly identical in specs to the Dell 24" LCD, but comes with speakers, an integrated TV and FM tuner, and is a few hundred bucks more. Pretty good.

Oh, and Apple dropped the price on all their displays today -- you can pick up a 30" display for $2500 now ($500 drop).

I really do have to recommend the 24" dell, it is a wonderful monitor with every input you could want. Along with a built in 5 slot card reader on the side, which seems to accept everytype of card and is great for use with both my digital cameras. Also if you watch the deals there are coupons for it just about everyweek, I got mine three weeks ago for $780, which beats the socks off apple's prices (even though i love apple, i just cant justify the extra 500 dollars for a smaller monitor) It is really a beauty. Photo of my desk: patrickgage

I have the dell 24" and it kicks ass. I had a hard time admitting it because it is a Dell, but it does. One caveat no one hs mentioned. Have you hooked an xbox up to one of these large monitors? I have tried component, and two different xbox-vga adaptors, and it looks like crap. The problem is the native resolution of the display is not a clean multiple of the resolution the xbox kicks out and it has to interpolate the pixels. It looks ok on textures, but every edge of every object is super jaggy. It is bad enough that I do not play halo on my 24"

It looks a bit better with svideo because the analog signal is blurrier, but then you are running 480i.

this was helpful too, when I bought 2 of Dell's 20" monitors:

http://anandtech.com/displays/showdoc.aspx?i=2400

very thorough review comparing Apple's to Dell's.

I would think much of it would apply to the 24" monitors as well.

Sony has announced a new combo LCD TV, the MFM-HT75W.

Been looking at doing the same thing too. Thought about the elgato thing or something similar too. Fine for a dedicated box. Been thinking about a Dell 24" too, and for $780 shipped, that's a great deal.

Saw a set up at our local version of 'Parade of homes' on a modified Windows Media Center, But that's Windows and i'm a Mac guy.

Investigated things further, and found some neat things you can do [remember, i'm a mac guy]

PRV/1394 - If you are going digital and/or want HD content, then i recommend getting a 1394 piece of equipment. You can then use your mac/pc as a Personal Digital Recorder [note, think it only workes with digital content, not analog on all of them]

Split screen vs PIP and support. not sure which is better, just depends on what you want to do.

ATSC built in tuner on LCD - If you want HD/digital content, then you want this. FCC sayd that current shipping 37" LCD TVs must include it. Think next year it goes to 26", as i just saw a new 26" at BestBuy with the tuner included.

-HDMI etc copy protection for the Paranoid... that stuff looks like it will keep changing too, so don't worry too much about it all working with what you buy in a few years. It won't.

-on the mac, there are a lot of Home Theater solotions in the works

Anyhow, best wishes in your search. Thanks for more positive feedback on Dell's 2405... Will try to check back to see if anyone has questions/comments on my post... Let me know if you have any good stock tips.. could use a few more dollars to buy some of this stuff =)

I don't know how much things have changed since the original el gato, but I'd be very cautious if you intend to play games on it at all, there is about a second of lag between it displaying and the actual event happening. This has no effect on tv watching, but on video games it is a deal breaker

I have the Dell 24" as well. It does not currently support HDCP :-( but there are rumors that Dell may fix that. Whether there is any validity to them or not remains to be seen as I don't know if it is as simple as a software update or if it requires a chip (a chip would make it virtually impractical to implement). Other than that (no HDCP) I am VERY happy with my monitor. It has 5 inputs on the back, DVI, VGA, Component, Composite, and S-Video.

I got mine for $864 after tax and shipping and got $23 back from FatWallet.com. I've had it for about 2 months now and do not regret my decision...

Of course a 37" 1080p TV would likely be nicer, but then again it was probably at least several thousand dollars more. :-)

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I don't think that LCD monitors are cheaper... but they don't spoil eyes.

I also can recommend the 24” Dell. Though you are a fan of photography you'd better consider some other options

Definitely consider the Dell 2405FPW. I have it, and it's great for general usage and gaming, and fairly good for movie viewing (it would be great, but seems to have less contrast than other displays when displaying large dark areas; there is visible blockiness with large dark areas in movies (probably due to usually-invisible compression artifacts) even after calibrating the 2405FPS with SuperCal).

For text display, gaming, and even most Photoshop work, though, the 2405FPW is terrific, and is often on sale at Dell.com for around $900!

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