I'd like to get a larger monitor for my DAW but all I can find in the way of 'very large' is a Dell 30" but that's over £1,000. It occurs to me that a large flat screen TV (HD?) would perhaps be better and more economical. Is anyone using one and/or have recommendations? Are there any disadvantages involved? Thanks.

John

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When I'm sad I sing, and then the whole world is sad with me.
Band / Songs

Some might say that the resolution of a monitor is much higher, but when do you ever use the very highest resolution a graphics card offers anyway. I use a 32" and the display is quite acceptable HD1080x920, but I do cheat a bit sometimes as I have a second monitor which I dock my VSTs/Reason/Kontakt on, but there is room enough on the 32" to have one of them docked there instead

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but when do you ever use the very highest resolution a graphics card offers anyway

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It's not about the resolution of the graphics card, it's about the resolution of the monitor. (Or TV.) Higher resolutions give you clearer text (and graphics). At lower resolutions, everything becomes very blocky, and this is particularly unpleasant for text.

Proper HDTV is 1920x1080. Assuming it's a 16:9 ratio on the TV screen, the TV screen is 26" wide. That means you've got a resolution of 73dpi. You'll definitely see the jaggies on text, but it probably won't be too bad - if you've seen a 17" monitor running in 1024x768 mode, it'll look like that.

There are two other problems with TVs though. It's probably no longer such an issue, but you could have problems with the refresh rate. At refresh rates under 70Hz, you can't see the updates in your central vision, but you *can* see it in your peripheral vision, so you have this constant subconscious distraction which gives you eyestrain. Past 70Hz your eyes can't keep up with the refresh rate though. Old TVs used to work at mains frequencies (50Hz or 60Hz depending on country), but modern TVs typically work at double that, or at some other frequency altogether, so it's generally not a problem.

There is another problem with TV though which also gives you eyestrain. Typically TV screens have rather poor colour depth (resolution of colours). A monitor can typically manage 256 different levels of red, green and blue (24-bit colour), and do this accurately and well. A TV typically only does 16 different levels of each colour (12-bit colour) if you're lucky. To try and get it looking better than that, for colours in between those steps a TV will flash adjacent pixels lighter and darker, so that overall they look the right kind of colour - this is "dithering", the same way that audio does dithering. On a continuously-changing TV broadcast, this isn't really noticeable becasue everything's always changing anyway. But on a PC monitor where the picture is generally static, you can often see the dithering as waves of fuzz on the picture, and this really is not very nice. This should be solvable if you can get your graphics card to work at the right bit depth for your TV, so that it never asks for the in-between colours.

Ah! I can help here, quite a lot!

I presently have a W7/64 pc feeding a 22" LG widescreen "telly". Next to it is an Eizo 17" proper monitor and yes, the Ezio is a tad sharper but barely and you would certainly trade the tiny bit of "fuzz" for the acreage! Then again not everything is at top resolution anyway. For instance, the shortcut icon of Samplitude se8 and Sonar X1 is slightly blurred whereas the icons for Adobe Reader 9 and Cubase6E are pinsharp on the LG. I think the resolution on the LG (W7 PC)is in fact even better now that I have fitted a Radeon 5450 graph card?

So, even bigger? Yes! In my living room I have an XP pc feeding a Sony Bravia 32", stonking graphs even from onboard NVIDIA. Better even than the smaller LG.

One caveat. I had a problem with overscan with the LG (but not the Sony)so whatever TV you buy insist that you are shown how to get into the RCs' "service mode" to set the width etc.

Dave.

We have dual monitor set-ups at work, where we do 3D modelling and animation, spending a lot of time working with wire-frame images. Our second monitors are 30 inch Samsung or LG flatscreen televisions.

Having worked on both the TV's and proper monitors, I have noticed no discernible difference between the two in everyday use. Where colour reproduction is essential we still have grade 1, calibrated CRT's. Having anything bigger just means you have to move the TV/monitor further away, in my experience. If you can't see the whole of your monitor without too much eye movement, it's too close anyway.

If your graphics card has HDMI out and can display the resolution of your TV 1:1 at the right refresh rate, I haven't seen a problem with using a TV as a second monitor yet... and, if you're in the music industry, having a set of TV speakers as another audio output can't be a bad thing, surely?

"and, if you're in the music industry, having a set of TV speakers as another audio output can't be a bad thing, surely?"

Ha! YES! And those artyfarty producers that fit Star Wars dynamics sound to wildlife and science programmes should be locked in a room with one and made to copy out as much of the dialogue as they can extract from the row! I have no doubt all is very "resolveable" and exciting at the sweetspot thru' £10,000 monitors but us mere mortals, especially if the lugs are not 25 leave alone 100% stand NO chance. Subtitles? Don't make me laugh!

This point has been made in POV and in Radio Times many, many times and my sig' this time refers to that!

Dave.

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#They did not listen, they are not listening still...Perhaps they never will?#

I don't think it makes much sense to go over about 24" unless you want everything to look larger. The resolution of a full HD 24" screen is the same as the larger ones unless you go for a very expensive display with better resolution. I'm using a 28" display for some things and, having used it for a while, I wish I had gone for a 24" and saved some space.

James.

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JRP Music - Audio Mastering and Restoration.
http://www.jrpmusic.net

Hi

You might find this topic interesting - http://prorecordingworkshop.lefora.com/2011/06/08/tell-us-about-your-visua l-monitor-choice/

Several mastering suites have large screens mounted behind their monitors to avoid reflections.

Dave

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www.hiltongrovemastering.com

I've been running a 40" Toshiba 1080P HD TV in my studio for 2 years.

Whilst the resolution on monitors can be higher, my display is 1.5 meters away.....the size of the screen and its resolution make images/text easy to see. I wouldn't go back to the 2 18" displays I had prior to that.

I also run a small 17" TFT right next to my mouse. Sonar X1 lets let docks whatever I like on it (such as VSTIs, FX) and I have the main editing window on the large display. No clutter - Perfect.

Ant.