I have a need to replace my computer monitor. My computer sits in the corner of my bedroom next to a 27" conventional TV. I have a cable TV box, a cable modem, a PS2, a DVD player and a wireless router all right there. The whole mess takes up a lot of space and I would like to consolidate. I have come to learn that most new TVs have a PC input. I am considering a 32" unit from "that one big box store" because it's cheap and so am I ($275ish).
According to the TVs specs I would have a HDMI inputs for my cable box, a standard cable input for my old DVD player, RCA line inputs for the PS2 and PC audio and video inputs.
I am assuming I will need to update the video card in my tower, it is an older mutt of a machine but it operates Windows XP flawlessly. It has never been used as a streaming/gaming device so it never had anything but a standard video card installed. Any suggestions on what I should look for in a video card?
Will I need anything else?
Am I on the right track or all wet?
huh? your video card should run the TV just fine as long as the TV has a VGA input to match your PCs output.
Just concerned about video airing speed, I know the load times on my laptop are laughable, I just want to be armed in case I need more than what the AMD Athlon 2.0ghz with 1gb of memory will allow with the mismatched jumble of junk inside the box.
Also I know it will work fine as the PCs monitor, I am more concerned about it working as the media device seeing as it is less powerful than most new cell phones
what are you planning on doing differently now than you were before? you will still be watching cable through the cable I assume. Any concerns about video playback with the new monitor will be more an issue of the machine being old than the vid card.
Netflix through the computer to the TV is the only difference.
chances are your "obsolete" processor and minimal ram will be more of a hindrance.
I've got a P4 2.8 that is too slow for real streaming video use.
My dual core with 4gb of ram and win XP gets a bit of heavy breathing when I start doing flash games on facebook
Read topic and thought you were going talk about TVs and monitors large enough to be a bedroom.
john... did it play OK before on the old monitor?... (looks like you never tried eh?)
if you are only running the big TV as a big monitor it won't work any differently... I was dual monitoring with an old 1.7mhz celly and 1 gig of ram with out an issue (running S vid to my TV) to stream netflix/hulu... heck my netbook (1.6ghz atom 1 gig ram) streams netflix/hulu just fine to the 2nd 20" monitor even
Mark, how much load time do you see streaming netflix? Is it hurry up and wait or instant on?
thats more of a depend on how fast your inter-webz is... on even the slow computer it takes more time to find/get to the vid/movie I want then for it to buffer up and start
goto hulu and it's pretty much the same thing... unless netflix changed a lot in the last few months... i think they have a free month right now so you could check it out pretty easily...
