Does this screen exist?

[wiggy001]

We should hopefully be moving into our new house this side of Christmas in which there is a small "garden room" which I would like to be a home office and a second TV room. What I'm wondering is if I can buy a single screen that could be used for:

- Work: second screen for Thinkpad T550. Standard IT consultant stuff (so no heavy graphics work), but will be used for a lot of hours at a time
- TV: Probably Sky multiroom but maybe just freeview

A lesser requirement is that I have a few old consoles I'd like to dig out every now and then (PS1,2,3,SNES, Amiga).

The room is quite small (sofa will be around 10 feet from the screen) which is why I was wondering if a widescreen monitor could double up for TV work?

With the cost of moving I'm not looking to spend a fortune - could this be done for the £400 mark and if not, what am I looking at?

Cheers

[4x4Tyke]

wiggy001 said:

I was wondering if a widescreen monitor could double up for TV work?

Yes, well mostly yes. There are dual purpose devices but these are generally very poor for working with text. The limiting factors are that TVs tend to have lower resolutions than monitors, a dedicate monitor will exclude a tuner and will likely have fewer input options.

I suggest getting a dedicated monitor with multi HDMI ports and a separate DVB-S/T tuner STB which will give you satellite/digital. Most of these will also give you the alternate inputs such as SCART needed for retro games consoles.

Edited by 4x4Tyke on Monday 24th October 13:58

[mizx]

Pretty much as above. You'll probably want 24" at an absolute minimum for that TV viewing distance, considering it's for the PC too., and one with IPS panel rather than TN.

24" may well be fine for you, but 27" or even bigger might be more suitable for the TV viewing distance. Also if you want bigger for TV uses, when you're using it for the PC, for me 1920x1080 is on the edge of being too big pixels on a 24", so it's worth looking them to see how it is for you, you might want larger res.

The other thing is what about sound? There are still monitors with built in speakers, but they will only be 5W or so. I'm not completly sure if all will be able to accept HDMI audio input, but I've certainly heard of people using that to get their PC audio to the speakers.

Edited by mizx on Monday 24th October 13:59

[sgrimshaw]

In the past I've considered using a TV as a large PC monitor and the advice has always been that the text etc on a TV at 1920x1080 is too soft at short distances to make it unacceptable as a monitor.

I often connect my laptop to a 47" LG TV for use as a big monitor in the lounge, and from normal TV viewing distance it's "OK" but up close it's not usable for long.

I've been wondering recently though, what would using a 4k TV be like as a PC monitor?

As these support a much higher resolution does this mean that the PC / Laptop can be connected at a higher than 1920x1080 resolution which would improve text at closer distances?

If you see what I mean.

4K TVs are in the OP's £400 budget.

Another thought for the OP though, can his old consoles connect to a modern TV?
If they output through the co-axial won't that be an analogue signal? Do TV's still support analogue signals or are all the built in tuners now Digital?

[wiggy001]

Many good ideas and questions here, so thanks for responding. I guess I need to look into these a bit more once we've moved but it's given some food for thought.

On one of the last points, I've used an HD TV in the past as a monitor. Well, I've tried to, but as already said it's not crisp enough so I didn't persist with it.

I'll need to look into sound options and connectivity with older consoles, so thanks for the heads up on that.

A quick browse on Amazon comes up with a couple of immediate options - anything I should be looking for/ruling out?:

Samsung Curved

Samsun 4k

LG Ultrawide

ASUS Ultrawide 4k