Turn Your Monitor Into an HDTV

orangerobot writes "ViewSonic has released an interesting new box that turns any VGA monitor into an HDTV video display with support for standards up to 1080i. At $399 it's a little on the pricey side, but according to the review from EnvyNews, the unit performs pretty well." Like the review, I can't figure out what the target market for this is, but it's still a cool device.

Comments

Hmm

[blitzoid]

I would imagine that simply buying a HDTV would, in the end, be cheaper. HDTVs are just really big monitors IIRC. That's not to say this isn't cool, I just imagine it would be more economical to buy an HDTV and use it as your monitor :D

Re:Hmm

[The Clockwork Troll]

The best CRT-based consumer HDTV's are far less sophisticated than the best consumer monitors.

Consider that the best purpose-built HDTV's can only display 720 lines of video non-interlaced and 1080 lines interlaced, and even then only at a refresh rate of 60Hz.

What's on your desktop is a far better display device, it's just smaller, and mostly what you're paying for with HDTV's is size.

Use with a projector?

[slimsam1]

Could you potentially use this device with a projector? Might make a great (much cheaper) alternative to a giant HDTV.

Re:Use with a projector?

[questionlp]

A lot of projectors in the market now have DVI input, so you should be able to connect an HDTV "tuner" to the projector via DVI and have it project the image. The only problem is that most projectors use the 4:3 aspect ratio (there are some projectors that are native 16:9 or 16:10).

Re:HDTV?

[The Salamander]

1920 x 1080i (or 1280x720p if you go that way).

Pretty low, actually. And most current TVs don't display anywhere near 1920, more like 1440 or 1280.

HD

[14ghz]

Actually, many HDTV recievers output VGA D-sub anyway. My $315 Samsung SIR-T150 has a VGA output that I've watched on a PC LCD monitor. And if you are interested in recording HD, check out the MDP-100 card. http://www.cellarcinemas.com/cgi-bin/store/HTDV-MY HD.html It only works with over-the-air, but you can record data streams right to your HDD with it. bob

Re:HDTV?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

And most current TVs don't display anywhere near 1920, more like 1440 or 1280.

That's not quite accurate, at least when it comes to direct-view HDTV's. Some HDTV's down-sample a 1080i signal to a 720p signal, but most of them actually display the full 1080i picture. The thing, though, is that the picture tube isn't capable of resolving a picture that fine. The best consumer picture tubes on the market can resolve about 800 lines of resolution; these sets cost $2,000-$4,000. The best professional tubes can resolve about 1,000 lines, but they cost, literally, ten times more.

So the TV tries to display the full 1920x1080 picture-- it scans all the pixels-- but the tube isn't capable of resolving it.

One of the sure signs you are a nerd

[Kasmiur]

Your computer monitor is larger than your TV. I imagine there are quite a few people here who have a 21 inch monitor and only a little 13 inch tv. Probably even a 5.1 sound system there too.

what??

[updog]

That headline is very misleading. This box does not turn your TV or monitor into an HDTV as it implies. Look at the input and output capability:

TV/Video input compatibility
480i, 480p, 576p, 720p, 1080i

RGB output capability
640x480, 800x600, 852x480, 1024x768, 1280x720, 1280s768, 1280x1024

Clearly, This takes up to a 1080i HD input and displays up to 1280x1024.

Students?

[Fastolfe]

Dorm rooms can be tiny. It's not unreasonable at all to consider using your computer monitor as your television in this situation.

For kids too.

But no, now that I'm out of school, I much prefer them separate.

Re:What a Waste

[Babbster]

Having just purchased one of the cheapest HDTVs possible, you're just dead wrong. I paid $700 for a 27" direct-view HDTV (a Samsung) and I will still have to buy an HDTV tumor that will run me between $300 (for a PC HDTV tuner card) and $800 (for one of the nicer HDTV set-top boxes with satellite HDTV capability and all the outputs including DVI). If I had gone with something like the Viewsonic deal, I would have paid $300 less for the display and with a $500 set-top box I would have only been $100 over the cost of my (again, cheap) HDTV.

At the VERY least, this box gives you the ability to connect your Xbox or Gamecube to your monitor and get the true 480p signals (for most Xbox games and many Gamecube games), and I'm sure there are gamers out there who would like to get that capability for $400 instead of spending $700 or more on an HDTV.

Now, all that being said, if you just want to use your computer monitor to watch HDTV, I recommend checking out the myHD card which you can put right into your current box (assuming it's over 400MHz) and start watching HDTV right off the bat. That card is running at $300 (as low as $250). Note that the following isn't an ad for this particular retailer (you can google and see if there are more - it's the cheapest I've found), but you can find this card at Digital Connection. It even has S-video and composite inputs with scaling to several resolutions allowing you to connect other sources. Frankly, it's a much better deal than the Viewsonic.

Re:True, but...

[The_Laughing_God]

Actually, what you need is an HDTV tuner card. There are several on the market, for the price of a top graphics card (that is to say, under $300) The computer I'm on now has a MyHD MDP-100 $260 from the Digital Connection, who also happen to offer the primary US tech support for the card, on bug report/support threads on the AVS forum (read the entire forum - there have been separate followup threads for each driver revision and they contain other support tips too. Especially check out the v1.55.2 driver thread. That driver allowed DVDs to be displayed in 1080i - something the DVD consortium has since declared to be forbidden. All other cards and DVD players display DVD in 480p)

The MyHD comes with VGA output with a passthrough cable for dual monitor or simultaneous computer/HDTV use, and a breakout cable that gives Component Video and s-video. it also offers your choice of stereo or Dolby outputs. I don't usually to use it in that mode however. I find that it's usually simpler and equally high quality to simply rout the video through my (decent but nothing special) graphics card.

I also own a Telemann tuner, but I can't look at the model number and outputs right now. It's in the basement, cabled through the floor to a Toshiba DLP-650 LCD projector (though it's a used 1999 model, I usually can't even imagine what better quality would look like. Maybe a tad blacker blacks -it's only 300:1 contrast ratio, unlike the newer models at 450-3000:1- but that's it!) There is at least a third major manufacturer, whose name eludes me at the moment, but all the model numbers and details are listed in the support thread I linked above, with more info in other threads

In short, the card you want is out there. I've run the LCD projector off the MyHD a junkbox celeron 466 and ATI Rage-something card, running Win98 and projecting onto a bare wall (that was my test rig) and the results were outstanding: a crystal clear 120"+ image for a total equipment cost much less than a hinky 60" rear projection screen on sale at Best Buy. I did later upgrade to a better machine (Athlon 1700XP, but it worked with a P-III 800, too), so I could do HDTV recording. HTDV VCRs, like D-VHS, cost several thousand by themselves, but with a card, all you need is a moderately powerful CPu and a decent sized HDD to sotre them on (I saw a 200GB for $160 after rebate on Fatwallet Hot Deals forum this week) You can compress/record the transport stream to DVD-R for archival storage, and still get DVD quality or better. (I compress to DVD the next day. I haven't tried doing it in real-time yet, but it should be possible)

As much as I hate to say it, if you're building your own Home Theater PC, I'd recommend an Intel processor over a AMD. Maybe the newer or better Athlon boards are rock stable for HTPC use, and set and forget for at least a week at a stretch, but this wasn't the case for myself or others on the AVS forum a year ago (As a workaround, I have it reboot at 5 am every day. ) In general, I readfewer Atlon complaints for HTPC, I almost never heard Intel problems - and the drop in Atlon issues may be due to a shift to Intel, which is the general advice of that board.

Or use DScaler and Brooktree based card

[sdo1]

Or you can download the open source GPL'd DScaler and use (according to the FAQ) "Almost any card (and that means A LOT) based of former Brooktree (now Conexant) chips including bt848/878/879".

There is also a section in the FAQ called "Can I use any vga card as a display device?" which answers the other half of the question.

I do this in my computer room and it works quite nicely...

-S