TVs as monitors

[bill at billhorne.homelinux.org (Bill Horne)]

On Sat, 2004-04-10 at 16:52, nmeyers at javalinux.net wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 10, 2004 at 04:33:39PM -0400, Doug Sweetser wrote:
> > Hello:
> > 
> > The land of TV tubes is very competitive.  There is a lot of screen
> > available for a few hundred bucks.  Does anyone other than WebTV
> > trilobites use TVs as monitors?  The flat screen ones sure would feel
> > like any Joe monitor.  
> > 
> > What would be required to control the TV?  Could it be done with
> > S-video input, whatever that is?  It would be a cool upgrade to go
> > from 15" to 27".
> 
> I don't know about HDTV, but the NTSC signal used to drive your standard
> TV has nowhere near the resolution needed to deal with the video used
> in computer monitors.
> 
> If you want to drive a TV, you need a scan converter - something that
> will translate the monitor signal to NTSC video. Such products exist
> both as outboard boxes and PCI cards - and some display cards have that
> capability built in. But you'll find the result totally unusable as a
> monitor except at the lowest resolutions.

I think the S-video inputs are capable of much higher resolutions than
NTSC (known in the trade as "Never Twice the Same Color"). The first
step is to visit your local video store and talk about capabilities with
the eager salesmen: if it can be done, they'll want to sell it to you.

Some Googling will help, as well. A casual search turned up several
references to S-video and EVGA: http://tinyurl.com/3gbc7.

I'm sure there's an easier solution than NTSC. 

Bill