Can I use a 42" Panasonic Plasma TV for a monitor ?

[kRocket]

I have a Panasonic TH-42PX80U Plasma TV. I have a computer that I play a lot of games on and have a 20" LCD monitor. Can I marry the computer to the TV and use it for a monitor. It has a wonderful picture (720P) but, I have read that is not sufficient for a monitor, but is that chiseled in stone or just opinions. I play MMORPG games like WOW etc. I have a TV outlet on my video card, just never tried it. I would have to rearrange a good part of my bedroom to accomplish this so I would enjoy knowing that I had a good chance it would work before hand.

 

[sdifox]

as long as you are happy with 1280x720, sure. Just get a dvi-hdmi cable from monoprice (unless your tv has a dvi port), test it out. If it doesn't work you are only out the price of the cable, which you can resell locally at cost anyway.


Mind you, plasma are subject to burn in just like CRTs, albeit not to the same extent.

your video card is dual dvi right?


edit was to fix typo of 270 instead of 720.

 

[kRocket]

I hope it was a typo that you said 1280x270. My current Vid card is an ATI x87XT and, yes, it has two DVI outputs on the card.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: kRocket
I hope it was a typo that you said 1280x270. My current Vid card is an ATI x87XT and, yes, it has two DVI outputs on the card.

lol, it was supposed to be 1280x720... Mea Culpa...kindda hard to call it 720p if it is 270.

 

[sivart]

For game play as a secondary monitor it should be fine. For surfing the web, not so much as some website force a font size making it hard to read from more than about 5 feet away. I have an HTPC hooked up to my 42" Plasma. It is okay to surf to a site (I.e. hulu/sling) and you can read enough to select and play back videos.

 

[Ramma2]

I've got a 42" TH-42PX60U, and have recently connected a PC with a DVI to HDMI cable.

Apparently the native resolution for my set is 1024x768. Some oddity in the way the Panasonic plasmas were made. No resolution I've tried fits the screen perfectly, there always seems to be some overscan.

I'm in the process of setting up a HTPC, but I can surf the web (text is a bit tough to read from the couch, but I can do it) and last night I played peggle for a good while since my new RF keyboard/trackball combo arrived.

I've contemplated trying out WoW to see what it looks like, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Still getting movies and TV fuctionality up and running.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

text will not be very good.

 

[coldmeat]

If it's like my Samsung 42" plasma, it won't let you force a resolution other than 1024x768, which means that the picture will be stretched when doing anything other than gaming. I had an LG for a few weeks before trading it for the Samsung, and it would let me use a 1360x768 resolution.

Movies are fine though, I just have to change the aspect ratio in VLC to 4:3 for 16:9 movies.

 

[yours truly]

i use my panasonic 6x600 to surf the net all the time. im running dvi to vga and pq is perfect

i tried dvi to hdmi, but the picture was fuzzy and didnt fit

id recommend dvi to vga

 

[alcoholbob]

When you surf prepare to press Control ++++ quite often.

Good thing about firefox is that it saves your preferences so when you open firefox and have saved tabs the font will remain the same size.

 

[kRocket]

Thank you guys. Your input, as always, has been useful.