I have moved v-e-e-r-rry slowly through the Great American SD-to-HD conversion. I must have waited until 2006 before I upgraded a Viewsonic "flat-screen" CRT-type computer monitor to an LCD. The LCD is 4:3 aspect ratio.
We have more old TV sets than there are family members. Mom violates my share of the power-bill by leaving her bedroom set turned on, when she mostly watches TV in the den. My brother has a old Panasonic tube-type TV in his bedroom.
When I built my previous computer, I wanted it to do HTPC duty. I put in an AverMedia M780 tuner-card. Hooked up OTA HD antenna to one coax input; the cable-TV coax to the other. Finally decided -- while putting off purchase of an HDTV -- to buy a 28" LCD monitor -- 1080p and 16:9. My new, second monitor became the TV, as the first mentioned earlier continued to serve for desktop computing.
Finally, I replaced my other brother's hand-me-down GE 25" TV with an LCD-LED 42". Upgraded our cable-TV subscription to HD for an extra $5/mo. I ran an HDMI cable from the set-top-box to the HDTV, and another DVI-to-HDMI from the PC to a second HDMI on the HDTV. The new computer uses a Hauppauge 2250 card because the Avermedia's HD tuner went on the fritz.
The Z68 system deploys Lucid-Virtu to integrate the iGPU and dGPU. But it runs in "d-Mode," so the TV and monitor are hooked up to the DVI ports on the eVGA 570 GTX card.
I let Lucid "decide" which monitor to use for game-play, and it selects the LCD monitor. The Media Center Setup menus allowed me to select the HDTV for Media Center and TV viewing.
I have some puzzlements and misgivings about how the Hauppauge card choose to display HD channels, but . . . it SEEMS to CORRECT itself. But since all the input comes from the set-top-box, I can't "record one channel, watch another." And I think my Charter service deploys SDV or switch input, so when one channel is selected, the others aren't available.
There is a further mystery that with all the WDRM, HDCP and other content protection, the Hauppauge card isn't supposed to allow video recording or DVR from my PC -- but it does. The card was promoted by PC Mag with the caveat that you could "throw away" your set-top-box, because the Hauppauge allows you to get all the "basic" cable channels. Certainly that would be the case for any TV-tuner-capture card. But I get all the premiums, SD and HD with the set-top-box in the mix, and I can schedule, record and play back the premiums and all the channels I've tried so far.
By now, my colleagues here must realize that with WDRM and whatever the Jack-Valenti-media-Nazis forced upon us, if you use one PC for a DVR/PVR and then choose to copy the recordings to a new system, Win 7 Media Center won't play them unless they were recorded on the new system. The exception seems to align with "free" TV or "basic-cable" recordings, so I can transfer the files or burn DVD's of PBS stuff. But if I recorded on an earlier computer AMC's "Breaking Bad," HBO movies or Bill Maher, I can't play back the files on the new computer.
One more thing. The LG HDTV LCD-LED has an energy-saving feature that allows you to dim the screen through "Energy-saver Off," "Auto," "Minimum," "Medium," "Maximum," and especially -- "Screen Off" mode. So when you leave the room, instead of turning off Media Center and the TV, you can simply select the "Screen Off" from the energy-saver menu. The broadcast continues -- you can hear Chris Matthews' "Hardball" through the computer's 5.1 speaker system.
But in the event that you have a similar setup with your TV and worry about a Windows Desktop "burning in," you can simply use the same energy-saving feature.