Can a Panasonic 720p work as a monitor?

[tolipa]

I had a Dell W3000 30" LCD that was beautiful when it worked, but which has failed almost from the day I bought it. It has now stopped working at all and I wanted to replace it with a Panasonic TC-L32X1 which is a 720P LCD. My graphics card is a GeForce 7600GT. The problem I am having is that at the maximum resolution for the TV - 1280 x 1024, the display is very slightly blurred, and it also will not fit within the confines of the screen. My taskbar is halfway covered by the edge of the screen making it difficult to click on items in the quick start - and this oversize is all theway arount the display. When I try to go to a higher resolution, the display becomes almost unreadable it is so blurred.

I am connecting with a DVI - HDMI cable.

The question is whether or not this GeForce 7600GT is capable of displaying a clear enough resolution to be acceptable, or whether or not it is even possible to use this tv as a monitor. Would another (better) graphics cards give me that crystal clear resolution I had on the Dell, or should I just go and buy a large computer monitor? The price difference for a screen this size is almost quadruple.

TIA for any input.
Frank

 

[pcnoob101]

well, personally, I say upgrade to a newer card like 9400GT if your NOT into much gaming. I got mine for $42 from TigerDirect. it has 2 DVI ports and 1 S-video. and I recommend using S-video for your TV.

 

[Zenthar]

Base on this old NewEgg spec page, that card could support up to 2560 x 1600 so 720p (1280x768) should be a breeze.

 

[jedimasterben]

The TV will never give you the clarity that the monitor did, IMHO. The monitor would be much MUCH sharper, especially with text.

Also, you'll be working at basically half the resolution (from 2560x1600 to 1280x768).

 

[Zenthar]

The TV will never give you the clarity that the monitor did, IMHO. The monitor would be much MUCH sharper, especially with text.

Also, you'll be working at basically half the resolution (from 2560x1600 to 1280x768).

I might be wrong, but the Dell W3000 is a 720p LCD TV as well so if the OP was used to that resolution it shouldn't be a problem.

 

[tolipa]

Well here are the facts - the first thing I did was to update the drivers, which resolved the "won't fit" issue. Nvidia has added a utility that lets you shrink the display to fit.

The biggest problem was that the only "acceptable" resolution was 1280 x 680. If I set the resolution any higher it became distorted - almost like double lines. The resolution I wanted to set, 1280 x 768, which was the resolution of the Dell, the Panasonic would display a blank screen and then revert to 1280 x 680. The display of high res photos was beautiful, but my Canon photo program would not work with a resolution less than 1280 x 760, and that was the deal breaker.

S-Video, for some reason only displayed in black and white and was very poor - almost unreadable.

And so the TV experiment is concluded, and now that the POS Dell has given up forever, I am in the market for a new 30" monitor - probably the Samsung SynchMaster or the NEC MultiSync.

Thank you for all your help.

Frank

 

[Zenthar]

In the NVidia control pannel (not Window's), have you tried the HDTV presets like 480p/720p/1080p which might work better? You can also try so change the refresh rate.

 

[tolipa]

Yes, I did try them all, and the only option for the refresh rate was 60Hz. I think I am going to have to buy a monitor, but they are so expensive, and local stores only offer 24" as their largest.

I wonder if I had tried a 1080P instead of the 720P, if things would have worked any better. I just had to get that minimum resolution for the Canon program and maybe a 1080P would have been a better choice. Clearly I am still not fully dissuaded from a tv as a monitor.

Frank

 

[tyralyon]

Guess I'm a little late to replying to this thread, but anyway...

I use a 1080p projector as monitor, and that works perfectly. Crisp picture, 1080/60p, 70" screen.

Not sure what pcnoob has been smoking, but S-video was a ridiculous suggestion (sorry, no offence).
I use DVI to HDMI like you, and that gives a perfect 1080p, HD picture (unlike s-video, which can only display max resolutions of 480i/576i).

As far as your picture being too big for the screen, that sounds like overscan, and I had that problem as well. My projector automatically set an overscan of +1. Once I noticed and fixed that it worked like a charm.
If you can't change overscan on your TV, I think there should be an option for it in the Nvidia control panel.

I can't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to use your TV as a monitor, and I'm sure the 7600GT is more than powerful enough.

As for why the picture is blurry I'm not really sure.

Besides, I guess I'm a little late with my post and that you might have bought a PC monitor by now.