32" monitor vs 32" hdtv?

For your dollars? HDTV.
For your eyes? Monitor.

I don't think they make 32" monitors though, only 30"

oh wow. could u please elaborate on the eyes comment?

r u saying that a monitor has eye correction stuff so that we wouldn't have any eye problems watching a monitor at the typical 2 feet away that we normally do when sitting in front of a computer screen?

well i know that a 30" monitor will run 2560 x 1600 resolution where as tv's will run 1920 x 1080. the tv's pixels will be bigger than the monitors and the picture will be stretched to cover the entire screen. also other differences like contrast ratio, Gama, brightness, viewing angle, ext. will be slightly different and may be more preferable depending on what you like better.

It's also going to depend greatly on the HDTV or monitor you get. Not every 32" HDTV will make for a good monitor especially for gaming. Though not all monitors are all that great either.

Color and resolution wise, a good 30" LCD monitor wins hands down. For price, a good 32" LCD HD TV wins hands down.

Mikey, I've had the Samsung 305T for well over a year and absolutely love it. Its resolution is 2560 X 1600 - higher than the best TVs - and on it I can watch high-quality TV or video in a window or full-screen.

As it happens, I've inherited a late-model 32" Sony HDTV TV from my mother-in-law and, not needed anywhere else in our house, I've attached it as a second display to my hobby computer downstairs. (Hobby computer is high-end with top-line NVidia graphics board.)

There is NO comparison in image quality! I could never do work on the TV. Even large near-full-screen graphic images - like when playing online poker, for example - look very soft. DVDs played through the computer onto the TV are also soft. I put a Blu-ray player underneath it, and only when using it does the TV look really great.

TVs are TVs, monitors are monitors.

Maybe you should get a vizio hdtv, i use it for my monitor and its fine. the sony must be crap if it won't play dvd's acceptably. The hdtv wont be as sharp as the monitor since it is two inches larger and not as high a resolution, but for for around 600 bucks cheaper i can live with that.  

My bad, 700 bucks!

1. I just noticed that i kinda forgot this important part of my original question.. "I really only want to play games" on the new bigger HDTV screen. That is all i wanna do with the new screen.... gaming! and i usually play games on a resolution of 1024x768. the games are kinda old..... starwars EAW and FOC.

used to play eve, but eve moved in a direction that i didn't like i.e. they think it should be legal for other players to steal from someone doing a mission in empire space and the player commiting teh theft is protected by the 'in-game security forces'.. i. e. one can steal loot (expensive stuff... over 1 million credits a piece) from the player doing the mission and the thief is protected by the in-game cops. the cops will blow ur ship up in a new york second. I think that's VERY VERY WRONG, but the eve makers think it's ok. so i dont play eve anymore. Eve would look awesome on a big screen though  )

2. I currently have a 'still pretty high end computer setup... 3.0 G m/b AMD Phenom AM2 chipset, and one 9600 nVidea card (card has 2 DMI outputs). SO with the card i can use both screens still at once, correct?

3. I also will need to know how to set the screens up to work independently of each other, if that's possible. the big screen run the games, and the smaller (Hannspree 21" monitor) to run regular stuff from my OS at same time as game is running.

I'm sorry for forgetting this item, bout running games and regular stuff on 2 screens  

The best a TV can do is 1080, the best a monitor can do is 1600. Higher is better but it will cost more.

the tv will run games fine.