42 " Plasma TV as Monitor

semperfitca · n00b Joined: 23 Apr 2004 Posts: 27

My roommate got a 42" Gateway Plasma TV that's HDTV-ready. We want to use it for watching TV and as a monitor. The screen is huge, which is cool, everything displayed on the screen is too big and very pixelated (esp very small print..it's impossible to read). I have the same settings that I used with my 17" LCD display (1280x1024 and 75 Mhtz).

What do we have to do to icrease the screen "real-estate" and make the pixels smaller/more crisp??

I have a gentoo, windoze and a mac computer and I don't really care which I use...although it'd be nice if they all could work.

Do we have to purchase a high definition component? Do I need a new video card?

Thanks for the help everyone!

-Steve

Bohemian · Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2004 12:51 am Post subject:

You have too much money

sigSEGV2003 · Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2004 2:01 am Post subject:

Hate to tell you this, but that Gateway 42" is not HDTV capable. That's why its so much cheaper than other plasmas.

semperfitca · n00b Joined: 23 Apr 2004 Posts: 27

Oh, I guess we had that part wrong. And by the way, we're not rich...his sister died and his parents gave it to him.

So there's no way to increase the resolution and make it less pixelated? New video card, etc????

Thanks in advance....

Sastraxi · Apprentice Joined: 25 Feb 2003 Posts: 258

What you're doing is watching an HDTV signal (or not, depending on how you connected your computer to it) that is being subsampled... is that not the term? Anyway, the problem is that the size is being lowered before being blown up again. Think of what would happen if you had a 1000x1000 image for display on a 1000x1000 monitor, but your graphics card could only handle 500x500? It would have 4 times less resolution. It's not exactly what's going on here but it's a good enough relation to give you an idea of what's going on...

Sorry, HDTV-Ready and HDTV are two completely different things meant to drive the consumers insane and spend all of their money.
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WarpFlyght · n00b Joined: 04 May 2003 Posts: 38 Location: Atlanta, GA

It could be that the Gateway display is actually an EDTV (enhanced definition television) monitor instead of HDTV. EDTV is pretty much DVD resolution (720x480 or thereabouts). You might have better luck dropping your resolution to 1024x768 or maybe as low as 640x480. There are some more obscure resolutions available as well, and your video card may or may not support them. A good place to start is the owner's manual that came with the plasma display. It will list compatible resolutions and refresh rates, and from those you can narrow down the ones that work best for your viewing pleasure and hardware configuration.
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