Picking a Display: Monitor VS. TV

This is something that I struggled with when I wanted to upgrade from my dual CRT monitors to either LCD screens, or a 32 inch+ LCD television.  There are quite a few different factors that it comes down to when it comes time to make the decision, and the pros and cons have to be weighed.  I got some information for you to weigh before you shell out at least $500 bucks on something that you are going to be stuck with for a while (I am going on 3 years now), because this can be a big decision.

Like I said before, I went with dual 22 inch LCD monitors for quite a few reasons, but mainly the price was too damn good to pass up… $150 a pop.  See, I strategically budgeted myself to make my purchase around Black Friday (if you don’t know what this is, or what Cyber Monday is either, stop reading and click the link), because I was a poor, recently out of college, and absolutely aching for something better… I mean, I spray painted my ugly cream colored CRTs because I needed something different so badly.  Truth is, I waited to write this article till a month or so before Black Friday, so you can start researching now on what you may want.  There are a lot of pros and cons in all the aspects for each option, but we are going to outline some of the most important factors that it is going to come to when making your purchase.

Resolution – TV’s

When it comes to shopping the deals, you might find something that seems like $300 for a 32 inch plasma is a great deal… but if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.  Things to stay away from with TV’s in terms of resolution are anything below 1080p including 1080i and 720p, and if you consider anything below that you’re a dolt.  Reason being, it might look fine as a monitor, but if you upgrade down the line, you can’t use this as a full HDTV either.  Also, stay away from plasma televisions as well… they generally have a lot of glare from the glass or Plexiglas over the screen, and the lower-end ones that you would be considering have generally bad color.

Resolution – Monitors

This is kind of a no brainer, if it can hit a 1680 x 1050 resolution, or higher with a decent refresh rate, it’s probably good to go.  These are the ones that you have to find some nice deals on.  Since I bought my two monitors a few years ago, you can get a couple 21 inchers for around $150 apiece, but you are looking to go big, like 22’s or 24’s I highly recommend looking at Black Friday ads and camping out.  Also, you might want to try shopping Fry’s, Newegg, Woot, and TigerDirect, I always see killer deals on large monitors at least once a month.

Screen Real Estate – Televisions

Now this was the big picture for me and, the other main contributing factor for me to go monitors and not television.  With TVs you essentially have one screen with a ton of space, except everything you do is probably twice the normal size.  If you get a television that lets you select a giant screen resolution in your computer, and you can set it up to be about the size that you like your monitor to be, more power to ya.  You could even go as far as getting two TVs if you are really hardcore and double up your workstation, but that is a whole ‘nother dream world right there.  There is also the factor that your TV is going to possibly extend another foot about where your monitors lay right now, leaving you to actually look up for some tasks, but I actually worked on a 42 inch NEC, for around six months, and it was a dream.  I could go both ways on this, personally.

Screen Real Estate – Monitors

Like I said, for my home workstation, I chose dual 22’s because I enjoy having an extended desktop, rather than a gigantic one.  I guess this really weighs heavily on how much multitasking you do, as well as what programs you run.  For me, I surf the net, watch Hulu, run After Effects and Photoshop almost all day, naturally having an extended desktop is a necessity because being able to position things on two desktops rather than just one big one is a lot easier than minimizing all the time.  If you just work on the internet all day, or perhaps have only one or two windows open at a time, you might want to go with a television.  Now comes the program-based choice of it all.  If you are an editor, say you run Premiere, or Final Cut, or even an audio editing program like Pro Tools or Soundbooth, you can extend your timeline across two desktops instead of one, giving you twice the space to position your Source and Program monitors, bins, effect controls, and the numerous other things that sometimes seem smooshed or hard to display all at the same time with ample space.

Price

Now the selling point.  Literally.  This is what it all comes down to, what can you afford?  Naturally, monitors are going to be the cheapest option, but if you really want to have that TV, you can wait till Black Friday in a tent outside Best Buy (year three for me!), hound the interwebs on Cyber Monday, wait for those handy email blasts, or follow @woot on Twitter to get a random deal.  Any way you are doing it, make sure you really weigh the pros and cons, because you would really hate to get something, and then be pissed at yourself for making the wrong decision, or an uninformed one at that.

There are other aspects to take into account as well that I’m not covering such as, desk room, feng shui of your edit bay, strain on your neck from looking up at a tall display, and numerous other things that might affect your decision to buy.  I’m not here to tell you which is best, just to give you a little bit of insight if you might be considering a display change on the cheap.  So here’s the question for you guys… what are you using right now?  are you dual SLI-ing it with 4 monitors, or are you rocking a 52 inch LCD TV?  You know what I got, now I wanna know what you got!  Leave a comment letting us all know what you use, and what your thoughts on the article are.