I want to buy a large screen for the living room to watch movies and play computer games on with my computer. I was looking at the new HDTV's with the HDMI input and figured that I could just hook-up my computer to that since my video card came with a DVI to HDMI converter. My question is, what is the difference between a 40' HDTV and a 40' monitor? Will one look better than the other and be as more compatible with the computer? I'm so lost! Thank you so much for the help :) Incarn

HDTV is 1080p at best. A 40" monitor should have fantastic resolution. Then there is the refresh rate, which will be better on a monitor. That said, you better make sure your graphics card/chip will support the NATIVE resolution of any monitor your buy.

Here are the two options that I'm thinking about buying. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... The prices differences are insane, but the resolution and size are the same between the two. Am I missing something? Incarn

I really haven't looked at monitors that large but the NEC monitor has a response time of 18ns. I beieve that is pretty slow. If you played games you would notice the lag. My 22" Samsung, for instance is 2ns and 1680 x 1050. I assume you are looking at LCD displays. 60Hz for a refresh rate is plenty. The scepter look decent. Remember if you want to watch TV on this thing that you need a tuner. The monitor has no tuner. You would need a TV tuner card. Are you planning on using a DVR from your cable company to record TV shows? I don't think that NEC is worth that kind of cash. If you are planning on using the computer connected to this setup for regular tasks then consider using a normal size monitor for that purpose and use a dual head output on your graphics card to feed the TV. 40" isn't really all that big. Consider a rear projection LCD in the 55/60" range. Unless your room is very small you will not be satisfied with a 40" wide screen.

I have a TV Tuner in my computer, so that's not a problem. I know that 40' isn't really big, but it's what I can afford :( Bottom line is the NEC monitor would have a worse display than the Sceptor. I just can't figure out why the NEC is going for so much then. Incarn