Greetings all!

  Okay, this might be crazy or strange to ask, or even mention. I'm looking to buy a HD 42" LCD TV to use as my primary monitor. Looking at one of those 1080 resolution things. What I would like to know is if anyone here has done a similar setup? And what video card would be recommended. I would also like to buy a new TV card, probably a WinFast brand because I have an old one which I highly recommend to anyone looking to buy a TV card.

  I'm a little confused/out of touch when it comes to the new/modern/state-of-the-art video cards. I was looking at a Radeon 1650 Pro, but I'm warry for anything that says "designed for Windows Vista" and doubles as a TV card, due to Vista's DRM issues. I don't want to rely on something that will be crippled because of some DRM restriction. So a good vid card is wanted, yet I still plan to use a WinFast TV card.

  To connect to an LCD TV, what should I be looking for? Any specific video connections, such as s-video, etc?

  The OS which I intend to be using with this thing would be Vista, but for now, XP. I hope to be doing various thing besides running Bryce... such as programming... thus my concern will be the quality of fonts on the screen, the sharpness of icons on the desktop/button bars... The resolution I'm currently using is 1280x1024, would I be able to maintain a similar quality or will all my icons be blocky? What systems I have seen on display at stores like Best Buy are 31" monitors, and their icons look like they have the monitor set for a lower quality resolution--big and blocky.

  So... any words of wisdom and advice to look for?  If it's not a smart move for a monitor, let me know... I guess it's about time I bought a TV anyway (no more vaccuum tubes for me ;-)

--Death

I've had recent experiance of this. We bought a Phillips Flat TV - 42" HD-LCD complete with sky+HD recorder, Phillips Hometheatre DVD player surround sound system and a Phillips DVD burner.
While we were setting it up my son - who does all my instalations - realised that we could plug in my laptop!
It seemed to be a bit tricky, but after a few minutes we had Bryce up on the TV screen! Now the picture wasn't perfect but then we didn't mess around with the TV resolution which I'm sure would have accommodated our requirements of a pc monitor. 
The tv picture itself when showing satallite programs - regular tv - is perfect! So I have now doubt that this particular model would do the job.

Not sure where you live but this lot cost us less than £1000uk as a package deal.
This tv is atm sitting on a really cool glass table kinda thing that has the other entertainment equipment on it, but you can buy a metal plate thing that will let you hang the tv on the wall.
Hope this helps!

I'm currently using a sony bravia 42inch HDTV as primary monitor at the studio and i must say its amazing! however, i would advice you to take the highest resolution you can get! The one im currently using is 1300something pixels wide but we're looking at replacing it some time with a 1920x1080 resolution screen. This might sound like a lot of pixels, but remember the screen is absolutely huge! It's also a blast to look movies on, and well worth hooking to a fine set of speakers!

I have no idea if its vista compatible because i hate vista with a passion.. but under xp it works fine! If your videocard doesnt support the resolution by default then there should be extra tools available for download to adjust the resolution. If this might be a serious issue, make sure to google for such tools before buying the tv ;-) If you have a reasonably new videocard you should be able to get the picture on the screen pixelperfect!

I did find it a bit tricky to get the colors to line up with the colors rolling outta the printer, but then again i was too lazy to get actual configuration programs for this into action.

Oh and another very important point on the usability front... Make sure u can sit at least, and really at the very very least, 1 meter away from the screen. preferably twice that! And dont keep it at its brightest mode all the time cuz ull ruin ur eyes LOL low energy mode should suffice :-)

I program using this screen too, and its no problem at all! fonts are sharp, its all good. no blockyness and shit like that. As long as you match up the output resolution of your videocard with the resolution of the screen it works just like a computermonitor would.

Great feedback Bryster and Rayraz!

Maybe this weekend or in two weeks I'll probably start buying components. Probably will begin with that WinFast TV card first, then move to the more important stuff. I'll definately post feedback to this thread as all this evolves. Maybe others here might benefit eventually also, as it seems connecting a computer to HDTV's is probably going to become more common.

Mounting a large 42" TV might be an issue too. Currently my computer desk appears to be large enough, but it has a hutch. I'm using a 19" LCD and it fits under that hutch nicely, but obviously a 42" would not. So there's going to be some modifications.

Besides mounting the 42" to the wall, or having it stand on it's own, are there other options? I've seen computer monitor arms that someone could connect to a desk and move a monitor all around. Is there something similar for these big TV's?

I know there are some sophisticated wall mounts around. They offered to sell me one when I bought the tv, but I didn't want to get into that right then so I don't know whether or not they would suit you.

I dont know anythinga about WinFast TV cards, but Hauppauge makes great TV Cards, they are hardware MPEG II Converters, so that you're PC's processor can do other stuff rather than spend time compressing/decompressing or converting video.

I read around the net, that using large TV LCD setups(any) are not that great for 3dcg. Game consoles and such work well on them, but nothing can touch a good 22-24inch widescreen computer LCD for graphics(unless you do dual monitor). For the price of that 42inch, you could probably do triple 19inch monitor setups(their fairly cheap now), which as soon as you view triple setups for games OR graphics, you'll never want anything else, lol(including high end projectors). As for a graphics card, a Nvidia 7600 to 7900GT should do fine for anything out now. (Btw this is just what I read, not an opinion, except for triple monitors)