Using a TV as a monitor

[Shaft]

I know back in the good old days of CRTs, for reasons that I can't remember you couldn't just plug a telly into the back of your desktop and expect it to ever work.

But these days, it would seem running your laptop into your cinema screen sized gogglebox is a possibility.

In another thread, I was bemoaning the fact I had a perfectly good LED TV that was too small as a telly, but it occurs to me it would make a handy size monitor.

So can I and, if so, what do I need to make it happen?

TYIA BCF Massive
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[WD Forte]

Not had a telly for years so not up to date on them
but some off hand thoughts

I reckon the telly would need to have the onboard circuitry to handle the display and audio signals from the PC
I recall seeing a telly with a vga port and seperate audio connectors waaaay back
But nowadays you'd probably need at least that or more likely
DVI, HDMI or a display port, some of which handle audio and video
(cant recall which does which off hand)

Quality will depend on the tellys resolution and refresh rate
and how 'smart' the telly is

If it doesn't have the above ports you might find a convertor
to port PC AV signals into a scart or composite video and audio sockets on that Ebay
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[xX-Alex-Xx]

Easily doable as most computers have hdmi outputs now. Ideally your TV would be at least 1080p but 720p will be “ok”.
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DILLIGAF

[UncleFester]

Been using a 4k 40" Lliyama 'TV' as my main monitor for years. It's only 60Hz at 4k but that's fine for me.

HDMI will carry audio and video so if the TV has decent speakers then you can route your audio to it. I don't - i send Audio via HDMI to a 7.1 AV amp. But it will work.

So in theory all you need is the relevant connecting cable from your 'TV' to your computer.

Whether you find it ok to use or not is a personal thing but i'd reckon a max of 15 quid of cable is going to let you discover that for yourself.
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[doggone]

It is probably easy enough to get it to work but a TV is intended to make images look good whereas a good PC monitor will be better for fine text and probably has better refresh rate for gaming type action.
If doing anything like photo and video editing you might want a screen calibrated out of box or by using software, most Tvs will be poor at this.

[Ste]

Plug a HDMI cable in and try it.

[GettinBetter]

[Easy-X]

I have an old 42" LCD TV and the only issue I had plugging a PC into it was "overscan" - the Windows desktop had a big black border around it. However in the settings you could label all your source inputs and LG's solution was for you to explicitly label, for example, HDMI2 as "PC" and the border magically disappeared.
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[Ayrton]

Every TV I've ever tried has ended up slightly too blurry when reading text, I think because the pixel density is worse on TV's. Looks fine for movies though.

[Fat Angry Scotsman]

I run my PC and my PS4 through my TV which is 4K HDR @ 60 FPS. Works perfectly well.

My exact TV:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B089NDJD9C
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[notbike]

If you aren't doing fast-paced shit it's fine. Otherwise you're going to get massive input lag, even with high refresh rates, in comparison to a purpose-built monitor.

[Fat Angry Scotsman]