The Best Monitor for both HD TV and PC Games (SL)

What is the best monitor for both TV and PC Games, including SL?

I want something biggish, 36"-42", widescreen, so I can have it on my wall beyond my desk. Pop BlueRay videos into my PC and watch, or use the built-in TV card and watch regular TV, play SL, or connect my Satellite Receiver to it to watch HD sat broadcasts.

So, basically, a widescreen that will really show off the high rez of my BlueRay, show SL in all its glory, and have a digital input for my Sat receiver too.

Any recommendations?

Rock

Bonus Question:
Suppose I want to take my cordless keyboard and cordless mouse out of my den and into my lounge (they do work) and be able see SL or my BlueRay movies from my PC in the den on my widescreen in the lounge (it is only connected to a sat receiver at present). Is there a way of transmitting the digital signals from the PC in the den to the widescreen monitor in the lounge, I guess I am asking about wireless DVI. Laying cables is not easy (to impossible) so a transmit solution would be best.

if you're gonna berunning the images thru your computer you gotta remember your video card gotta be able to produce the resolution of the stuff you're watching (or more), I don't remember what exctly is the resolution for HDTV or bluray video, but I remember some TVs/screens got a resolution way bigger than the average high resolution avaiable on some not-highend video cards, also even if your video card can reach the resolution of the screen, if it isn't powerfull enough there might be a significant performance hit by using the highest resolution possible with certain programs

DVI comes in two formats: DVI analog and DVI digital.

For DVI analog the fancy connector is just 'a different connector' and you are running the usual red, green blue and H/V sync channels. Wireless will degrade the daylights out of even low, crappy monitor resolutions.

For DVI digital, which you are *probably* running... utterly forget wireless. DVI digital can run anywhere between 2 to 6 gHz at the high end, depending on resolution (that's a digital 2 to 6 gHz, think 'eye diagrams' not analog fidelity) and don't even dream of transmitting this wirelessly. In fact, you'll note that you can't buy a DVI D cable much over 10 or 15 feet long; even on specially designed cable for DVI D. The digital signals 'skew' with respect to each other after that distance; you need to either a) drop to analog or b) reclock the signal every 10 feet or so to get it to go any farther.

Real Answers:

a) Drop to lower quality right near your computer with a converter box, and then run analog cables.

Forget about all that boosting/adjusting/tuning crap and get some Big, Thick coax cables for RGBHV if your monitor will accept that and can pass through something like 500MHz with ease usually; sometimes 1GHz.

Failing that, depending on the converter boxes/monitor you have use a standard 'cable tv' connector (good for about 150MHz passthrough) and last choice: use NTSC, which is barely 5MHz of passthrough bandwidth typically. Companies that sell all the fancy boxes *always* sell them with thin coaxial cable... you don't need *any* of the boosting, tweaking or other such nonsense if you use a big thick cable in the first place! But don't worry about cable shielding. Coax cable shielding is for two reasons only: 1) UL safety 'smoke' ratings when the cables burn in a fire, 2) non~EE's with no signal experience think all that braided steel actually does something, and tend to readily accept the upsell; cable companies know this. What you really want are thick, thick, thick, thick coax signal conductors so the high frequency signals can run on the 'skin' of the metal inside. One good kink on the cable conductor for anything running over say, about 20 MHz is going to act as a *component* with various impedances at various frequencies, plus act as a reflection point and totally trash your signal. You'll easily be running 200 to 400MHz of signal with ease on a good computer monitor, maybe more.

b) Run a power cable too, and don't 'ground' stuff excessively and pointlessly at multiple locations. 'Grounding' is for power safety *only*... not signal referencing. If you Ground everything at various points in your house, you will get a 'ground loop' if any faint currents run between the house's ground points (think of the earth as a big, ugly composite capacitor/resistor/inductor, rather than the mythical 'perfect black hole for current'... it's not. Ground loops typically show up as slowly moving fuzzy horizontal bars on video equipment. Have one *single* ground point for the whole system, or spend a fortune on ground loop isolators.

c) Surprisingly, though I have yet to see a single computer *ever* made that actually properly met the USB tech standard, usually you can get away with extending your USB cable... embarrassingly far. I've seen 30 feet. It's a robust standard and it so often works that I'd say it's worth buying a coupla USB cable extenders and putting your wireless mouse/keyboard transceiver thingie anywhere you want.

Good luck!

I have a 46" Samsung 1080P LCD TV that I have been using as my primary computer monitor and have been very happy with it. You should get better black levels with higher contrast ratios so that is one important factor to consider. Make sure it and your video card support 1080P (1920x1080 pixels). The Television I purchased includes a standard 15-pin VGA connector and I have it attached to my computer with a 25' VGA cable. My experience is that you can get away with much longer cable runs using VGA cables over DVI. The picture quality has been excellent.

Here is a link to the model I have...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16889102260