Travel Technology - LCD as TV monitor????

If you purchase a VGA to RCA or component video output and have a VCR with a tuner, can you use a regular LCD monitor as a TV? The 19" LCDs are on sale for $200 while the cheapest 20" LCD TV is $350/400.

Anyone done this?

Not done exactly that. But I do use a Hauppage WinTV unit. My stuff is UK/PAL standard and you have NTSC there. So cannot tell exactly what it would cost - kit in the US is generally cheaper. Actually, funnily right now I'm on the outskirts of Taipei less than a mile from the Avermedia offices. They also do alot of this stuff.

I'm guessing, but it should be possible to get a unit for under $100 (perhaps much less) over there which does hardware MPEG encoding.

You would need to use it in conjunction with a PC (I use a laptop) but the advantage is you can record stuff as well, transfer tapes to DVD (by connecting it to a VCR) and with hardware encoding it doesn't slow down your PC if you want to watch TV in a window and do other stuff at the same time.

If you watch it full screen, its no different from watching a TV.

I've noticed a number of DVD-recorders here in Taiwan have VGA outputs. Perhaps this would be a cheap + neat solution - just buy a cheap VCR or DVD-recorder (probably not so cheap) that has VGA out. In the UK they seem less common.

there are (expensive) VGA to RCA converters, btu a quick google search couldn't find anything to do what you need, RCA to VGA. in that case you would need a TV tuner card and a PC to use an LCD as a TV, but as the previous post indicates there are other benefits, eg your own DVR

thanks for the replies. I know about adding a TV card to use your computer as a TV. You can also get a sling box to do this. What I was thinking about is forget the computer - just get an LCD monitor and hook that up to a VCR to use as the tuner. I am just thinking about a cheaper way to get a flat screen TV. The computer monitors are so much cheaper than the flat pannel TVs. Not sure if it will work....seems to good to be true.....

There are things out there that will do this... some are straight converters from your RCA or S-Video source and others include the external TV tuner. I have something similar to link #2 below... my computer comes in via DVI to my monitor while my Playstation comes in via VGA. I just change sources on the monitor to go back and forth.

http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/video-vga-vis-3000.html
http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/video-vga_adapter.html

Not endorsing that site - just first thing that came up in google.

I personally use the ATI HD Wonder PCI Tuner in my PC for local HD channels on my 21" monitor - works well and it also comes with a remote, making my monitor a real tv. So for about the same price as the converter ($86) to get your VCR picture to the LCD you can upgrade to HD on your monitor.

thanks for the replies. I know about adding a TV card to use your computer as a TV. You can also get a sling box to do this. What I was thinking about is forget the computer - just get an LCD monitor and hook that up to a VCR to use as the tuner. I am just thinking about a cheaper way to get a flat screen TV. The computer monitors are so much cheaper than the flat pannel TVs. Not sure if it will work....seems to good to be true.....

This (http://www.legendmicro.com/store/more_info.asp?product_ID=3033) will do what you want. The quality may not be the same as an integrated solution but it will do the trick.

This (http://www.legendmicro.com/store/more_info.asp?product_ID=3033) will do what you want. The quality may not be the same as an integrated solution but it will do the trick.

That is exactly what I use for my video projector. It has 2 inputs and an integrated tuner. Remote is a little weird, but all in all it is a great unit.

The ViewSonic Nextvision converter recommended by kanebear and Scott is the way to go.

Besides the price, it is also has a RGB pass-through, which will let you use that low-priced 19" LCD monitor (which will probably not have dual inputs, much less DVI) with both your PC and VCR without plugging/unpluging cables or purchasing a VGA switchbox.

For those considering a PC TV tuner, keep in mind an external USB unit will eat up lots of CPU cycles, unlike the better PCI/AIW implementations.


P.S: not sure about the reason for the price differential between smaller same-size LCD monitor and TV's; in the EU, at least, this is mostly due to higher taxes on equipment deemed capable of displaying TV content :td:

While I can't comment on the technical aspects, picture wise, be sure that the LCD has a very short lag time.

I recently bought a 55" Samsung DLP instead of a Sonly LCD that my daughter has because I could not stand the lag time on action scenes like football. I understand that lag times for LCDs are getting better, but its best to watch a fast moving display and see if lag is a problem for you.

Unless it's HD content, in general I find TV on an LCD looks like crap. Even DVDs don't look as crisp as my CRT. This is mainly due to pixel interpolation since the NTSC and PAL resolutions are subsets of the LCD's native resolution.

Now, if you keep the image at the native resolution, it looks fine, but depending on your LCD's size (I have a 24" Dell and a 17" on my laptop), they can be pretty small. So if you scale them to fit, they fall apart.

HD content (especially 1920x1080) looks vastly better since the native resolution is close to filling your screen (my 24" is 1920x1200) and the detail of the signal is of course much greater then in an NTSC/PAL analog broadcast.

Unless it's HD content, in general I find TV on an LCD looks like crap.

Agreed. Or on a VGA tube.

I went through a couple of the Viewsonic boxes (they were > $100 at the time) thinking they must be defective because the quality was so awful. I tried it on both a tube and an LCD. I ultimately bought a Liveview FlyTV box, as it was the same functionality and quality as the Viewsonic, but much less expensive, though I've given up on trying to use it.

>not sure about the reason for the price differential between smaller same-size LCD monitor and TV's

In addition to possible taxation issues, I would assume TVs cost more than LCD monitors because they've got -

1) Tuners built in
2) Remote-control support
3) Extra connectors on the back for coax in, composite video in, component video in, audio-in etc.
4) Amplifier and (often) stereo speakers
5) Hardware options for mounting them on the wall etc.

Cheers,
Geoff Glave
Vancouver, Canada

I would imagine the price differential is because of the tuner, remote, and better speakers on the TV version. The cheapest LCD monitors might not have speakers at all.

The picture quality, as SEA_Tigger noted, isn't perfect when watching TV content, but I just last night used my slingbox to watch the bedroom TV on the office PC and it looked really good, but not perfect.

I suspect that if you're looking for the cheapest solution and will be watching VHS content that this probably good enough for a kitchen/office TV.

I would assume TVs cost more than LCD monitors because they've got -
1) Tuners built in
2) Remote-control support
3) Extra connectors on the back for coax in, composite video in, component video in, audio-in etc.
4) Amplifier and (often) stereo speakers
5) Hardware options for mounting them on the wall etc.


That's $20-30 in production costs, to be generous (talking about a low-end 20" model). Profit margins on consumer electronics are 2-3 times higher than in the PC industry, which accounts for a big chunk of the difference. Then, there are taxes *; in the EU, a DVI input qualifies a LCD monitor for the higher 'TV' tax :(


* in the EU. Edited as original post obviously was deficient in syntax

That's $20-30 in production costs, to be generous (talking about a low-end 20" model). Profit margins on consumer electronics are 2-3 times higher than in the PC industry, which accounts for a big chunk of the difference. Then, there are taxes; in the EU, a DVI input qualifies a LCD monitor for the higher 'TV' tax :(

Brian is in the US, so the TV tax is not part of the equation here.

What great advise. I think that I am going to borrow a friends LCD and test it out to see how bad the picture is. Assuming not horrible, I am going to save the $$. Will let you know.