Possible to use a TV as a monitor?

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I do a lot of work that involves text. I have a Surface Pro 3 and I am wondering if it would be possible to work on the sofa using the TV as a monitor via Miracast.

I recall trying to do this when I had a 720p TV and it was awful. Would this be any better with a 1080p TV?
 
Can be done, but as said above you have to play with the settings to make it look ok
 
I do a lot of work that involves text. I have a Surface Pro 3 and I am wondering if it would be possible to work on the sofa using the TV as a monitor via Miracast.

I recall trying to do this when I had a 720p TV and it was awful. Would this be any better with a 1080p TV?

I play Civ 5 on my 48" 1080p TV.
It is unplayable from the couch if you leave the default resolution.
(Same goes for any attempted work, or web browsing)


You have to drop the scale to 720p to be able to comfortably read text, browse websites etc.


FPS games do work on the TV, but as said above don't expect to be competetive. Good for a laugh though :D (Especially when also using a Bluetooth mouse keyboard at the limits of range)
 
it weill work fine for casual couch gaming, and for text editing, you do not ned to drop the res, you can just zoom in on webpages/office etc. Can also scale up windows a bit to generically use bigger text/icons if you find them too small.
 
Depends greatly on the television, resolution, viewing distance and your own eye sight.

Personally, I'm using a 42" 1920x1080 HDTV from a 1m distance (I have a big desk). I don't see it as blocky or blurry. And immersion in games is awesome. Granted, my eye sight isn't what it used to be. But I don't wear glasses at all, either. Someone wearing glasses will probably have a better vision and might see the image as blocky. In which case, he should sit 20cm further away from the screen.

Slightly off-topic rant in the spoiler, with regards to bad manufacturer behaviour (Philips):
Too bad my specific set (Philips 42PFL6907T) has an awful color banding issue. And Philips support is faking ignorance, saying it's not a bug, it's a feature. And under this excuse refusing to do anything about it. Actually, first they claimed they "didn't see the difference" with the sample images I gave them. But once I confronted them and made public polls regarding the matter, to see whether un-partial people could see the difference (and naturally they did), Philips' customer support quickly retracted their statement and instead opted for the "it's not a bug, it's a feature" -approach.

Seriously, do not buy a Philips product. I repeat, DO NOT buy anything from Philips. Once they have your money, they don't care about your complaints. In the last three years, the only beneficial bug fix they've made was something called "5 pixel shift". Which should have been so glaringly obvious that they should have never released the products until they fixed it. And in the meantime, they've actually BROKEN earlier working features. Some people have had to revert to over a year old firmwares. And from the looks of it, Philips is apparently going to leave the firmware in a broken state, as the 2012 line is already three years old, and they want to deceive new fools to buy their crappy products. And I'm telling you guys all this, just so you won't become one of those fools.

In essence, Philips' support has thus far been utterly shameful. You think that was uncalled for? Sadly, it wasn't. But tell you what: I will stop bashing Philips (and even retract my negative statements I've made so far) once they actually fix things. Unfortunately, that's probably not gonna happen, so I wouldn't hold my breath for it...
The average input lag among HDTVs is around 30-40ms, I think. Which is borderline playable. Unfortunately, it's not so uncommon to find models with input lag over 100ms. Which not only makes proper gaming impossible, it also makes basic desktop environment practically unusable. But if you know where to look, you can find HDTVs with 15ms input lag. Here's one place to look: http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/input-lag

For the past two years or so, Sony has been the king of low input lag in HDTVs. Might have something to do with them having a game console in the market, as well. Personally, I would recommend taking a look at
Sony KDL42W705B and Sony KDL42W829

If my current set broke down, I would immediately purchase the Sony KDL42W829, no questions asked. And this is especially troubling times, as I haven't seen any reviews of Sony's this year's contestants, so not sure if they're keeping the same input lag agenda anymore. And beware: don't buy a smaller/bigger brother of any reviewed model, thinking it will have the same input lag. It most probably won't. And this is not just a potential possibility, it actually happened with the Sony KDL42W653 and Sony KDL32W653.

So if you're eyeing for an HDTV, you can't generalize that much inside the model line. Btw, that KDL42W653 is also a recommended model, but you might have hard time finding one. The KDL42W705B is basically its spiritual successor.

Ps. Considering Miracast is wireless streaming (...right?), I would reckon that it will even further increase the input lag. In that case, even the fastest HDTV would be lagging. Well, if you're only typing text, it might not be so bad, but mouse movements would be noticeably lagged.
 
I don't know how much Miracast (or similar features) deteriorate the original image. So first you'd be better off figuring out the best possible image settings via regular HDMI or DVI-HDMI (I would recommend the latter, but both should be fine), before trying to troubleshoot the Miracast. So next we'll determine whether you're using a native resolution and whether there's unwanted scaling happening in the background.

I'm not sure if you already have a 1080p HDTV, but in any case, the rest of the post is only for that. It most probably won't help with 720p HDTVs, as those are with a 99% certainty not actual 720p panels, but 1366x768 panels. I won't go into further detail as to why it is so, but you can search either the internet or check my old posts if you want more information.

Ok, so:
Go to http://www.vanity.dk/tft/monitorTest_scale.html and from the top drop-down menu, select "1:1 pixelmapping". If the image is shown as static gray, then you're good to go. The image is actually black and white pixels next to each other, aka. checkerboard pattern. For further confirmation, you can check the image with a magnifying glass. But on the other hand, if you are seeing blotches, artifacts, etc., then you're not operating at the native resolution (1920x1080), or there is scaling happening at some point. And that's the reason you're not getting the optimal image. If you're certain you have a 1920x1080 resolution HDTV, and already checked that the Windows is set for that resolution, then it's a scaling issue.

Few things to check to eliminate scaling:
1) Some HDTVs have a "PC mode" which makes most of the settings right by default. Try that mode.
2) If you're using an AMD GPU, then it will most probably default to an Overscan setting of 10%. You'll have to change that to 0% (via CCC).
3) It might also be your HDTV which is doing the scaling for you. You don't want that. Check for settings that that involve "Unscaled", "Overscan/Underscan", "Aspect ratio", "Stretch", and so on. Check your manual for explanations for settings you're not sure about.

You might also want to check whether your set is using RGB or BGR pixel array. RGB is more common, but for example my set uses BGR. You can make Windows (and at least some of the Linux environments) to take notion of this in font anti-aliasing and ClearType settings, which will make text look better. Default is RGB, so you most probably won't have to change this. But to make sure, you can check your pixel array with a magnifying glass. Pretty self-explanotary, you simply check in which order the red, green and blue sub-pixels are arranged. Check http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/subpixel.php for more info.

The next one doesn't affect text, but you can check for color banding in the vanity-link by selecting "Color range -> Black/blue grad." from the drop-down menu, or from here: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gradient.php
If everything is OK, then you should be seeing a smooth gradient from bright to dark. If you can see clear barriers where the color changes to a darker/brighter hue, then you have color banding. The color banding is especially an issue with Philips HDTVs. And the people at Philips seem to be total amateurs at fixing bugs, so there most likely won't be a fix for that in their sets. Ever.
 
Im confused by some of the responses here. Because my PC hooked up to my Samsung series 6 40" tv is absolutely stunning. Pin sharp desktop and text and games are in no way blurry at all. On PC or Xbox. I was tempted to use it all the time but was worried about screen burn even though my TV has a setting to prevent that. I recommend this tv strongly.

http://www.samsung.com/uk/support/model/UE40H6400AKXXU
 
@Jimbo:

Like said, it depends greatly on the television, resolution, viewing distance and one's own eye sight. But indeed, I'm also one of those who think some people diss HDTVs without any actual merit. Those people have probably tried it once with a very bad HDTV (and/or bad settings), and have since generalized all HDTVs as such. Granted, HDTVs are not the Holy Grail of display devices, but they're not all as bad as some people make them out to be. Some of them are pure rubbish, but there are also gems included. You just have to know where to look.

As for your specific model, you mean this?
http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/ue40h6400-201405023756.htm

The input lag on that is quite high (~40ms), so I wouldn't recommend that for FPS gaming. I myself have around 35ms, which is borderline playable with V-sync off. With V-sync on -- nope.

As for screen burn: screen burn is very uncommon with LCDs. And it's not the same as it is with plasmas. Unless you have a static image for 24/7, then you should have nothing to worry about. For the essential components, LCD HDTVs and computer monitors use pretty much the same technology. So if you're worried about your LCD HDTV, then you should be worried about your computer monitors, as well.
 
Yes that's my TV. I honestly am not noticing much blur in games at all, both in fps and GTAV. Its been superb on my Xbox one and PC. But I suppose its all a matter of opinion. Maybes I'm just easy pleased. I love it.
 
Just to clarify, I was talking about blurry image, not blurry motion.
- Blurry/blocky image is caused by wrong settings or too low PPI (pixels per inch)
- Blurry motion is caused by high pixel response times
- High input lag is caused by the display device's internal electronics thinking too long

These are exaggerated situations, but should exemplify the difference between pixel response time and input lag:
If input lag is 1000ms (== 1s) and pixel response time is 0ms --> the pixels will start to change only after 1 second, but they will change immediately --> image is clear, but aiming and mouse movements will feel sluggish
If input lag is 0ms and pixel response time is 1000ms --> the pixels will start to change immediately, but the changing is slow --> the pixels don't have enough time to change before the next frame is received, and the end result is a blurry grey mush

Further elaboration of the high pixel response time:
Pixel is instructed to show black (0). Next frame is white (255). The pixel will start the transition from 0 to 255, but because it takes 1000ms to change, and the next frame data is received at 16,66ms (for 60Hz panels), it means it only reaches "4", which is still very dark black. If the image is static for more than 1000ms, then it will eventually reach the final color, as each frame is still trying to reach the 255. But if there is constant change in the pixels (in other words: motion in the image), then it will quickly become a blurry mess.

- In real life, pixel response times are around 1ms-15ms, but some old LCD TVs having 20ms+
- In real life, input lag is around 5ms-20ms, slightly higher for HDTVs (15-40ms, though some even 100ms+)

This might also be of interest:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2803/7
 
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