Thank you for taking a look.


Ok, I'm totally new at this. Your constructive advice is
requested.

I'm considering the purchase of a

Proscan PLED4017A 40" Class LED HDTV - 1080p, 1920 x 1080, 16:9, 60Hz, 5000:1, 6 ms, HDMI, VGA


and would like it to work with these devices:

Hewlett Packard PC, model p6710f running Win7 64bit
Sony Playstation (first generation)
Roku box
ancient Panasonic VHS tape player
Sony DVD player, model DVP SR200p

(I currently have DVD, VHS, Sony and Roku connected to an ancient CRT television)

I'd like the Proscan to serve as both a computer monitor, and a means
to view DVDs, Youtube, Roku (netflix streaming movies), surf the internet and play games, all WITHOUT a huge amount of messing around pushing buttons every time I want to switch functions.

If this LCD won't display steaming content like Roku or Youtube flash video without being downsized to a tiny dimension or grainy resolution, that is a huge issue, and my change my mind about buying this at all.

If I've gotta fiddle with things every time I want to switch from interent
to television, forget it. Not worth the hassle.

The HP is a budget model, and only has a VGA output, not HDMI. The television has both a VGA and multiple HDMI inputs. I'm willing to have a shop install a power supply and video card upgrade---- eventually. If that's the only way to do this, I'd like to know.

I'd like the get the most "bang for the buck" with the least amount
of hassle.

Well for one thing, you will have to get an audio out cable to go with your computer's VGA out, or you won't have any sound. HDMI transmits audio and video signal through one cable, while VGA is video only. I'm sure you are aware of this, but you didn't mention it so I wanted to make sure.

As for outputting video, Windows should scale to the recommended resolution automatically, and you can change it if it does not. Windows 7 also has a display setting in which you can change the display size of icons and windows, and browsers also have zoom functions. You should be able to fullscreen any video without a problem. And the resolution set on one input (HDMI in vs VGA in, for example), won't alter the resolution on another.

All in all, I think you will be fine once you get your desktop resolution set appropriately (for reference, I often output my laptop's video signal via HDMI to TV, and it's output resolution is 1360x768 vs 1366x768 on the laptop screen, and Netflix/YouTube/etc. output fullscreen without issue as Windows automatically changes the resolution).

We JUST had one of these threads in the couple last weeks but I think it got buried pretty quickly. Lemme see if I can find it...

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/differences_between_tvs_and_monitors

There ya go. Not exactly what you asked but that thread might get you started.

Edit: don't take "JUST" as a complaint, but instead as a comment on the timing. I know this stuff doesn't always translate on the 'net...

Thank you for the information, and especially your courtesy and consideration.
Anonymity has murdered civility in many venues. Thank you. A few bucks on cables is no big deal.
I'm wondering....If I park this on a desk, will it be easy to pull up to the desk with a chair, turn on the internet, and have it "default" to a size I want? I guess I could get a wireless keyboard, but I'd prefer the old style of sitting at the desk and typing.....but I dont' want to be overwhelmed with words/letters that are four inches tall, or blurry.....

And, of course, be able to sit down, turn on the TV, and have Roku / Netflix streaming fullscreen, without having to go to the computer and type something....?

Sorry, really new to this concept, and very afraid of getting burned.....

There's two main problems to parking a bad boy that big on your desk, and they both revolve around sitting really close to it: one, you are gonna get some severe eye strain even if you lower the brightness considerably and two, on that large of a screen when you are sitting so close, and two, things are gonna look extremely pixellated at even 1920x1080 resolution. You could turn off scaling through your graphics settings and box a lower resolution to make the stuff take up less screen real estate, but the lower res the more pixels you are gonna see and the worse your images are going to look (even plain text). Keep in mind that most of the largest 30" monitors run @ 1600p resolution, and you are adding another 10 inches on top of those.

So here's the thing, if you are gonna use the desktop more as an entertainment hub, then I would just spring for a wireless keyboard and put it in the living room. You can do minor typing and e-mails through browser zoom and Windows control panel settings, though it wouldn't be the most comfortable thing in the world. But, if you want to use the desktop as more of a workstation at a desk, then I would advise just getting a small, cheapo monitor from somewhere like craigslist.

EDIT: BTW I am not sure if you know this, but PS2s are backwards compatible with PS1 games, and also function as DVD players. You can find them pretty cheap on stuff like craigslist and ebay if you ever wanted to stick with your PS1 library and have less equipment hooked to your television.

Thank you EC. This is what I feared. I had HOPED I could easily pull up the desk chair,
push a button, switch from TV to computer resolution. This is a 1080p TV, and I thought that would HELP......you seem to be saying, no matter what, that this size TV will be horrible as a monitor.

Good suggestion about working with a wireless keyboard, but I'm married with a death grip to the exact posture and position of sitting at the desk to type, with my dense-rubber wrist rest.
I would never get used to a wireless keyboard.

Sigh. I guess I could just keep the computer as it is, with my small monitor, and hook it up to the TV for viewing things like Roku or streaming video like Youtube.

But, for this much money, I'd really like something that would do double-duty with zero fiddling hassles.

Thanks for the tip, I did know about the backwards-compatibility of PS2 to PS1. I think Sony should be lynched for not making the PS3 run all the old content. I'm not much of a fan of consoles in general, most of my games are PC. Until consoles come down in price to about $40, and the discs come down to about $15 each, I'm not interested in them.

My guess is that you might have trouble with the two old connections, the Playstation and VCR, depending on what connectors you find on the back of those two pieces. That trouble would be that the set may not have enough connectors to handle both, though it looks like it does. I think most VCRs would connect over the COAX line and you would then tune to channel three or four to watch VCR content. Then you could connect the Playstation over the regular RCA jack (yellow cable for video, red and white for audio). Or vice verse. I see that my old Playstation is hooked up using the COAX connector and then tuning the TV to channel whatever, so in my case I would use RCA for the VCR. To get sound from the Playstation out to my receiver, I use the TVs audio output RCA connectors. Everything else goes through the receiver first. Kinda sounds like you're just using the TVs speakers so this shouldn't be an issue unless you decide to go with separate speakers someday. It's actually pretty easy to do so if you decide to upgrade to that route down the road.

Say, which Roku player do you have?

On our TV, a ~12-year old Sony 34" HD CRT set, it automatically configures itself for standard and HD content. I can then further choose stretch, zoom, etc, on the standard content in order to fill the screen. I suspect the new set you're looking at would also do the same since it has both old and new connectors.

If you haven't yet taken a look at the TV manual, you can find it here: [url= http://www.curtisint.com/html/custservice/manuals/PRO_PLED4017A_EN.PDF ] http://www.curtisint.com/html/custservice/manuals/PRO_PLED4017A_EN.PDF [/url]

HereForTheBeer, thank you for the link to that thread. I wish I could say it helped.

Instead, it was like walking into a room with 20 people all shouting at the same time, and no one paying any attention to anyone else.....just painful.

I'm also hyper-sensitive to poor grammar. I learned to read at age five.
When folks spell poorly, I react the way many persons do when they hear the
horrific screech of fingernails down a chalkboard.

I find few persons understand this, until I put it this way: imagine that everyone you speak with is talking with a mouthful of marbles. Half of their words are made up out of thin air. Some of it sounds like a foreign language. All of it is either shouting, whispering or mumbling, with emphasis on speed and emotion rather than dignity and clarity. You could be excused for getting a butcher knife and running amok. HereForTheBeer, thank you again for your help.

My TV is salvage from the trash. I live on a very modest fixed income. A couple years ago (holiday season? Stimulus money? I don't remember any more) it seemed like everyone in my large apartment building purchased an LCD television, and threw out their old CRT. I had my pick of some big ones, and took this 25" CRT. I like it a lot, a Panasonic, but can't get the universal remote to control the volume. I suppose the model number is printed on the back, but it weighs about 60 lbs, so that's not easy to look at.

The Roku is an older 2000C model, the cheapest they offered.

I've currently got a nightmare of cables and two "hub" switch boxes for the many RCA cables, so everything can run into the TV okay. Nothing currently connects the computer to the TV, and I assume this TV would never display computer content.

I don't much care about sound, I'm perfectly happy with typical TV sound, or my inexpensive computer speakers. I do care about picture quality, and, of course, being able to switch easily between TV and internet.

You know, this is odd.....am I really the only person living in a tiny closet of an urban apartment who would like to save space by having one device serve as both television and computer monitor, but craving to finally have a BIG image to view movies and internet video?

Gotta be someone building a decent double-duty device that will scale down to viewable close up for internet, then shift up effortlessly to TV size....

It comes down to something called pixel density (PPI, pixels per inch). In general terms, the higher your PPI, the less you will be able to discern the pixels in a generated image. It's why Apple calls their iPad and iPhone "retina" displays. They have set an arbitrary value of PPI where the human eye is unable to discern pixels within an image. The larger your screen, the higher the resolution you will need to maintain a given PPI.

For instance, take this TV you are mentioning. The PPI is about 55. That's a 40" screen @ 1920X1080 (1080p) resolution. A 22" monitor at 1600x900 resolution (A lower resolution than the TV) generates a PPI of 83. So you can see why, when sitting up close where you can actually start to see different pixel counts, the small monitor would be preferable. The farther away you are sitting, however, the less the human eye can notice PPI changes. This is why a lower PPI isn't that bad for larger TVs, because they will generally be set further away from the viewer.

Yeah, that manual is really screwed up for the first dozen pages or so. Well.... there sort of is, but it's not the solution. Those HD CRTs are great at dealing with just about any resolution you can throw at them, even moreso the monitors but I don't recall seeing widescreen CRT PC monitors (I'm sure they exist but I never saw one). But that was the beauty of those monstrous 200 pound beasts. Full HD? Gorgeous. Standard def? Looks just like it would on a smaller set, only a bit bigger. The downside is that they didn't have HDMI since that came out after most of the CRTs went the way of the dinosaur. The best you would find on those is DVI and component.

What you may consider, though, is a receiver. Some of them will do resolution upscaling, it'll make switching much easier, you'll be able to ditch those RCA hubs (the receiver will be your hub), and you'll be set should you decide somewhere down the road to get some separate speakers.

For us, we're using a receiver to handle both PC and DirecTV chores. Does a nice job, and we're also using it to run a 2.1 speaker setup, with a second zone in the kitchen. But yeah, EC- gives good advice on the size. 40 inches is just too big to have that close. A 24-30 incher would be sweet but the TV selection becomes more limited as you decrease the size. I think, if you don't need the TV tuner, you might be able to get away with a monitor if you have a receiver with the proper inputs for your sources. The other thread talks about it a bit.

For what it's worth, we're using a 23" monitor with our receiver, and mounted it on a swing-arm so we can pivot it over about a 160-degree arc. That way we can use it in both the kitchen and the breakfast area (mostly TV duty), and it also works fine for using the PC right there at the counter. With this setup, we have DirecTV and the PC both going to the monitor, through the receiver. The PC handles, well, PC crap (we do mostly TV shows from cable network stations, recipes when swung over to the kitchen side, and music) and DirecTV does the rest. I haven't tried Netflix or a Roku box so I can't say for certain how they would scale to the screen. This particular receiver has a load of RCA video and audio inputs, as well as several HDMI connectors. What it lacks is COAX and S-video, which might be an issue depending on how you can connect the VCR and Playstation.

Anyway, something to consider: smaller and less costly monitor or TV, and an inexpensive receiver with the money saved on the TV. You can still use the TV speakers, and many monitors also have speakers.

I think I'd start by writing down your connection options for each device and going from there. For instance, a typical DVD player might have RCA (also called "composite"), component, S-video, and maybe HDMI. Your VCR should have COAX, RCA / composite, and S-video. Maybe also component but it would likely need to be a Super-VHS to have that.