Hi all,

Need some quick advice on something. I want to get my dad a new TV for the holidays. He's a big football fan, but isn't too "up" on new technology....hence, has never replaced his 25" big ol' CRT TV :) He's limited for space, so needs something no bigger than around 28" or so, regardless.

He has an HD digital cable package with a Motorola HD set top box (of course, it's outputting right now to this ancient CRT...go figure).

My question is: since there don't seem to be too many HDTV's in the 28" range, can I just get him a 1080p HD computer monitor in that size range, without a tuner, and have it accept the signal from a cable company's HD set top box for use as a regular television?

Will the picture quality of an HD computer monitor in this envisioned setup be comparable to a "dedicated HDTV" (as in, something that is designed primarily as a "TV" rather than as a "computer monitor"?) Would the quality be the same, for all intents and purposes? I'm particularly concerned with any differences in terms of rendering fast motion (since the whole point of the exercise is to improve his football/sports-viewing experience).

Oh...and what about sound? He'd just need basic TV speakers, not Dolby 5.1 movie surround sound...he's far from an audiophile :)

Thanks...pardon my ignorance, I've never had to contemplate buying a computer monitor as a television :)

Yes. In fact there are alot of newer computer monitors that have HDMI inputs.
Here are two from newegg.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010190020%201309829303&name=28%22

Also What's the room setup like?

If you are going to be replacing a 25" CRT, I would go with a 32" LCD TV. A 32" 16:9 LCD TV should give comparable screen real estate as a 25" 4:3 CRT.

Edit: Also, many current LCD Tvs use 120hz or 240hz processing in order to help with improving motion resolution, which is a general LCD problem. I belive most LCD monitors use 60hz so if rendering fast motion is one of your concerns, thats again another reason to go with a LCD TV over a LCD monitor because of the 120hz or 240hz processing the tv will provide for improved motion resolution. Of course, if motion resolution is really a huge concern for you, then you will want to go with a plasma tv as plasmas are in general far superior to even the best LCD TVs as far as motion resolution is concerned. Unfortunately, I haven't seen a plasma smaller than 42" so if a 42" plasma is not an option for you, then I would go with a 32" LCD TV that has at least 120hz (if not 240hz) processing.

I have a fairly new 27.5in LCD for the computer monitor and it doesn't even compare to the 40in Bravia I just put in the bedroom. First of all they over inflate the stats with dynamic contrast. Going off my own monitor its DC 50000:1 (1000:1). The real number there is 1000:1 versus a native 5000:1 on the TV.

EDIT for the post below me - Source is the same both from the computer. Its used for HTPC with mostly OTA-HD.

I agree completely with Marty. I believe I have read that there is a different color space for PC monitors, so I am not certain if the colors would be correct on a PC monitor. For televsion, video, motion pictures, white is 6500k. I believe that white and the color space are different for a PC monitor.