MONITOR AS PRIMARY TV SOURCE

[skinny81]

Quick backgound: I have limited space and lots of wants. In an ideal situation
I can use my XBOX 360 as DVD player and gaming console (as is it is designed) and my PC on one monitor. The monitors that I am looking at have DVI and VGA. If I plug both PC and XBOX (one into vga and one into DVI) in at the same time, is there an input function like TV's or will I need a KVM switch? Are there monitors that have input switching between DVI and VGA, or are they the same input. I realize it will be monitor specific, I am asking in general. Any responses will be greatly appreciated. Is anyone doing anything similiar? Thanks in advance.

 

[MakubeX]

Quick backgound: I have limited space and lots of wants. In an ideal situation
I can use my XBOX 360 as DVD player and gaming console (as is it is designed) and my PC on one monitor. The monitors that I am looking at have DVI and VGA. If I plug both PC and XBOX (one into vga and one into DVI) in at the same time, is there an input function like TV's or will I need a KVM switch? Are there monitors that have input switching between DVI and VGA, or are they the same input. I realize it will be monitor specific, I am asking in general. Any responses will be greatly appreciated. Is anyone doing anything similiar? Thanks in advance.

There sure is, the one I have in my living room right now does. I don't know if you've heard of the Westinghouse LVM-37w3, but it's a very popular monitor right now because it's an awesome monitor for the price.

It's a 37" LCD with an S-MVA panel, a native resolution of 1920x1080 (that's 1080p), 8ms response time and a Contrast ratio of 1000:1, all for just $1,000 (actually $989 at mwave.com. It doesn't have the deepest blacks but they are still quite good. It also has tons of inputs (HDMI, DVI, VGA, Component... you name it). You can switch through all of these inputs with just the click of a button on your remote control, so you don't even have to leave the couch.

Since the Xbox 360 can display 1080p content, your games will look oh so very sweet on this screen. On the other hand, regular Standard Definition (SD) Television won't look that great because of its low resolution (480i). It doesn't look that bad either, but I recommend watching it from 6~7feet away for it to look almost as good as it wood on a regular SD TV. DVDs will look a little better than SD TV because they play at 480p. You can always get an up-converting DVD player like the Oppo 981HD. Although, if you play everything through your PC (that is TV and regular DVDs) then you can upscale the signals with a tuner and have them look better. You can also watch HD DVDs with the Xbox360 HD DVD Player in all their 1080p High Definition glory. Remember this is a monitor (though it sells like a TV) so it doesn't have a TV Tuner, but you probably won't need it anyway.

 

[NicePants42]

In case you're looking for something a little smaller and more computer-monitor-y, HP has a nice 30" panel that is nearly identical to Dell's, except that it comes with multiple inputs and a switch to change between them.