to 1080p or not

The question I have beaten to death has come back to life. I was trying to show my wife the difference between 1080i and 1080p last night so I put up a nice 1080p picture of trees and a stream. I pointed out the wonderful detail and then lowered the resolution to 1366X768 and said and here it is at 1080i. My wife couldn't see the difference.

I couldn't really tell much difference either. The main difference was not in the picture but in the desktop, we had lost a lot of real estate. I flipped the resolution back and forth several times until my wife finally conceded that she could see a minor difference and that 1080p was better.

I should have brought up a PIP with television, an MCE window with HDTV in it and a browser all at the same time. Then changing the resolution would have shown how much better 1080p is.

I guess the point of this is if you can find a 1080i monitor in the size you like for a lot less than the 1080p monitors then buy it. If the price is close go for the 1080p. You'll be happy either way. I'm ok with this because the price I paid for this monitor is less than competing 1080i models.

Did I mention I love this monitor?

OK, enough of the 1080p 1080i debate, I promise to bring up new subjects soon.

Gaming on the big screen

I finally got the last pieces together so that I can game on my big screen tv. I had to buy a 15' USB cable and a USB hub to extend USB behind the couch and around to my easy chair for the mouse. I forgot to buy extension 3.5mm cables for my headphones and microphone. WWW.monoprice.com is sold out on 25' 3.5mm extension cables so instead I used an old microphone I had laying around and ran the sound through the stereo, that wound up working well.

Gaming at 10', the distance from the tv to my easy chair, was difficult. I couldn't see the finer details in the game. I tried lowering the resolution to make everything larger but this didn't help. Company of Heroes, my current game of choice, scales the image so that you see the same text and graphics no matter what resolution you are at. At higher resolutions the graphics look more detailed but they are the same size as lower resolutions.

I wound up pushing my easy chair forward about five feet. At a five foot distance viewing everything was perfect so I changed the resolution back to 1080p and played. Finally the holy grail, 1080p gaming on a 47" tv. Incredible.

Was it better than gaming on my 19" monitor? Yes and no. Graphically it looked the same, 47" at 5 feet is not that much bigger than 19" at 1 foot. The sound coming through my stereo was cool but not that much cooler. The easy chair made all the difference. I was comfortable, kicked back with my legs raised playing for hours on end.

Yes, this is the life.

The wonders of a pc connected to your television

I'm still playing with the new 47" Westinghouse 1080p monitor connected to the Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 computer. I'm having a blast with this combination.
I watched an episode of Jericho on CBS last week, the first that I had seen. I liked the premise of the show so I browsed to CBS' website and found that they had all of the episodes available for watching online. I've now watched four of the twelve available episodes and am enjoying the series.
Prior to purchasing the Westy I would have had to watch the episodes on my computer's 19" LCD while sitting in my cramped office. Now I can lounge in my recliner in the front room and watch the shows in beautiful HD.
A problem has appeared in the MCE computer, one of the HD tuners does not appear to be working. I can only watch or record one show at a time right now. When a scheduled recording comes up the computer pops over to that channel wether we are done watching the current show or not. I'll have to rectify this problem asap.
So, what's next? I'm getting setup to play "Company Of Heroes" on the big screen, I needed to buy a USB hub and a long, 15', USB cable to reach the easy chair via the back of the couch. I didn't want to spend the extra money on a wireless mouse, wired always works out better for gaming and the parts cost about $20 shipped from www.newegg.com. I'll let you know how the gaming at 10' from the set turns out.

1080p the good, the bad and the ugly

Since I purchased the Westinghouse LVM-W471 last week I have been enjoying playing with it. Not all of the play has been good but most has. Here's a breakdown:

The Good:
Picture quality is incredible.
Resolution is incredible.
Design is very nice, looks great in my front room.
Remote is simple to use and well layed out.

The Bad:
Windows XP MCE 2005 is hard to read from ten feet away.
Sitting in my easy chair I have a hard time reading windows fonts.
I can increase the text in the window at ease with CNTRL + but increasing the font size for menu items has proven much hard. I've gone to the Appearance tab in Display properties and raised the font size to Extra Large Fonts. Unfortunately not all fonts change with this setting. I've got more digging and testing to do.

I also haven't figured out how to get both the internal and external speakers to operate at the same time.

The Ugly:
Only one component input, I'm using it for my SD cable box and have to unplug it to plug in my NES to play M.U.L.E.

wow, what have I done

The new monitor (not a televison because the Westinghouse 47w1 doesn't have a tuner) is incredible. 1080p computing and gaming is incredible. Movies and HDTV look incredible.

Web browsing does not look incredible.

The text is so small when sitting 10' away from a 47" monitor that I kind of wonder if I made a mistake in not buying a 1080i instead.

I use cntrl + in windows to enlarge the text in windows but the text in the windows frames and drop down menus is not enlarged. I tried setting larger text in properties but will need to revisit this.

Now I'm wondering if I should have saved two to three hundred dollars by buying 1080i instead of 1080p. If I had gone the 1080i route I'd never know as stores aren't setup for you to test the monitors as you will use them at home.

Other than small, crisp text this monitor is the cat's meow and I'm sure I'll work out the small text issue. In the meantime I am watching incredibly beautiful video on an extremely capable monitor.

I have my HTPC (Home Theater PC running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005) plugged into DVI port 1. My SD (Standard Definition or non HD) Cable box is plugged into the composite video. My DVD player is plugged into Component Video 1.

I have extra ports now, one more of each DVI and Component and an HDMI all empty and waiting. What devices will I add to this monster next?

I am happy with my purchase, when I look at the price difference between what I paid and the similiarly sized 1080i systems I realize I did the right thing.

Waiting to find a good price on a Westinghouse 1080p was good, jumping on a great price for the 47" was even better.

Wooohoo, I did it!

I finally purchased my HDTV. Now I am eagerly awaiting delivery. I wound up purchasing the Westinghouse 47" LCD monitor from Best Buy. I had never considered this monitor because of the price, I ran across a deal on BestBuy.com that dropped the cost to $1622, about $300 more than the 42" Westy. I had to jump on the deal for that price.

The Westinghouse LVM-47w1 sports 1080p, two DVI inputs, one HDMI, two component and one composite. I think I'm pretty well covered with inputs.

I'll let you know how the monitor looks as soon as I get it and hook the HTPC to it.

Still looking, still waiting

Prices are coming down for the 720P sets, I saw some 37" LCDs for under $600 but the 1080p sets are holding onto their prices. I'm determined to get the Westinghouse 42" 1080P monitor for $999 but if a 1080p 37" showed up at $899 I'd probably jump.

I've been reading up on media center extenders lately, so far the Xbox 360 looks like the best deal but it also looks like I'd need to upgrade my MCE to Vista to get it to work.

I'm thinking of building a new computer in a case that looks like a piece of audio equipment to run my MCE in. It would still be nice to have an extender for the bedroom but that can wait.