What lcd tv's are best for connecting a PC with dedicated hdmi connection?

rapido

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I want to play pc games at the best quality possible and I wondered if anyone knew what the best tv's were for connecting a pc with dedicated hdmi? I'm having a difficult time finding info on supported resolutions and the maker's website haven't got any details! its ridiculous!

I'm looking at toshiba 37xv505d and lg 37lf75 , but the respective sites have nothing, so if anyone knows more about these tv's or of a good quality all round 37" lcd for £700 ish that also has good pc connectivity and good upscaling, please let me know. cheers
 
good upscaling

Play at native, and no scaling will occur. I've played games @ 1920x1080 on my 40" Samsung M86, looks superb.
 
One feature you may require is dts pass through to the TV's optical digital output from the HDMI input, as the audio output of your PC "may" go down the HDMI cable.

My Toshiba 40X3030D does not do this, so I no longer use the audio on my HD2600XT graphics card (even though I have the elusive ati dongle), instead reverting to the onboard SPDIF output from my PC to my AV-AMP.

The Toshiba just gives the EXT1 Output audio from the Optical (in my case the freeview tuner channel).

I advise looking for this feature in the forums though, as you may be some time explaining it to the "experts" that shift boxes in shops.
 
I've played games @ 1920x1080 on my 40" Samsung M86, looks superb.

ok! that's what i wanted to hear! Got an sli system that can run all games at 1680 x 1050 no probs (except crysis but that's no surprise) so a few more pixels won't hurt.

One feature you may require is dts pass through to the TV's optical digital output from the HDMI input, as the audio output of your PC "may" go down the HDMI cable.

Forgive me for my ignorance but I don't know what a dts pass is exactly. I always assumed i would need to connect audio separately anyway. The graphics card is a point of view 8800gt 512mb with dvi and hdmi connection in the back. What will a pc need to have for the audio to go through hdmi?
 
The ati 2400/2600 and 3000 series have on-board digital sound processing, if you install the supplied HD Audio drivers the motherboard sound output becomes secondary or disabled. So you either need to have a HDMI AMP, or a TV which accepts a HDMI (Audio + video) signal, and outputs a Optical Audio signal.........or as I have done, disable the HD Audio, and revert to motherboard Optical output.

The Nvidia 8000/9000 cards do not have onboard audio, and require a lead to be connected to a existing SPDIF header (Digital Audio internal PC connection) this is usually on your motheboard............so it still outputs audio and video via HDMI, however if you do not connect the SPDIF header then the Nvidia is still happy to output 1080p video, and you can still use the motherboard's digitial audio output via coax or optical.

So with your choice of graphics the DTS / Dolby Digitial Pass-through is not required, even with my ATI card it is a nice to have feature, as there is a work-around........except for my SFF mATX PC which doesn't have on-board Digital Audio. Hopefully that clears up the DTS / Dolby Digital Pass-through
 
ok, cheers. So if i connect the digital out spdif from my sound card to the graphics card - which i assume should have an input for this but i haven't checked yet - then video and sound will be output via hdmi. If not, then i can still use use the optical digital out of my sound card to connect to my av amp to get the sound and the graphics card will output 1080p video only, is that right?
 
I use coaxial output from M-Audio Revolution 5.1 to Av pre-amp, DVI to the TV.

If you're a gaming you'll want to use analogue 5.1 output, if you have a Creative Extreme Music (EAX only passes through analogue) unless you buy a "Live" encoding card (to DTS) then you can use digital out.
 
I've got a creative x-fi xtremegamer card with following spec

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24-bit Analog-to-Digital conversion of analog inputs at 96kHz sample rate
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24-bit Digital-to-Analog conversion of digital sources at 96kHz to analog 7.1 speaker output
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24-bit Digital-to-Analog conversion of stereo digital sources at 192kHz to stereo output


and connectivity:

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Speaker and Headphone connections for stereo to 7.1 (Line Out via three 3.5mm mini jacks)
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Line In / Microphone In / Optical Out* (shared 3.5mm FlexiJack)
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Auxiliary Line level Input (via 4-pin Molex connector)
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Intel HD Audio Compatible Front Panel Header (2x5pin)

* Optical Out supports stereo SPDIF out and pass through of multichannel DVD sound


There is a link here:-

http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=208&product=15853&nav=0

It does mention about live dts encoding in the description with powerdvd so that must mean the card can do live encoding. So if i use the optical output to an av pre-amp i should be able to get the full eax game effects shouldn't i? But what about the surround sound? Will i get surround sound through home-theater surround sound speakers when i play games or will it just be stereo?
 
For DVD's you can use digital out. But for games you should use analogue 5.1

That soundcard does not encode EAX to digital stream.
 
So i will not be able to use the tv surround sound set up for games unless i get a new card that encodes eax to a digital stream then yes? So the m-audio revolution does this then? But that means eax is done at software level and not hardware level like on creative cards so performance will take a hit. I think i read somewhere it doesn't actually make much difference though, i'll have to do a bit of research on this.
 
Since you already have the card, just use analogue outputs. It has EAX for the analogue outputs, and internal DTS/DD decoding.
 
I was just concerned how home theatre speaker systems would interpret analog output from the pc. I'm assuming this would not be a problem then if i want to get surround sound eax through a standard home 5.1 speaker system? I know a bit about computers but this will be my first home theatre build so i have no exprience of exactly how this all works
 

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