anyone have any experience with using both HTPCs and the native hardware on any lcd tvs? (say 940mw)

i have heard some bad things regarding some 3rd party tuners...

i am wondering if quality is really a concern on the native hardware of an lcd tv aswell.

i realize that there is likely to be differing quality among different brands but should the average quality difference between native hardware and setting up an HTPC be a deciding factor?

any help would be much appreciated.

hmm. maybe my first post was a bit convoluted.

what i am asking is, are HTPCs ALWAYS superior to native hardware on a monitor or are HTPCs just a step up from plugging, say a dvd player, straight into the projector?

Well I don't know about the 940MW, but I have a 931BW here and the scaler on it is pretty bad I think. Scaling 720p to 1440x900 introduces a lot of artifacts. In particular, there is a macroblocking effect similar to what is seen on some upconverting DVD players. I ended up just putting it back in the box and am going to resell the display on ebay. I've bought a a westinghouse LTV-19W6 to replace it. It costs about $100 more, but has the benefits of component input as well as old crap inputs like S-video and composite, and support for interlaced resolutions. The Samsung display didn't support 480i/1080i, at least not over DVI. Also the scaling hardware in it is infinitely superior. The artifacts I saw on the Sammy LCD are gone on the TV.

IMHO, your best bet is to just buy an LCD TV rather than an LCD monitor if you're connecting directly to your sources. YMMV since your 940MW is a different model, but they have very similar specs.

My guess is LCD TV's have better scalers since they're meant to be connected directly to a SD/HD video source. Most HDCP compliant monitors are probably meant to be connected to a PC, which will obviously do all the scaling itself.

If you already have an HTPC, then you might be able to save a few bucks going with the LCD monitor. However, you'll run into other issues. For example, there is no way to input the digital signal from an HDCP enabled set-top box into the computer at this time. There are no HDCP compliant capture cards that are reasonably priced. So, you'll have to use component into the HTPC, which degrades image quality, and sort of defeats the purpose. Based on my experience with HTPC's, they don't currently do everything I would want them to do. If you're only watching DVD's or playing games, this might not be an issue for you.

I know this post was all over the place, but I thought I'd share my HTPC experience with you. In summary, I decided to go with an LCD TV in my PJ to simplify things and ensure that I have support for all resolutions 480i-1080i over any input I choose.

no, your info was awesome. thanks alot for sharing. gives some specifics to look in to. i was hoping that i could rely on the hardware in lcd tvs to be good stuff, especially from samsung, but i guess ill need to do a little more in-depth digging. thanks again