moniters vs. TVs for doom 3

[Guest dpercy]

Hi I am going to either upgrade my computer or get an xbox to play doom3. But I am confused about the differences between computer moniters and TVs. Will doom3 look better on a regular tv and xbox, or an equally powerful pc and moniter? Some people say moniter resolution is so much better than TV that moniter is better. Others say TV is better because of interpolation whatever that means. All I know is the evening news on my tiny TV looks a lot more "real" than any computer game. So does that mean TV is better than moniters for games as well? If so, why don't we use TVs in the place of computer moniters all the time? And if TV is better, why is it better? If TV is not better, then would HDTV make it better? Sorry if these questions are disorganzed but I am confused! If some tech savvy people could set me straight that would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Guest Dark_Fox]

Except for the HI Definition TV's the max relsolution is 640 by 480 (REAL LOW) and the dot pitch averages in around 30.. While for much cheaper you could get a nice 19in monitor that can go past 1024 by 786.. The TV does have smaller inbetween pixels that help with smoothing.. But overall go for a Monitor, it would a better choice.

[deadnail]

There is no doubt that a monitor will be better. Television output is usually limited to 320 by 240 at 24 frames a second. Anything more than this just interpolates it down. That just means it blurs it like a low quality jpeg image. Look at the evening news through your PC, it'll be a teeny little jagged window.

Besides, Doom 3 will be available for the PC long before a port to the X-Box.

If you have a decent computer and run Doom 3 at 1024 by 768 at 48 frames a second you're still getting around 5 times the detail at once. This also makes objects in the far distance visible while at the lower resolution they would just be a few unrecognizable dots.

[Guest elyuca]

Monit*O*r, of course. An average tv uses 50 year old technology. Monit*O*r technology is renewed everytime something better is out. (dot pitch, resolution, colors, sharpness, framerate, refresh rate, etc) And of course, my next monit*O*r will be a 21" flat screen CRT.

[GooberMan]

/me remembers playing an Amiga game on his TV
/me remembers finally getting a monitor and finding out a red blob that appeared during the game actually spelt "Light"

[Guest dpercy]

Thanks guys! Now this makes more sense to me. Now I will be sure to play on my monit*O*r lol. I have another question: say I have a 17" monitor and a TV with the same screen size. If you played the evening news full screen on the monitor, would it look the same as on the tv?
Also, I hear the recommendations for Doom3 will be pretty much the Xbox specs. Right now I've got a celeron running at 488 and a voodoo3! So I need to do a lot of upgrading. As far as prices go, do you recommend upgrading now or waiting until later this year (I'd like to play black and white and tribes 2 and stuff so upgrading now would be nice). THANKS again!

[Espi]

I would suggest upgrading the processor, motherbnoard and memory now, and upgrade the video card when Doom 3 comes out. Since by then video cards do much of the performance heavy display stuff, it won't need a beefy processor (I guess). I had a PII 300/64MB/Voodoo 3 3000 and updgraded to PIII 800/256MB but saved the Voodoo 3. Everything plays smooth @ 1024x768 with full details. Don't know about Tribes 2 and Black and white though, but I suppose they'd play just fine.

[NiGHTMARE]

dpercy said:

Thanks guys! Now this makes more sense to me. Now I will be sure to play on my monit*O*r lol. I have another question: say I have a 17" monitor and a TV with the same screen size. If you played the evening news full screen on the monitor, would it look the same as on the tv?
Also, I hear the recommendations for Doom3 will be pretty much the Xbox specs. Right now I've got a celeron running at 488 and a voodoo3! So I need to do a lot of upgrading. As far as prices go, do you recommend upgrading now or waiting until later this year (I'd like to play black and white and tribes 2 and stuff so upgrading now would be nice). THANKS again!

Actually, I seem to recall that B&W's minimum specs are a P233 and 96 megs RAM.

[Guest dpercy]

Espi said:

I would suggest upgrading the processor, motherbnoard and memory now, and upgrade the video card when Doom 3 comes out. Since by then video cards do much of the performance heavy display stuff, it won't need a beefy processor (I guess). I had a PII 300/64MB/Voodoo 3 3000 and updgraded to PIII 800/256MB but saved the Voodoo 3. Everything plays smooth @ 1024x768 with full details. Don't know about Tribes 2 and Black and white though, but I suppose they'd play just fine.

Yeah I feel the same way, I want to upgrade now. Tomorrow I'm going to get a microstar motherboard and an amd 850 chip and 256 of ram. It's basically a whole new system! THen I'll wait for a new vid card later. THanks again guys for all the advice!

[sirgalahadwizar]

most - if not all games appear better on TV, trust me on this!

The reason why is surprisingly ass-backwards from what you might think.

TVs are naturally low resolution - which isn't really much of a problem since they are about 648x484 in the first place (which is actually a pretty good res to hover at).

The real reason why they look good is because TVs naturally blur things from low dot pitch and you see about 1/2 as much blockyness. Trust me on this - If i was able to hook my TV up to my computer and play games that way I would, but because I have such a sucky system (that really doesn't like to be compatible btw) I can't - i'll be upgrading soon when the influx of computer buyers goes down (and prices go down as well). Since I don't know how to build my own computer like everyone around here does, Im probably going to get some cheap (non-brand) knockoff since I still don't have much money even though I work.