1080p-is-the-answer-PC-use-tv-as-monitor

I have been using a 23" monitor with my 13" Macbook Pro for a couple of years. I'd expect more than two years life out of a monitor, but yesterday it stopped working and smoke started coming out of the top. I'm no monitor expert, but from my experience with electronics, this means it's toast.

So I find myself yet again at Best Buy browsing through the sorry selection of monitors. 23" is the max. So I think to myself, "I've got HDMI (thanks to the HDMI to mini display port adapter, which can be found at whatacable.com) why not check out the TVs and see if I could just use a TV as a huge monitor which would be great for looking at CAD drawings, Adobe Illustrator, etc. I found a great deal on a 32" LCD TV from a major brand that I trust and head back to the office where I spend the next 24 hours trying to get the resolution correct. I just couldn't get small text to look good. It was way too blurry to read email or read MS Word documents. I was searching for tips, messing with settings on both the computer and TV, but no magic solution. I even tried hooking it up via mini display port to VGA and in to the VGA port on the TV. No luck. I also tried hooking my desktop PC to see if it was an Apple issue. Nope. Same blurry text. Video looked amazing.

So begrudgingly I took the TV back. I hate returning items. As a small business owner I feel for manufacturers who have to take back merchandise. But at the end of the day, it wasn't working and I'd spent a pretty penny for a "monitor" that looked worse than my 23" monitor. So I brought my laptop to Best Buy and started plugging it in to different TVs. They all were blurry! I decided that I was going to go back to the 23" when it hit me. These were all 720p. Would a 1080p make a difference? I found a beautiful 1080p 32" TV and plugged in the HDMI cable. Bingo! Very clear. Not crystal clear, but a spectacular improvement. I told the salesman, "I'll take it.". I took it back to the office and problem solved. The answer did not lie in the settings of the computer or TV. 1080p was the answer.