Dell 3008WFP Monitor as HD TV

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Dell 3008WFP Monitor as HD TV

morrisk

363 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#24598 28-Jul-2008 21:32

Does anyone have experience of using a Dell 3008WFP monitor as a HD TV? - the reason for looking to this option is one of size - the space I have to fit a new HD TV into means that any screen above 30" is too large. HD TV's all start at 32" and their width is too great. The Dell monitor is the right size but I need to be sure that it will work with a Sky HD box that I have coming.

Any advice or experience with this appreciated.

chiefie

I iz your trusted friend
5877 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#152229 28-Jul-2008 22:26

It is great as you will/can use other external tuner, like Freeview HD set top box, Sky digital set top box, or TCL Saturn Digital set top box, DVD player, PS3, XBox360 etc etc... but the down side is, there's no remote control to turn it off/standby. Except it timeout itself to standby.

Internet is my backyard...

«Geekzone blog: Tech 'n Chips Takeaway» «Personal blog: And then...»

Please read the Geekzone's FUG

Tradepub

Free professional, reference and technical white papers (affiliate link).

pyedp1per

25 posts

Geek

#152231 28-Jul-2008 22:37

I use it for media centre.

-It supports HDCP so you don't need to worry about DRM issues.
-Component and HDMI support 1080P
-HDMI Audio can be passed through to 3x 3.5mm analog jacks, It supports 2 channel PCM or Dolby Digital
-It can suffer from more picture and scaling artifacts since it has to scale upto a higher resolution.

morrisk

363 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#152529 29-Jul-2008 20:22

Thanks for the prompt and helpful replies.

I note the comment:

"It can suffer from more picture and scaling artifacts since it has to scale up to a higher resolution."

Is this a problem in practice watching either SD or HD television?

pyedp1per

25 posts

Geek

#152534 29-Jul-2008 20:37

All lcd displays look worse with a lower resolution signal, ie HD will always look better than SD, thats why Sky charge for HD!
The lower the source resolution the more it has to be scaled to match the display, ie:

-720x576 scaled to 2560x1600 has to add 3.5x as many lines horizontally.
-1280x720 to 2560x1600 has to 2x as many lines horizontally.

There are other factors like even though all dvds in NZ are 720x576 they aren't all the same picture quality, it depends how the movie was filmed, edited etc; getting it to display on your screen is just the final part in the process. If SkyHD is broadcast with a high quality picture then it will look really good, but not so good if they compress it too much, like the espn channel. Also note that different tvs scale in different ways so even with the source on 2 screens being the same you can still end up with a slighty different picture.

morrisk

363 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#157321 15-Aug-2008 22:20

Just to close this post - I have gone ahead and purchased the Dell 3008wfp monitor and I am using it with the Freeview hd box and Sky HDi - the results are great. Has turned out to be s good solution to getting a "tv" into a space that is too small for any 32" hd tv.