HD PC Monitor?

Question

Hello. i am currently trying to upgrade my PC to play HD-DVD's blu-ray ect...
however i cannot find a monitor for a pc that states HD... (if someone could find a HDTV pc monitor ide be very greatfull)
is this because they dont exsist or because all resonable spec monitors will play HD (given the right conections ect?)

my current monitor is a LCD 21'' widescreen with a standard VGA input. (believe its anloge).

i have also downloaded PowerDVDHD wich as a useful engine in it that lets you know what parts you need to view HD...

it states my monitor connection as analoge but with a green light next to it (red would be incompatible)

Answer 1

As far as I am aware there are two issues that would limit your plating HD-DVDs or Blu-Ray.

Resolution. I am guessing that your monitor has a 1680 by 1050 resolution. That's better than 720p, but smaller than 1080p (1920 by 1080) so you would have to upscale a 720p signal to fill the screen, and downscale a 1080p signal.

Also your aspect ratio is 16:10 as opposed to 16:9, so either you would need small black bars top and bottom of the image, or things would be slightly stretched vertically. Probably you would not notice.

The other problem is content protection. Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD are requiring HDCP encoding over the player (your computer) to display This is only available over a HDMI link or a DVI link that has HDCP. So your video card has to have DVI out and HDCP encoding, and your monitor needs to have DVI in and HDCP decoding.

My understanding is that if you do not have this link then it drops the movie into a lower resolution, like 480p. Which makes paying extra for HD media a bit pointless.

Answer 2

the green light means even though it is analog it will still work with the hdtv program. best thing is to play a video and see how you like it. and yas there are hdtv/ pc in one monitors out there. go to wal-mart you will find one.