I'm getting ready to buy a large screen (>50 inch) HDTV monitor for my new office's conference room, primarily as a display device driven by a laptop. We are having a custom table built so that power and cables will come up through the floor into the middle of the table for convenience and saftey. Alas, I've become depressed and confused reading about HDMI, DVI-D, and the inability of most common HDTV monitors to accept a signal from a PC even if it has a HDMI or DVI-D port. And what genius thought it was smart to carry only the video but not the audio over a new format like HDMI or DVI?
Right now I'm thinking about buying a device for about $600 that I can plug just about anything into (HDMI, S-Video, RCA) and it then sends the signal over two CAT5 cables to another box that then plugs into the HDTV monitor. This solves a couple of problems by now requiring that we only fish CAT5 cables though conduit rather than all the various cable formats. But it still leaves me with the problem of what monitor to buy. I am quite hapy with my SONY LCD HDTV I have at home, but, as noted above I don't think this will work that well connected to a PC. I think I prefer LCD to plasma for cost and longevity reasons, but other than that, I have an open mind.
Any good references, thoughts or suggestions out there?
Rut-roh...now you've got me worried about the setup we're planning for our showcase account. I know nobody thought of this before buying the massive LCDs (done before I got here, so don't blame me ;-). Drop me a link to that magic black box when you have time.
Posted by: Scott Chaffin at 11:48 AM