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TV to be used as secondary monitor.. settings?

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deathman20

High Speed Premium Senior
Joined
Aug 5, 2002
Ok what I got here I got my Dell monitor as my main monitor, though when I do work from home its nice to have a secondary monitor running instead of flipping between programs and such. So recently I got a Vizio 26" which works great next to my Dell, nearly same physical vertical height.

With that, course it does not look like a PC monitor when in use... not nearly as chrisp with images, text looks odd, etc. Managed to get the overscan set to 0% so its normal screen size. Tried to run the cleartype font program on it and little change to that. Is there any tools or other ways to get it to be similar setting to a normal PC monitor? Just curious. This is connected via HDMI cable currently as my VGA cable I've been trying to use doesn't work at all setting this up as a secondary monitor.

Next up, when both displays are active, the video card ramps up in speed. Is there a way to kill this or is this just a bios setting that should be changed? Goes from 150/250 to 500/1200 for clocks. Rather annoying since it starts to ramp up the fan speed as well because of the increased heat. And no im not using this for a gaming setup so speed wise its not an issue.

Last but not least, i can go into CCC and disable/enable the monitor pretty quickly but is there a better way to do this? Its not that I don't want the PC to pick up the secondary monitor, its I just don't need it active if im watching a movie or tv and I have something on that screen I can't see.

Yes I could of gotten a TV card, and another monitor for this task but I wanted a true dedicated TV for future purposes (possibly move this into the bedroom after I build a new room). Then I could get a truly dedicated monitor and use a bigger TV in the room :)

Specs for the TV is a Vizio 26" Internet Application TV. So it has a bunch of apps, ethernet and WiFi N connections.
 
The 500/1200 clocks are there to stop flickering when more than 1 display is active. You could use the windows key + p to disable displays quickly. I can't help you on why things look odd, it could be because the dot pitch is lower.
 
The 500/1200 clocks are there to stop flickering when more than 1 display is active. You could use the windows key + p to disable displays quickly. I can't help you on why things look odd, it could be because the dot pitch is lower.

I agree, this TV was likely not designed to be viewed close up as a monitor so the dot pitch probably sucks (not clear text). You can try settings with the AA in CCC, like morph, to see if that fixes it. You can manually lower the clocks a little but it is done like that to prevent flickering. Also, the HDMI cable will be better than the VGA in terms of image quality usually unless you are running a strange resolution. Have you tried a different resolution as well?
 
Cool thanks for the info on the Win Key + P! Thats wonderful!

As for the clock thing, thats cool, can understand that was just curious really to why that would be.

Though I know the DPI is lower it should still give pretty crisp results considering it is a 1080p TV. I mean images, and the mouse cursor look very crisp just text. Like typing this no major issues. Text when its posted is pretty good. Though signatures if bolded or italics suck.
 
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