LCD TV Rating

Why do computer monitors have higher resolouton than LCD televisions?

I was wondering why LCD or TFT computer monitors often have higher resolution than LCD TV. Surely a HDTV will have better picture than a computer monitor which has higher resolution but no HD.

Public Comments

1. The reason for this is that a monitor is intended to be used up close, whereas a TV is viewed from further away, so it doesn't "need" the extra resolution. Also, the things that you use a computer for (viewing and editing text using word processors, reading Web pages, etc.) benefit from the higher resolution more than just watching TV shows or movies, which is all that a television is generally used for.
2. A TV had something like 30 PPI or points that change colour in each inch of screen, A Computer monitor is used for more detailed work in many cased and being closer to you when using it has a PPI of .35 Computer monitors have been HD and above for many years and when they stick HD ready.. that's just marketing fluff. A computer monitor is much better than a HDTV in most cases, because they are higher spec. BUT don't get it wrong as quite a lot of LCD TFT screens are not higher rez than HD. But then 720 is very common even in CRT monitors. FYI - a 1650 X 1050 Computer TFT (which should be the standard nawa days) would show as much detail as a 1.73 Mega pixel camera. Old Non HD would be .4 mega pixels..
3. A TV is intended to give you an overview. For that, you have to have a viewing distance of no less than 5 x the diagonal of the screen. A computer monitor is intended to view (small) parts of the screen e.g. Icons, thumbnails, words, small photo's and movies. So you need a higher resolution on that small part you are looking at. As soon as you display a full size picture or movie on the computer monitor, you automatically increase your viewing distance to get the total overview again. But than you can do with the lower TV resolution and the computer monitor is overdone for that matter.