back to article Samsung P2370HD TV-monitor

Combo TV-monitors are not a new idea, but all too often what you get is a standard PC monitor with a TV tuner bolted on. Yet with the P2370HD, Samsung has created a fully functional 23in widescreen TV, that’s designed to work just as well as a PC monitor. Samsung P2370HD Dual purpose: Samsung's P2370HD The monitor is …

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  1. frank ly

    Every little helps

    "It’s a welcome that suggests you’re going to be helped through this experience rather than left to fumble on your own."

    They seem to have got the psychological engineering sorted out nicely :)

  2. Edwin

    Not that new

    ...I have an old Samsung 741MP in the MBR as a telly, but it used to work as monitor/TV for when we had an au pair. Power savings by kids not being able to run 2 devices at once were enormous.

    Though nowhere near as nice as this pretty thing, it's very functional, easy to use and can still be seen quite often in e.g. shops.

    Oh yes - it's missing the annoying chime, which is a good thing :)

  3. zaax
    FAIL

    very expensive

    But why is it so expensive when 37" TV are well under £500 and 50" TV are under £1000? Sorry I should have known we live in rip off Britian.

  4. Colin Miller

    HDMI->DVI

    Does the DVI-D socket support HDMI link encryption?

    BTW, where's the SCART socket?

  5. Mark A
    WTF?

    Talking of monitors vs TVs...

    Can anyone explain why TVs still suffer from overscan issues? Plug a DVI into a monitor and you get a perfect 1:1 alignement. On a TV (and I've tried this with many, including my brand new Sony Bravia) and invariably the display is misaligned. Indeed NVidia's control panel has a feature to let you stretch/squeeze the secondary display visually to align it on your TV.

    Also console games and set top boxes still have to leave "safe area" borders that you can't use for UI in case it's offscreen for some people. And of course this also means you're not getting 1:1 output pixels on your nice 1080p supply chain.

    So what is it that TVs are doing differently (or more cheaply) than monitors in this respect? Just seems wrong that a digitial display with a digital input can't get this right...

    1. stephen 8

      @Mark A

      I have a Samsung LE32B450, and as far as I can tell it works 1:1 quite happily no adjustment required.

      It's not full HD 1360x768 rez, and I have to use the correct HDMI port on the back (only 1 of them supports PC in), or the VGA port (but it does tell me that in the manual).

  6. The Original Ash

    I never understoof HD on PCs

    I've had a 1920x1200 24" monitor for around a year and it cost significantly less than a 1080p HDTV. No HDMI input but then again... It's got an extra 120 vertical lines. Why would I drop the resolution?

    1. Steven Raith
      Happy

      @Original Ash

      Ash, I had the same conundrum when I was building a new PC back in April - screen real estate, or 16:9 aspect ratio?

      In the end I went for the slightly cheaper 1080p monitor - with HDMI input.

      Works a treat for movies, XBox/PC gaming, and still has plenty of screen real estate for general PC working [interwebs, office stuff, etc].

      No TV tuner in it though, but then, you can pick up a PC TV card for pennies compared to the cost of a combined telly/monitor, so if I want to watch live telly on it, I'll get one of them in the future.

      Steven R

  7. AdamW
    Coat

    I'm going blind

    I'm sure it says digital optical OUT ?

  8. john loader

    Why no Freesat

    With HD easier on Freesat an integrated tuner would make it attractive to me.

  9. Si 1

    Where's the SCART socket?

    The review says it has a SCART socket but I don't see one. I currently have a Samsung monitor/TV combo and I'm really pleased with it, it's a couple of years old now but it has picture-in-picture and the same wide array of inputs (including SCART). The screen is ideal for hooking up consoles: SCART for systems like Super Famicom/PS1, VGA for the Dreamcast, component for the Xbox 360 and HDMI for the PC.

    The P2370 sounds like a good next step in Samsung's range, although after seeing my brother's new HDTV screen with MotionPlus I'd probably want that on whatever screen I buy next.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      SCART on flying lead maybe?

      Good question. I don't know about this particular product, but on the high-end Samsung LED TVs the panel is too thin to carry a traditional SCART socket, so they bundle one on a flying lead. This in turn plugs into a (thin) connector on the main board.

      Maybe the reviewer can confirm if they've done this here.

      1. Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware (Written by Reg staff)

        Scart

        Right, folks, here's the deal on Scart.

        The UK version of the P2370HD comes with Scart in place of the composite-video portage, and that's the model our man reviewed.

        The pics Samsung supplied us are of the US model.

        New pic coming shortly.

  10. spencer
    Heart

    Can this handle other resoloutions?

    Would this Tv be able to handle more pc-like resoloutions as well as the standard 1920×1080 (or whatever it is)?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    daft question?

    Why would I want this rather than (say) a SyncMaster T220HD 22" model, currently under £200? Think of the beer I could buy with the difference. (So what if the T220HD is obsolescent, this one already is too as it almost certainly doesn't do DVB-T2 ie Freeview HD).

    And for the gentleman who asked about digital optical out - isn't it so your home cinema system can take an audio feed from the TV tuner in the monitor?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BIGGER!

    I want something like this but just slightly bigger. I've got a 26" space, but there's so little that fits the bill, without costing £600+ which is silly when a 32" TV can be had for < £300

  13. SImon Hobson Bronze badge
    Thumb Down

    RE: Talking of monitors vs TVs...

    BEcause for some reason the people who came up with the standards decided that no-one was interested in picture quality ! At least that's the only explanation I can come up with.

    Using HDMI, the picture is automatically scaled to create overscan - so when you nice shiny hi def source feeds it a nice 1920x1080 image, it doesn't simply map those pixels onto the 1920x768 pixels of the display panel, it rescales them first to guarantee a loss of quality. On many sets, there is an option for scaling (sometimes called something like "full pixel" mode), but not on Panasonic (according to their non-help centre), and generally not on smaller sets.

    It's an epic fail IMHO to designa system that's guaranteed sub-optimal quality.

    I was pleasantly surprised that my Samsung LE26B350 automatically does this mode if you use the HDMI input that's labelled as HDMI/DVI - I get the impression that Samsung actually understand that you might want to use one of these as a monitor. Just a pity they don't have S-Video, only component and composite, on the SCART.

  14. Craig 12

    Comments

    Overscan is weird in this day and age, but you can turn it off on most tellies. I've had a Samsung, Sony and Panasonic in the last 3 years, all were able to turn overscan off. (Of course, it had a different name on all of them!) So quit moaning about overscan and turn it off :)

    As for TV vs monitor, there are loads of other factors, from things such as design (most TVs are not this nice looking or compact) to response rate and frequencies etc. When I was in the market, I looked at a normal 1080p screen for dual duties, but couldn't find a TV that looked as nice as the Samsungs. Also, 1080p might be fine at 32" and up for movies, but I think maybe too low res for a desktop (and too big really if you're normal PC distance away). I find 1080p @ 23" on a normal desk to be just about right in terms of text size, web etc.

    What swung it for me was I wanted dual desktop, and Samsung do a TV version, and a non-TV version of their models, with the monitor only version being much lower priced. I was tempted just to use a TV card and get two cheaper monitors, but then you wouldn't have a nice remote, would need to have sound thru PC speakers etc.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Samsung seem to have this nailed...

    I've been using a 46" Samsung as my PC monitor for about 18 months now, and it does look exceedingly good - and whilst it does have some odd resolution omissions. it does support pretty much everything you will need, vfrom 640, 800, 1024, 1024 and 1200. I'd recommend any Samsung telly, actually!

    No, I don't work for them, why do you ask?

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