Slightly off topic, but what's the benefit of having a digital monitor connection? I've got an analogue one that I have an adaptor for my video card (you know, one of the ones with loads of pins in it).

Is there an appreciable increase in picture quality?

I'm not really sure what the point is. I will say that using a modern monitor at anything other than it's native res isn't a great idea in terms of quality.

I will also say that I got to use a 52" TV as a monitor for awhile doing spreadsheets, and it was awesome.

Unsure about quality, as my eyes aren't the best in the world, but if you watch movies you won't have the proper HDCP setup to watch it at 1080P.

Even though it was only 1920x1080 pixels on a screen twice regular size?

In my experience at least when it comes to cars men prefer small and fast, while women prefer big cars.

Anyway, regarding screen preferences, it's personal and also depends on the environment. Your living room is usually not designed to accommodate the TV, but the other way around, and usually because of the way the room is designed a bigger TV provides a better experience.

Personally when it comes to movies I don't care about resolution that much. 720p is as good as 1080p for me, and I've been known to watch a movie at 480p for a while before noticing it's not HD, simply because I was engrossed in it. For games it depends on the game. Sometimes a higher resolution really helps, such as in UI heavy games (RPG's and MMORPG's for example).

Thanks - so basically, given I don't watch movies through my PC, there's probably not much point in upgrading to a DVI monitor from VGA connector until I get an all singing and dancing new monitor and video card.

Yes, even though. As an experience it was great, and for what I was doing the lower pixel density was useful. I was doing a lot of comparing similar images, and it was kind of like having a magnifier.

1080 holds up fairly well at that size. (may have been an upper 40 something, I'm not certain) It's not like when we were trying to blow up SD feeds on 50" screens.

Analogue signals are far more likely to experience quality loss. I once had a monitor connected through VGA, and I noticed quite a bit of noise, in the form of colors showing up slightly differently - once I switched to DVI, the image was crystal clear. However, I tend to notice these things quite easily, so your experience is likely to be different.

It's mostly noticeable on solid colors; if it's not quite a solid color after all, that's caused by signal issues and switching to a digital connection should get rid of it.

This issue with your argument is apparent if you continue applying it.

I have a display that has over 200 pixels per inch. It is over twice as sharp as either of the displays you listed.. but it would suck for (ahem "proper") gaming because it is only 4.3".

I can play UT2004 single-player at 9-12 frames per second (which is what my Atom-powered server can achieve). Sure, it'd be nice to have a faster frame-rate, but it clearly isn't necessary.

Your display is 1 pixel per inch sharper than the 23" screen. Not only is that pretty much impossible to discern to any significant degree, especially during movement, it also has 762,880 less pixels to convey visual information to you with. That's over 35%!

For the same reason you choose low resolution, high quality, low cost, I would choose low cost, low quality, low resolution and high framerate (I played Assassin's Creed 2 at 800x600, minimum quality and still got sub-20fps on my previous machine) and another would choose high quality, high resolution, high framerate, high cost.

Personal preference.

^ Yes, this! ^

I agree with you 100%. And basically, that's what most people here are saying, even if they are saying it in different ways. I for instance will game on my somewhat generic 16" laptop (with just a plain ole intergrated grahics card) when traveling with games that'll work on there. At home for my pc, I have a 20" 1080HD monitor for my fav pc games. I have my XBox 360 hookled up to a 32" 720 Samsung, and believe it or not, in my living room, where I do most of my TV watching, I have my old ps2 and original XBox hooked up to a 50" Sony (1080) through composite cables so they play at 720, and for the most part they look fine (no where near as good as my pc on the 20" monitor, or the 360 on the 32" Samsung, not even as good as the laptop...cuz the small screen looks sharper than the large 50" of course). In other words, when I am playing on any of these different systems and screen sizes, resolution, ect., I seem to always be happy with the graphics, because generally, I become so engrossed in the games, I don't really consciously think of the graphics. If pressed as to which I think looks prettiest? The 32" Samung, and the 20" pc monitor...but really, it's pretty secondary to me, as it's the game(play) that really pulls me in and holds my interest.

Sure, graphics and resolution may bring more realism to your gameplay, and that definitely helps with the overall experience, but I usually find myself enjoying just about any game, regardless of the resolution, if they gameplay really has me engrossed.

I think i would stop playing, if i had to return to 17" at home. Laptops are laptops, but i simply want to have the - not only for games, but for desktop and all the windows i keep open at the same time. So small monitor simply start to get hard on my eyes and simply feels claustrophobic these days.

Using 24" 1920x1200 Eizo atm which is pretty nice, but i would go for 27" 2560x1440 in blink of eye if i just had the money for GPU. Screen prices are dropping and 2560x1440 27" dont cost actually all that much on Ebay (check the Korean ones, Yamakasi etc) - but unfortunately GPU's cost premium which i dont have for long long time.

If i had tablespace, id plug in two 20" 1600x1200 screens as well - got them for 20€ piece used so they werent really much of an investment...but naturally my old GTX 295 is hardly good enough to run anything on triple monitors..doubt that many can even be connected to it.

Anyways these things are certainly matters of preference....but ive also noticed that the people who make the biggest number of "not needing them" are also those who do not have them, nor have used them for any significant amount of time. Whether it is about video, audio, body fitness or fresh food. We get easily used to things and when we cannot have/change them and start to think that we also do need to.

Well. ofcourse at times the old things really are far superior to new.

What?! You can play a real-time game at that kind of frame rate? Gosh and I whine because I can't get Heroes 4 over 30FPS and it's turn-based! People sure have different opinions. :D

Of course. Graphics and realism has no substance. As much as I care for a high resolution and high frame rates I would never play a game for the sake of either only to have them over something that offers superior gameplay but inferior technical capabilities.

That's what I was thinking. I personally consider anything below 30 to be unplayable in most circumstances. Some, slower moving games get more wiggle room, but a twitch game like UT no thank you. Give me 75+.(not that it matters much with monitors not really having the 75, 85Hz refresh rates these days)

It's definitely not a frame-rate I would choose to play at, but I did to test out the capabilities of the machine (32 bots on a pretty small map) and I found it to be strangely fun.

It was a completely different challenge and requires a very different style of play. It could be a game mode called "Precognition" :P

Well... Most of the time you really don't need to, I mean a new screen is not exactly a matter of life and death :-P