New Monitor - A 42in LCD TV

I had researched this time and time again but couldn't get the answers I was looking for. Switching out my 24" for an LCD TV sounded tempting but I was concerned about image quality. Yes, LCD's look fantastic watching movies in 1080p or playing console games that were designed for such devices, but how would web pages and documents look? Would the text be clear or too crisp, would the colors be uneven? No one could tell me this, I would instead get a routine of how great my movies and games would look, well duh-uh!

Walmart had an LG 42" LF11 for a reasonable sum and right next to it was a Vizio 42" at 120hz for the same price. The image quality on the LG was better but knowing what hz is (refresh rate) and why it's important (more Frames Per Second), the Vizio looked more appealing so I did some research on 120/240hz LCD's.

It's all marketing BS.

That's correct, the LCD's do not display at 120/240hz as one would expect. It is instead a smoothing technology that takes lower frame output such as Movies and interpolates in-between frames to make the video look smoother. Anything not running at 60fps (a.k.a 60hz) will appear smoother but it's not true 120/240hz. This leaves the LG as the winner and I go purchase said TV, running home like a fat kid to the candy store.

Hooking it up was easy enough with a DVI-HDMI cable and Windows 7 detected it as an LG TV, no specific driver could be found on the LG website. On first boot the image was overblown and text was impossible to read clearly, but simply switching profiles solved the problem. One of the things I liked about the LG was the extensive custom settings which allows for a wide color adjustment gamut. I checked TweakTV (again) for a calibration profile, but none was to be found so I settled for the built in optimizer which does a decent job.

So to answer my question for any concerned: Yes, an LCD TV is a viable alternative for a monitor. Not surprisingly, gaming is magnificent and 1080p video manages to look even better - I will have to investigate buying a Blu-Ray drive for my PC. Now if I could only find a desk with 6' of depth between me and the screen...