Lack of an ideal Monitor for S3

HD Projectors.

 

I have a Westinghouse HD TV (Monitor was the official label I believe), it has speakers but no built in tuner. The speakers are able to be disabled in the menus, and are located in the "back" of the TV, so they are not visible. It supports HDMI and says it supports 1080p.

 

There are several HD monitors available with no tuners (although the number available is shrinking), but they do include spaekers (except for the front projection units). I would expect that the cost of the 10-15w speakers in most of them is so small (in relation to total cost) that there is no incentive to create a separate product line.

 

You could look for a computer monitor with HDMI, but you're not going to get anything over 30".

 

Panansonic, and maybe others, have "professional" (ie non-consumer) lines of equipment that come without tuners. You used to be able to get them without speakers and amps, but I think most now have at least built-in amps for which you can buy speakers that attach to the "monitor." As stated above, many come with monitors, probably because of the small additional cost of low power amps & speakers. These units are not usually available at the big box stores and usually have higher MSRP's. These are the types of units that walmart and others are mounting throughtout their stores. Of course Walmart will buy 10,000 at a time, so they can get them pretty much how they want them.

 

In my search for the "right" display for my needs, I found that by going out of the mainstream and into the "pro" non-tuner market, it wasn't worth it.

The tuners, speakers, and potential cableCARD slot on the consumer units don't add as much cost to them as the fact that they are huge production runs decreases the costs.

I found pro units didn't offer as much "user friendly-ness" and consumer inputs for the money I was spending.

YMMV

 

Here is one reviewed at Cnet and elsewhere.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16889187012

Unfortunately, the bad downside of some "professional units" is the lack of hdmi (without additional purchase). Accordingly, you should add the price of an hdmi port (about $125) to any purchase and compare such to consumer models.

You may want to checkout Pioneer consumer models, most of which have removable speaks. Pioneer plasmas have the best ratings but reviewers generally point people to Panasonic b/c of price.

 

As others have said without large production runs removing the stuff you sited doesn't save enough to be worth it. Also in order to call something a "TV" it has to have an Over the air (OTA) tuner.

Good Luck,

 

Projectors.

Best I've seen is the Panasonic AX100U

At around $1,500 US it's around the same price as a big plasma. Image about double the size.