Are you sure your monitor is not HD? Is it an LCD monitor or an older CRT monitor? If it is an LCD monitor what is its native resolution?

An HD monitor allows you to view your video at the same resolution as your produced HD video. If an LCD monitor's native resolution is not the same as your window's display setup then the image will be distorted. A dual monitor setup allows you to preview your edited video on the second display while editing on your primary display. I actually had this setup at one point, but I found that it took up too much desk space.

The cost for good HD LCD monitors has dropped a lot in the last couple of years. Q9300 2.5 GHz
4 GB Ram
Nvidia 9800 GT

Hi,
I have the an Acer 24" LCD monitor and a few weeks ago purchased a Viewsonic 24" LED monitor. As for Photo Editing I use CorelPhoto Paint X3 and find that on both in PhotoPaint I had to turn off color calibration for the various devices attched (Epson rx500 printer scanner) as the images when viewed in the program were slightly off, but once things were of I got good results., but I do not do a lot of Photo editing per se'.
As for Video editing I can't comment to much as my camcorder is just standard definition, but when edited in Power Driector 9 Ultra on a 32bit Windows 7 system take some time but the finished results are very acceptable when viewed on a DVD player. Just be sure (if you purchase) that as stated the monitor has 1920X1080 as native resolution, as some don't and you have degradation of quality.
The LED images on screen are excellent tho'.
JImM Intel i7-2600@3.4Gz Geforce 560ti-1GB Graphic accelerator, windows 7 Premium 12GB memory

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I switched to a 23" HD monitor. The size is good. The price was right and I can spread things out more while I am working. I often use it to watch movies because the quality is better than my television. __________________________________
CORNBLOSSOM

A good rule of thumb in selecting a monitor is to match the aspect ratio and pixel capability of the monitor to that of the final display. This way what you see on your monitor is what you'll get on the final "show time" screen. Win 10, i7

I have a 23" as my primary screen and a 24" 1080P LCD for my secondary. I run the PD window on the primary and my open folders & Splash Lite as my preview screen on the 24".

Recommend dual screen set up.

Panasonic SD9, Panasonic TM700, Panasonic SD600, GoPro HD Hero.

I want to add one big caution:

Make sure that any monitor you consider has a wide gamut!

A medium-quality CRT can display 16 million colors, or near enough. LCD monitors can not.

For example, the ones that came "free" with our Dell desktops at work are terrible. I had to fiddle for hours to get them to display light yellow and medium gray adequately for office applications. I can't even imagine doing graphics work with one of those.

When I bought my personal LCD, two years or so ago, I did a lot of research. I wound up with a Dell that was rated as "decent" in this regard. It's a 24-incher, and it was over USD 500 at the time. The "really good" ones were USD 1000+, but this is a hobby for me.

Jerry Schwartz

The native resolution for this monitor is 1680 x 1050 and that is how I run it. When I bought it, it was one of the best graphics edition monitors in the world and I paid a fortune for it. It is still a superb stills editing monitor but I can publish a mpg4 video to an SD card and run it here and it doesn't look so great; kind of DVD verses BluRay difference but I put the same SD card in my PS3 and it look wonderful on my plasma...which was the best when it was bought.
I've got a 20 inch HD TV in my bedroom I never watch. This PC has HDMI out and I have an extra cable. Think I'll give it a try to see the difference. Dell Studio XPS 7100 Minitower:
Phenom II 6 Core 1075T 3.0GHz processor - Black . ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 graphics card . 12GB DDR3 SDRAM,1333MHz . 300GB 10,000 rpm SATA Hard Drive . 12X Pioneer BluRay Burner . 16X DVD+/-RW . Windows 7 64bit .

One thing to consider, you PlayStation3 does upscaling. That may be one reason it looks better on the television. __________________________________
CORNBLOSSOM

That is true. Dell Studio XPS 7100 Minitower:
Phenom II 6 Core 1075T 3.0GHz processor - Black . ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 graphics card . 12GB DDR3 SDRAM,1333MHz . 300GB 10,000 rpm SATA Hard Drive . 12X Pioneer BluRay Burner . 16X DVD+/-RW . Windows 7 64bit .

I use 2 Gateway FHD2401 24" displays @ 1920x1200 each.
plenty of workspace, hd movies have black bar at the top and bottom, but it's ok I am viewing in full HD the monitor is just displaying a bigger screen then the movie. not the other way around. EVGA X99 FTW
EVGA GTX780 FTW
Intel Core i7 5930K
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