Television or Monitor?

Filed Under HDTV

Quick tip today so I’ll get right to it, I see a lot of unnecessary confusion around the differences between what counts as a television and what classifies as a monitor and wanted to explain it real quick. All in all the differences between televisions and monitors are really simple but as with many things in the world of consumer electronics, some salespeople have a tendency to overcomplicate the terminology.

In a nutshell televisions come with built-in tuners monitors do not. Now that alone in many circles sums up the difference between a television and a monitor, but some salespeople have taken it upon themselves to throw built-in speakers into the mix as a quantifier for what constitutes a television or not.

Here’s the problem with using speakers as a gauge for what is or isn’t a television versus a monitor. While it’s true almost all televisions will have built-in speakers some monitors (aka tuner-less displays) also have built-in speakers, but clearly the presence of speakers doesn’t make up for the absence of a tuner.

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