Monitor vs HDTV - differences?

The price of both monitors and HDTV's have dropped substantially over the last year with monitors still being much cheaper.

The questions become,

1- what are the differences?
2- can a monitor be used as a "normal" TV with either cable or Sat. dish?
3- the advantages / disadvantages of each?

This also leads one into the world of "free" TV via the internet - what is the real story on these sites?

Tks all - jb

 

you mean LCD TVs.
the difference is they come with the tv ports such as hdmi, scart, component and aerial so you can hook up game consoles etc.

Dacads

 

No, Dacads, I ment what I asked - but basically can, say, a 25 inch monitor be used as a "normal" TV hooked to cable?

And what about the "free" TV over the internet? Does it work? Can it be used instead of cable or sat TV? The pros and cons? - jb

 

My bad, what "free" tv are you talking about?
Websites are no good for movies/tv as they are usually low quality, you could buy a PCI TV tuner card though

Dacads

 

A monitor would need a tuner to get the different tv channels, or you would have to see if it could be hooked up to your dvd/dvr and use the tuner on it.
I suspect thats possible, but I never thought it thru.
That and the monitor dont have speakers so thats another issue to work thru.