Jeff Baker said: I'm wondering the same thing. How f****ng hard would it be to put something on this site about what kind of port the TV tuner has? Says it receives standard NTSC. I would hope it has a component video port at minimum but something in me is afraid it's some cheap coax piece of crap... which would mean we're back 10 years ago using RF modulators.

Wow. That's some serious hostility you have there Jeff. TouchSmart Community has been online now for, let's see, less than a week. We're constantly working on new content for the site, but it takes time.

As to the question, the internal tuner documented in the manuals for the TouchSmart models that have this feature. The tuner is a NTSC/ATSC tuner, and the unit also has S-Video input capabilities with analog audio. This means that, yes, you could hook up a PS3 or XBOX 360 to the TouchSmart, however, there's no external HD input included for set-top boxes. This means that you're limited to analog video through the S-video port or your basic "Channel 3 adapter." There's really no such thing as an ATSC modulator for consumer gear (yet), but maybe one day there will be. 

An important thing to remember, the TouchSmart isn't a television, it's a touch enabled PC. Using the tuner and Windows Media Center, you can double up some duty for TV usage, but it won't help you if you rely on a HD satellite or cable box. There may be aftermarket peripherals to enable real-time HD component video capture through USB, but I don't know of any off the top of my head.

I will agree with you though that having HDMI or component video input would be a nice feature, particularly on the 25.5" model where you may want to use it as both a normal TV hooked to a set-top as well as a computer, but I'm not sure often that would be the case.

Mind Over Matt'er - Technology musings, opinion, and more straight from TechLore's head geek.

kevinsmg said: Matt, but you know having Display outputs and inputs in this kind of multimedia PC is a very basic and essential requirement!! The way it is designed not having HDMI input / output makes it hard to use. In addition I think the Touchsmart software does not work properly when I change the font DPI, is there anyway to get around?

I'm not so sure. I think HD capable inputs and outputs would have been a nice addition, but I'm not convinced it's a "requirement." I can see use cases for having them, but if your goal is to pass off video to an external display, what's the point of having the TouchScreen. What are some of the things you want to do with it that having HD capable inputs and outputs are needed? I think it would be a good discussion. 

Also, there are other ways to get HD capable video in and out of a TouchSmart. For starters, the Slingbox PRO HD would let you watch any HD video source (TiVo, other DVR, cable, etc) on it or any other client. And Sling's new SlingCatcher would let you pass video back out and on to any other TV (for certain use cases).

I've never tried to change the font DPI in the TS. I'll try it and see what happens in the TouchSmart Software.

Mind Over Matt'er - Technology musings, opinion, and more straight from TechLore's head geek.

The initial version of the HP TouchSmart software does not support changes to DPI, but we have an update that should be published soon that will support any DPI and any display resolution.

The update is out now. Go to http://support.hp.com and type in the model number IQ504.
[Edit 2008-11-21: This update may actually not have the DPI fix. I need to verify that.]

any news about the update? tried to run my ps3 on the iq810 via the s-video input but i didn't find out how to run it. this dpi fix would be such an improvement. hope its available soon

For the DPI fix it would be the HP TouchSmart Application update, except the update that is currently posted does not have the DPI fix in it yet. A new update should get posted soon that has the DPI fix in it.

To hook up an external unit through s-video is a different issue. Community member Target described a trick for how to do it in this post: http://www.touchsmartcommunity.com/forum/thread/107/how-do-u-hook-up-ur-xbox-...