A couple days ago I decided I'd like to output from my PC to my 40" HDTV for gaming purposes. I've had my HDTV a few years now but I never bothered to hook it up to my PC because I didn't have a cable long enough at the time and I just plain forgot about it. I wish that I had tried it then...
Holy shit does it look amazing. The last time I tried to output to an SDTV years and years ago it looked like complete shit (Even by SDTV standards). My graphics card has an HDMI port and my TV has a couple open HDMI ports so I arranged things temporarily so my short 6' cable could reach for testing purposes. I just finished ordering a 25' HDMI cable from Amazon.
It all started because I was thinking about Trine. I play Trine with an Xbox 360 controller on my PC. I have one of these wireless receivers for my PC. Trine is a gorgeous game so I was thinking, you know, I already play it with a controller so it's not like it will be awkward sitting in a lounge chair with a mouse and keyboard. What if I output video to the TV, too? Thus my experiment a few minutes ago to see what it looked like. Trine is even more amazing at 40" than it is at 22".
In addition to trying out Trine I also spent a couple minutes with the Diablo III beta and Evochron Mercenary. Both looked amazing. I'm sure I can come up with some way to make a mouse/keyboard comfortable from my gaming chair. I'll figure that out once the cable arrives and I get things hooked up.
As a nice bonus I hadn't considered, since I'm using HDMI outputting audio to the TV is as simple as changing the output device. I can easily change audio devices via an AutoIt script. Indeed I already have just such a script to toggle between my speakers and headphones. The best part about this, though, is I can use my Turtle Beach Ear Force X31 headphones since it gets its audio from the TV output. That's a lot better than having to use my PC headphones (Turtle Beach Ear Force Z2) which have a cord.
I feel so stupid for not trying this sooner. It took just a couple minutes to orient my TV and PC in a position to stretch a 6' cable between them. Another few minutes to sort out the image scaling issue and then 30 seconds to pipe audio to the TV. The worst part, though, is I spent a grand total of $7 on the 25' cable that will make this work permanently. That's a ridiculously small price to pay.
If you have a nice HDTV and play PC games then I strongly suggest looking at hooking the two together. You can do more than just play games, of course. If you watch a lot of videos but don't have a way to stream to the TV then this is just the ticket (I've streamed video to my Xbox 360 before from my PC but that's no longer going to be necessary). Given how cheap cables are as long as you have a wireless mouse and keyboard that will work from your TV viewing seat you can likely get PC output to it for just a few bucks (Assuming your graphics card has HDMI output, of course).