Flat-screen TVs have gotten cheap enough that it’s possible to get two midsize TVs for the price of one bigger TV. A quick search of Amazon found that you could get two 46-inch plasmas for the price of one 52-inch LED LCD. Or, you could add a new, smaller TV to supplement the one you already have for only a few hundred dollars.
Why, you may ask? A better question: How (would you use them), and even more important, what do you need?
Let me first say, beyond a boring thought experiment, I actually do this. It is awesome. My setup isn’t typical, nor possible for many people, but it does give an idea of why you’d want two TVs. My main display is a front projector (again, this is just an example, you can do the two-TV thing with two HDTVs just as easily). For the most part, I use the projector for everything: TV watching, movies, gaming. It’s the latter that makes the a second TV useful. There’s a lot of downtime in games like Star Wars: The Old Republic or Battlefield 3. I’m certainly never bored playing these games (otherwise, I’d do something else), but my brain loves multitasking. I hooked up an old 42-inch LCD and placed it to the side of the main screen. An Apple TV is all that’s connected to it, so I can watch Netflix. For example, I recently watched all five seasons of the incredibly brilliant “Friday Night Lights” while leveling up my bounty hunter in SWTOR.
Another use could be sports. Two games at the same time, so you can monitor both without having to switch back and forth. Think a sports bar or Vegas, with a wall of TVs showing all the games at once. The “wall” in this case is just two TVs, but you get the idea.
How
This gets too easy! Get our HDMI switch!!!
More to see our product category.