LG is the way to go

visio, samsungs walmart brother

didn't cheap out when I bought my Sony Bravia 1080p 60mhz refresh rate, this was when flatscreens were starting to steadily drop in price, but for a good namebrand like Sony Bravia it was still expensive at 800$. It sat in my room but never got watched for a few years and then a month ago I got the brilliant idea to start using it as my monitor. pretty much without issues! the odd time things look a bit blury tho I am just starting to notice now, every once and a while.

Depends on the size you're looking at Rogean, and what you want to spend. A monitor with speakers and an HDMI input is really no different then using a TV assuming it's going into a cable box. I've always considered Samsung a good baseline as they control everything from the design to the factory, while most companies only control the design. The high end Sony TVs are still always near the top of the list, but you tend to pay about a 5-10% premium. Sharp actually makes some really good TVs in their upper line and they are a Japanese based company which tend to have better engineering in general. I'd steer clear of Toshiba entirely, they have some good TVs but its really up and down with them.

I spent about 3-4 years doing product testing and development at the Best Buy corporate office and I worked a lot with TVs...quite frankly the "you get what you pay for" stuff applies here. I've seen what is done to lower price points on televisions and the first thing that goes are the premium level interlacing, color processing, etc.

LED is so fugly

TLDR

32"

also ya sharp aquas p good I hear

Would only need HDMI Inputs (Plural). I have separate speakers I can plug in (So it should have a 3.5 jack too).

But obviously any higher end TV is going to have numerous plugs and options. An actual monitor would be much more expensive though. I don't need it to be high refresh. I'd only be watching movies on it, even if plugged into a PC.

Samsung a good bet for that, so is Sony. LGs are hit and miss but mostly hit from what I've seen. Vizio's are surprisingly good for their price point too.

You have to pay attention to what exactly is getting stripped out feature wise...sometimes you can drop a tier from a manufacturer and only lose stupid shit like 3D, internet apps, some inputs you don't need etc. In general (even though you mentioned refresh rate isn't a big deal) the more inputs you have the higher your input lag is going to be. Most gaming monitors for example only have a single input.

I'm actually looking at putting a new TV in my basement and I want a big one. It's really only going to get used to watch football so I don't want to drop a ton, mostly because in 5 years all the OLED shit will be out and make half the crap nowadays borderline obsolete (like when plasmas/LCDs replaced CRT TVs). Best Buy has a 65" Sharp entry level TV for $950 which is dirt cheap for a 65". I was actually pretty happy with the picture quality, because most of the shit the got skimmed was dumb things like 3D or 240Hz refresh (overkill, waste of money).

It's really hard to recommend a specific model though, everyone has different needs and reacts to color temperature settings differently. When we used to get TVs in direct from China everything looked really red tinted to us, but to the Chinese that was normal. The best way to shop for a TV is identify your minimum requirements and look for a model from each major manufacturer that meets them (Samsung, Sony, LG, Sharp, Vizio...I'd forget about the rest). See if you can actually view one in person at a retail place and buy the one that looks best to you. You should look up recommended settings on the avsforum.net forums and make the adjustment, TV manufacturers tend to crank up the brightness and contrast way past where it needs to be in order to look "crisp" when displayed next to several other televisions and under bright white lights in a retail environment. I've seen many TVs look like absolute dogshit on the showroom floor, but with proper calibration blow other TVs at their price point out of the water.