In case you don’t know what FTW means, it stands for “For The Win”. Get up with the slang, young-ins.

So, in an effort to be more productive, I picked up a Dell 20″ widescreen LCD monitor (E207WFP) and a Happauge WinTV-HVR-1600 HDTV tuner card. I opted for the Dell E-series instead of the 2007WFP because I have no need for the crazy adjustments it has, and the actual monitor is exactly the same. Didn’t feel like spending that extra $100.

You might be saying to yourself, how the bloody hell is an HDTV tuner card going to make this guy more productive? We’ll I’ll tell you. I hate silence; I need something going on. Radio hasn’t been cutting it for me, and I can only listen to the Opie and Anthony replay on XM so many times a day, so I’ve been working at the coffee table in the living room watching my HDTV. This has led to less coding, more gaming on my part, which is putting me behind schedule on a couple projects.

So I picked up a nice widescreen monitor and tv tuner card so I can have something to watch in my office while I do work. The monitor is more for a dual monitor setup on my laptop (which is a 15″ widescreen) than the tv part. I have a 19″ Dell LCD that my desktop runs on.

Hit the jump for more…

So the brightness and colors on this monitor are amazing! It puts my laptop screen to shame, and it’s a damn good screen. I have a complex setup going on with my monitors now… try to stay with me here…

• Desktop feeds both monitors by DVI so I can run a dual monitor setup from my desktop
• Laptop feeds the 20″ widescreen by VGA so I can run a dual monitor setup from my laptop
• Mac Mini feeds the 19″ Dell by VGA so I can have a monitor to run on that computer

Still with me? Good.

The HDTV tuner card is very nice. I don’t have an ASTC antenna yet, so I can’t pick up any over the air HD broadcasts. I’ll be picking one of those up later today. The card was cheaper than the non-HD version, the WinTV-PVR-150, which is one of the best cards on the market. The HVR-1600 takes the base card of the 150 and adds and ASTC tuner. For cheaper? Works for me.

So now I get to work in my office with something to watch. Will it make me more productive? Only time will tell…