How functional/practical is it to use an hdtv as a computer monitor?

Televisions and monitors have different characteristics, such as brightness, reflectivity, resolution, price, etc.

Typical 32" LCD has 1366 x 766 resolution, and wouldn't be comfortable for daily work. Casual online gaming should be ok though.

Sure. Current HDTV's are essentially large monitors with TV tuners built in.

There are differences, mainly pixel density (or PPI).. The highest resolution TV you will get is 1920x1080, and it might be 50 inches. I have a 1920x1080 computer monitor and it's only 22 inches - meaning those 1920 pixels are smaller and closer together, thus the image will be sharper on the smaller display.

The lower pixel density is good for TV's, as the size of the screen is much more important, because you tend to sit several meters from the TV.. PC monitors have higher pixel density, and higher resolution because you sit closer to the screen, and it makes things like small text easier to read.

I wouldn't buy an HDTV for a computer if I was planning to do lots of coding, or anything involving reading much text etc.. but for games, or a media center, HDTV's are perfect (I have a 32" HDTV, which is 720p, or about 1280x720 resolution and it's great for films/games, it's fine for web-browsing, but not for too long)

As long as you use an LCD with a square pixel aspect, sure - no problem at all. If the PC is already an HTPC why not have it connected directly to such a device?

It might lack some features or sharpness (or do way too much post-processing) for it to be comfortable for professional use but for playing games, watching videos and some surfing - definitely usable. Try to get one with a standard native HD resolution so you can easily set the PC at the native resolution as well - to avoid scaling artefacts.

Obviously, playing pc games on it could be quite a ride if trying to sit as close to it as before (keyboard+mouse games) - that's about the only problem I can think of.

As Dani said, "Typical 32" LCD has 1366 x 766 resolution". The problem is that few video cards support this resolution. The nearest is probably 1360x768 and you can end up with aliasing that makes text look terrible. If you use a DVI to HDMI cable you may find your PC will offer 1:1 pixel mapping to something like 1360x768 with blank strips at the edges of the screen. But it depends on the TV. My cheapo 32" TV insists on scaling the display to fit the screen even through DVI and while it's usable, you wouldn't want to work on it for long.

If you can stretch to a 1080p screen then the problems go away, but of course it would be (much) cheaper to buy a new monitor.

John Rennie