Is hot-swapping of my LCD monitor to my LCD TV degrading my components?

Question

I have a dual monitor setup and an ATI 4870, when I want to watch a movie I hot-swap the other monitor to my TV. Is there a chance that I might destroy my hardware? (monitor/tv/video card)

As I have noticed, after watching the movie and hot-swapping back my 2nd monitor, the colors levels are somewhat different, I try to put up MSpaint with a black background and put it at the center so that it's on both screens at one time, the blacks don't look the same, until I turn off the computer, remove the two DVI's, reattach them and turn the computer on.

Answer 1

There is nothing bad about hot swapping monitors. The only thing that could come of this is wearing out your contacts from using them so much. The reason they don't look the same is for two reasons:

Different display devices have different 'looks'. Some devices you can configure to have a 'warm', 'cold', or 'mid' color scheme. These settings, if available, would be on the monitor/tv themselves. It is highly likely that they are either configured differently, or simply aren't manufactured the same, producing different color.

Some videocards and video drivers automatically detect the presence of tv's, and change the videocard's output color scheme based on the attached device. It could be that the driver for the card doesn't detect it when you switch back. This could be fixed by updating your drivers.