It all has to do with your distance from the screen. That is the key difference between televisions and computer monitors. You sit just a foot or two from your computer monitor, while a TV is usually situated accross the room which lets them get away with lower resolutions and a much larger pixel pitch.
Let's say we have a resolution of 1680x1050 (the native resolution of your monitor). We have your 22" monitor, and a fifty-something inch LCD HDTV at the same resolution. Since they're the same resolution, the pixels on the HDTV are going to be much larger. However, assuming you put it where it belongs, this won't impact image quality one bit. Since your HDTV is designed to be ten or more feet away from you, the (much) larger pixel pitch is impossible to detect. Your computer monitor requires a smaller pixel pitch because it's designed to be viewed from just feet away. If you were to sit as close to your TV as you do your computer monitor, you'd go cross-eyed trying to focus on the grid of gigantic pixels.
The overall effect is that there is no image quality impact from going between one or the other. Other considerations, like contrast and brightness, are specific to each display and there is no general rule saying that HDTVs bave better contrast than LCD monitors, there's no trend here.
It's very cost effective to use an LCD computer monitor because you can get one that, even taking into consideration your viewing distance, has a smaller effective pixel pitch than an HDTV. 24" LCD monitors run at 1920x1200, the PC (16:10 aspect) equivelent to 1080p/i, and you'll spend a fraction of what you'd spend on an equivelent HDTV.
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