You really, really need to look at your output on a TV as opposed to a PC monitor--they are two different animals. As to whether you need an official reference TV monitor as opposed to a TV set, you can see if you do a search on this Board that this has been discussed many times, with the the generation of an enormous amount of heat and antipathy. Seems to me that the basic rule should be changed--one should never discuss politics, religion, or TV monitors on a video editing Board.

Use both.

Consumer TV:
I would try to calibrate it to color bars. http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm
Also: Turn down edge sharpening, which is typically too high. (Optional)
Turn off flesh tone correction or "auto color" if you can. Some TVs will try to push colors towards flesh tone, which will screw you up. To check if your TV does this, put the gradient display on it. Compare that to your computer monitor- there should gradual transitions throughout (especially in the reds).

The blue gel thing: I do not have a wratten 47b filter, so I can't check if it works. I suspect you may be slightly off if you try to calibrate things with the filter. The phosphors on your TV emit light of different wavelengths... the filter has to be good enough that it blocks the wavelengths from the green phosphors but not the blue ones, while at the same time giving you enough brightness to work with.
If you put the TV settings at their middle settings, you will be pretty close. Check the PLUGE bars though.

Billyboy's calibration instructions: Some of the things he says there I disagree with. For example, the advice about using the grey chip chart is questionable IMO. The center strips show 25 25 25 (RGB) and 0 0 0 (RGB). You should calibrate to the PLUGE bars on the color bars test pattern... where the bars show 7 7 7, 16 16 16 (in non-Japan NTSC, this is supposed to be 7.5IRE and black), and 21 21 21. 16 16 16 is supposed to be where blacks go, so anything below should be the same color and everything above should be brighter. I have no idea what the 0 0 0 and 25 25 25 bars would accomplish.

In Vegas:
The computer monitor will allow you to see the overscan area (hidden by a TV's bezel) and more or less perfect resolution (right click video preview, turn simulate device aspect ratio off; circles will look slightly oval, but that is ok if you are aware of it).

Just to clear up a point some seem confused with. The images used with the tutorials I L L U S T R A T E the steps, the actual RGB values have been enhanced so that changes are visible when viewing on the widest range of monitors WHEN YOU ARE READING THE TUTORIALS. This is especially true with the Zebra stripes and some of the bars in the Gray Scale chart, where they may not show any differences if your monitor is showing its age, is improperly calibrated etc.. You need to READ the instructions and follow them, not just look at the pictures.

Thanks everyone, BB your tuturial was a help- thanks