monitors

Just got this monitor along with my new HP m470n Media Center PC. Works great!! My previous was a Philips 17" CRT. There were no dead pixels, and the clarity is great. Very bright and clear images.

Make sure you install the drivers from the CD, and in particular, go through the display optimization steps for both Media Center as well as on the Sony CD itself. Otherwise the factory default settings may not get it right. I also found that the TV picture is clearest when it takes up one quadrant of the screen; otherwise you need to move back further.

Net/net I am very happy with the monitor.

I tested this monitor using its DVI-D input connected to my PNY GeForce FX5900 128MB Graphics Card's DVI-D output. The presentation was bright and clean, although my unit had one dead pixel in the lower right quadrant. It was most noticeable on a pure white background. From what I have read, this problem with one or more dead pixels is quite common with all LCD monitors, so it's truly the luck of the draw to get a screen that doesn't have at least one. However, while it may be considered "normal", it is simply unacceptable to expect people to put up with such glaring flaws when shelling out this kind of $.

This is a beautiful monitor, aesthetically speaking, and the set up was virtually plug and play on my Windows XP Pro-based system. The controls include one-touch presets for different viewing modes (gaming, pc, video). I found that it was wonderful on strictly computer-based images (i.e., gaming, where its 16ms response time meant no blurring of moving images), text (although there was some lack of clarity with smaller fonts when running it at its recommended native resolution of 1280x1024), web surfing, etc. However, the rendering of high-quality graphics and DVD movie playback is similar to all LCD monitors, i.e., flat, lacking in detail and incapable of rendering accurate color - in other words, far inferior to a high quality CRT.

In spite of the fact that most computer stores are selling (pushing, actually) almost nothing but LCD monitors, they are simply inferior to CRTs for rendering accurate color, detail in high quality graphics and DVD movie playback.

For this reason, I returned it for a refund. I will instead purchase the new 22" IBM ThinkVision C220p CRT, which is listed by IBM on their website at $589. It is the top IBM CRT (Trinitron-based). Per IBM: "...the C220p is best suited for professional graphics applications such as CAD/CAM/CAE, desktop publishing, web design, digital content creation, video editing and high-definition image manipulation..." Basically it should blow away this or any other LCD monitor for reproduction of high quality graphics and DVD movie playback - not to mention IBM's 3-year Rapid-replacement warranty. They'll ship another one to you and take the defective one and even pay the shipping! I guess you don't get to be IBM by jerking people around on defective merchandise. Try getting the same deal from Sony. Yeah, right.

Given the caveats, only you can decide if the Sony SDM-HX73 monitor will fill your needs.