Well I finally ordered the damn thing I've had my eye on for a few months now:



DELL UltraSharp 2005FPW 20.1-inch Wide Aspect Flat Panel LCD Monitor ($396.75)

The default resolution is 16:9 ratio at 1680X1050. I was a little worried about my PC currently pushing rFactor and GTL at this resolution, but I ran rFactor with 20 cars at 1600X1200 at the same settings I was running at 1024X768 and it never dropped below 30fps, so I should be fine. BUT, what is nice here is that this monitor has three modes for resolution, 1:1, Fill, and aspect. The 1:1 would allow you to run 1024X768 (or other supported resolutions) on this screen without scaling distortion as it centers it on the screen at the native resolution. So you may have a black box all around the image, but at least you don't have any scaling distortion.

It also has 4 USB ports built in and has Picture in Picture and Picture by Picture support.

Contrast ratio is 600:1 at Max Sync Rate is 75mhz V X 83mhz H.

Lastly, one of the nifty bonuses are the inputs. VGA / DVD-D / S-Video / Composite / 4 USB 2.0 ports

What this will allow me to do is still pump my DirecTV receiver right into the monitor via the S-Video instead of using my All-In-Wonder. Not a big deal now, but when I build a new rig it won't have an All-In-Wonder card, so still being able to watch DirecTV on it without the AIW is a nice bonus feature for me. And to be honest, I didn't notice much difference between S-Video and when I recently switched to Component cables. So going back to S-Video shouldn't be a major image quality problem.

I've been researching the monitor and reading a ton of reviews and talking to gamers/sim racers who have it and they love the monitor. No, it's not the 24in widescreen.... but still should be an upgrade from my 19in ViewSonic CRT.