PLANAR PX171M Vs. Hitachi CML174

Hi all,
I am a new member, and i would have to intruduce my self with a question.
My beloved 19" nec screen died on me 2 days ago. I want to take advantage of the bad situation and upgrade my screen to an LCD.
I been browsing the web for more than 10 hours and I have been to few computer stores in my area (circuit city/Wiz/Comp USA).

Anyway, after reading all reviews i have made up my mind to go and buy the Hitaci screen from monitorsdirect. The only problem is that they are out of stock for the black version. Since my current mouse/keyboard/speakrs are black. I am kinda stuck on having a black monitor. Since from what i read the Planar px171M is similar to the Hitachi, i am considering adding the few extra $$ and getting it instead. I think that 20$ more is worth it (esp. when i am getting a pivot stand, and i read somewhere that it has a better viewing angle).

My question is does the Planar actually exhibit the same abilities the Hitachi does? How is Planar in terms of service? Any one actually compared the two side by side? It is importnat to mention that I usually use my screen for coding/other 2-d application. However, I do play / watch dvd's on my computer....

Sorry for the long post,
I just want to order the damn thing and stop working from my powerbook.

Thanks.

Hi,

I'm also trying to buy a new monitor and found this review on the monitors really good...

http://compare.monitorsdirect.com/ [...] =PX171M-BK


Thanks
Jay

I strongly say go for the PX171m. U could look at some posts Ive made about it thus far, but real quick Ill add some more info. I actually bought the Planar before it was out, Monitorsdirect was doing a preorder on it and i jumped on that. At first I was worried I was losing some sort of performance or feature versus the Hitachi becuase then, the Hitachi was a bit more costly than the Planar, now I see that has changed. Like someone said, the tilt base is great, playing games, reading text, etc is a pleasure, but if anything else, the Planar simply looks SO MUCH more elegant, sporty, attracting, whatever u want to use, than the Hitachi. Thats prolly the primary reason I got the the Planar over the Hitachi, since everything else is about the same. After looking at the Hitachi I found it to be too simple, black, squarish, the Planar really looks nice. The silver/black combo is great and will match all ur black pc components with ease.
Hope that helps.