ViewSonic vx912

I've read alot of the LCD reviews in here and from what I gather the newer LCD monitors, and especially the lower-end overdrive monitors, will not be ideal for me as they exhibit low quality in video.
That's why I've been thinking about getting a vx912 (yeah I found a store that sells it). However I've read that although this was originally a 12ms panel, viewsonic upgraded this model to 8ms. The samsung 8ms panels are often criticized in the reviews so I was wondering if anyone knows what panel this monitor is using and whether it is good for video playback.
The viewsonic website (only the european one still has it listed) lists it as 8ms off-on-off, which is comforting because overdrive monitors usually use the GTG notation, but who knows?

Also another thing that bothers me is the aspect ratio. 1280x1024 is 5:4 resolution and I've read that this monitor is also physically 5:4, which means perfectly square pixels. Is this good or bad in practice?
I'd hate to see squashed video or distorted photos, and I'm not sure whether 1280x960 will look good (and of course there is the shame of the unused pixels).