Hitman, not sure what you mean by brighter lines? It hasn't got any visible brightness aborations that I can see.
The viewing angles are good for an LCD, and seem exactly the same as the 172T...
Ghosty,
I have a Hansol 925D (19" CRT), a Sony HMDA200(17" CRT), a Samsung 172T (LCD), Hitachi CML174 (of course), and in work have access to some pretty top end 21" CRT NEC graphics quality monitors.
In my appraisal of them side by side, the only critical thng I can find that isn't in the LCD's favour is the mouse pointer smearing. With the perfect focus/converfence/geometry DVI connection, the CRT's look a little out of focus and shabby in comparison. I am ignoring viewing angles/ghosting since I sit in front of my monitor, and the ghosting thing is so minimal on the Hitachi, its only noticeable to the critic.
As for the black level, the v bright Hitachi, with its good contrast ratio makes blacks look blacker then black to the eye, since it references black relative to the white level, which is high, I know that displaying a black desktop with the lights out looks worse on the LCD compared to the CRT, but the relative black level in normal use , to the eye, is a match to a CRT.. you'd have to see it to see how good it is.
I think for me, thats what I like about these newer LCD's, technically, on paper, they may lack in their colour/black level performance, but to the eye, in normal use, they do the job more then adequately.