Samsung SyncMaster 244T

The lack of HDCP support on a 17" or 19" 1280x1024 display means that you're losing about half of the pixels that the monitor is capable of. The bigger issue is with the high resolution monitors capable of displaying 1680x1050 and 1920x1200. Without HDCP, these high-resolution resolution widescreen displays are only showing a 1/3 or 1/4 of the pixels available.

The chaps over at FiringSquad take a further look at five HDCP compliant monitors - Gateway FPD2185W, HP f2105, NEC MultiSync 20WMGX2, Samsung SyncMaster 244T and Viewsonic VP2330wb:

Gateway FPD2185W - The Gateway FPD2185W is the cheapest HDCP-capable monitor that we could find. During promotional sales, you can even find it in the mid $500's. What's nice about the Gateway is that while it never finished in first-place, it's an all-around solid performer. It doesn't matter if you're looking for games, photography, or video – the Gateway can do it all. It has good color and image quality, excellent build-quality, a rich feature set including Faroudja video processing and even a sophisticated picture-in-picture system. The main weaknesses of the monitor are the hazy appearing text (only in comparison to the more expensive competition) and the need to purchase a DVI cable separately. If you can find this monitor on sale and don't mind a slight haze with small text, it's a solid choice.

HP f2105 - The HP f2105 is a good alternative to the Gateway. While you sacrifice features such as component video and S-Video input, and a pivot display, the HP was a superb monitor for games and movies. The HP did better than the Gateway in terms of pixel refresh performance, and at maximum brightness, the sRGB preset was quite good. The delta E of 5.96, puts it essentially on par with the ultra high-end Iiyama CRT. Remember, the Iiyama i90A was once FiringSquad's CRT monitor of choice as it had the full bandwidth to handle 2048x1536 at 72 Hz! The main weakness of the HP f2105 is that it has been designed like a high-resolution HDTV as opposed to a computer monitor. The HP doesn't work as well for photographers and desktop publishers who prefer to calibrate their monitors to a ballpark 100 cd/m2. Although the HP is more expensive than the Gateway, many of you will qualify for HP's generous academic and government discounts.

NEC 20WMGX2 - The NEC 20WMGX2 was also a superb monitor. While we didn't get the same pixel refresh performance as the HP f2105, the NEC still represents an improvement over the previous monitors we've tested. Of the 20" monitors, color accuracy was best on the NEC. The video input was better than the Samsung 244T but we'd prefer the Gateway FPD2185W for video use.

Viewsonic VP2330wb - The Viewsonic VP2330wb has excellent contrast ratio, and its 0.258 mm pixel pitch results in exceptionally sharp text. Where this monitor falters is in color and pixel refresh performance. So, while the other monitors we tested work well as multimedia displays, the best market for the VP2330wb is the financial world. In that environment, the colder color temperature isn't a problem, and the 23" size allows more monitors to fit on a desk. Likewise, the monitor also has anti-theft security features built into the firmware. This would definitely be near the top of our list for a high resolution 2.3 megapixel business monitor, but we'd recommend choosing another monitor if gaming or multimedia performance is paramount.

Samsung 244T - The Samsung 244T is essentially a "dream" monitor. It's a huge 24 inches, has 1920x1080 resolution, is super-fast when it comes to games, has great out-of-the-box image quality, and even has a portrait mode rotation. The only weakness of this monitor besides its luxury pricing is that the USB hub is cumbersome to use and the poor component and S-Video input. Nonetheless, this is our favorite monitor in the round-up. The Dell 3007WFP might be bigger, but the 3007WFP is not going to have the same 1000:1 contrast ratio or the same high-speed pixel refresh. This is definitely our favorite monitor of the group.