i got a philips 190X5 and after my horrible 17 inch crt its just plain awesome. All this talk about how video and photos don't look great, is just rubbish really. Unless you are making movies for studios, no one needs the highest fidelity or anything like that. Photos look great, vivid and crystal clear, movies are nice too. I can't say too much about games, but i played one race on need for speed 3 hotpursuit, and it was far superior, and brighter than my old crt.
The jump from crt to lcd in my opinion is well worth it. I was originally going to go for a 17 inch model, but since its native resolution was 1280 x 1024, i thought the dot pitch would be a little on the small side, even smaller than my 17 inch at 1024 x 768, but the 19 inch one i have, is just right, even at 1280 x 1024.