No, I am not confusing anything. Do you know what a contrast ratio is? It's the ratio between the maximum white and the deepest black that a display can reproduce.
Exactly! As regards contrast ratio, Plasma displays are at the top of the list, then CRTs, then LCDs. (Although some folks still claim that the CR of a good CRT might still be the best). Of course, there may be some overlap according to price. Development of CRTs ceased long ago. As I mentioned before, both plasma and CRT are able to render blacker blacks because their pixels can be virtually turned off. LCDs have to contend with that back-light which is never turned off.
However, if you pay enough, I accept that a good LCD will be perfectly adequate for photographic purposes, just as my Sony Trinitron is perfectly adequate for my purposes, with the exception of those few subtle shades of color that exist in the ProPhoto space, that
may be apparent on a print but not necessarily apparent on my monitor, or yours.
I was using an absurd example, I don't for a minute believe that any current displays can reach a black level of .01 cdm^2.
Why not? If individual pixels can be turned off so they emit no light whatsoever, then such a monitor should be capable of amazing CR. Whether your viewing conditions are suitable to appreciate such enhanced CR is another matter. I'm very pleased so far with the detail I see on black suits on my partner's 11th generation 50" Panasonic plasma TV with a mere 30,000:1 contrast ratio. I look forward to getting one of Panasonic's latest 12th generation Viera models with an even better CR of 40,000:1 and a claimed dynamic (on/off) CR of 2,000,000:1.
I'd like to get the ultra-thin, wireless 54" model and hang it on the wall like a picture, but I'll probably get the much cheaper, standard 54" model and buy a 5D2 with the price difference . However, I might over-indulge and get both. ISO 6400 shots on the 5D2, downsampled to 1920x1080, might look okay .
I don't know where you got your pricing, maybe that's the official MSRP from Eizo; but I paid $2K for my CG241W about 2 years ago, and ColorMall.com is currently selling them for $1800. Not such a far cry from your $1200 Sony when you consider the Eizo is a larger display. There are also more affordable displays from NEC among others that would still exceed the performance of your Sony CRT (which BTW at $1200 is hardly representative of the CRT's most people were using back in the day).
My prices are all in Australian dollars. A quick google for a best price for the CG241W came up with A$3250. My attitude is, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. I think many of us in the past have struggled to get a good match between monitor and print. I have such a good match. I'll hang on to my current Sony monitor for as long as it continues to provide that good match.
I recently bought an Acer P244w 24" LCD monitor for my laptop which has a BD reader. The monitor is capable of the full HD resolution of 1920x1080 and of course has an HDMI input. I thought it might be useful to watch the occasional Blu-ray movie, but also thought it might calibrate better than my laptop screen. It probably does, but it's not a patch on my Sony Trinitron. Rather poor contrast ratio, but it's a cheap monitor of course.
Edit: By the way, if I compare apples with apples, I'd be looking at an Eizo CG19, same size and aspect ratio as my Sony, but lower maximum resolution. It has no claim for displaying the Adobe RGB gamut, has a CR of 450:1 and a brightness of 280 nits, which is good. But would it be better than my Sony? Best price from a Google search, A$2,200.