It's not really a strange issue with LCD's, the brightness of the display and such as you're right - contrast/brightness controls wont make much of a difference. It is how the LCD is good at displaying shades/greyscale in dark areas.
There are a few LCD's by CMV,
http://www.cmv.com.tw/en/default.asp which have been rated very exellently and are pretty cheap.
You might want to check out some of the Samsung ones,
http://www.samsung.com as they have been rated very well too (Better than the CMV I believe). However a lot of Samsung LCD's only have the D-Sub (Analog) input and not the newer DVI (Digital) input.
I've been looking more in the 19" range for an LCD though so my recommendations (and the ones I looked at with CMV/Samsung) are based on that size..
