well the noise is sometimes apparent on TN panels due to the way the technology works, you sometimes get some artefacts and twinkling in playback. Like i said, the overdrive doesnt do this any favours, especially when, at the moment, the control of the overdrive impulse is not particularl well controlled. Samsung haven't done a very good job controlling it on their models and their overdriven PVA models like the 970P and 193P+ do suffer as well.
As far as all round performers go, i think you need to be looking at the MVA and PVA market. In the 19" range the Viewsonic VP930 stands out as one of the best. This is arguably the best all round panel in the market. A decent response time, thanks to overdrive, wide viewing angles, good colour depth and black depth thanks to MVa tehcnology, and because the overdrive is well controlled by Viewsonic / AU Optronics, no real major issues with noise in movies. This would be a good choice imo for an all round screen. The Samsung 970P is similar in many aspects, but the overdrive control is quite poor and so movie noise is a bit more apparent than on the VP930. The Samsung 193P+ is good on paper, but really doesnt offer any improvements over it's predecessor, the 193P. This offered excellent static image quality, arguably some of the best, but was not very responsive when it came to gaming. With the application of overdrive, Samsung managed to get the PVA panel down to a rated 8ms, but in real practice, there wasnt much difference in performance compared with the older 20ms rated version. As such, for gaming, this remains a step behind the VP930, and Samsung only really made a noticable difference when it came to their 6ms generation (like the 970P). Viewsonic VP930 would be my suggestion i think here
If you want a larger screen, the Belinea 102035W is basically a larger version of the VP930, being based round a similar, but larger P-MVA panel from AU Optronics. Aside from a few issues with backlight bleeding and build quality, this is an excellent monitor and a really good price. There are some other models emerging soon using the same panel as the Belinea, but they are likely to be much more expensive sadly