It's kind of hard to describe; especially since the monitor has been used by someone else for the last few months.
Basically though, the screen starts flickering a lot then goes dark. It comes back if I reboot but starts again within a few minutes. I put an older monitor on the machine and everything is working fine so it's definitely the 215TW.
I had it scheduled for an eWaste pickup this morning but I'm thinking of opening it up to see if there is anything obvious wrong before throwing it out.
It's really aggravating that it's just 3 months out of warranty -- especially when I could have used AMEX and gotten an extra year of coverage
sounds like the power to the back light is flaky. I bet anything that if you hold a light up to the screen when the display goes out you'll still see picture in there. Search the web for some tutorials, they are out there. Basically you're just gonna have to look for a voltage regulator that is probably out of spec(it happens) or maybe some bad capacitor(s) that are bulging.
lcd components get real hot and usually have minimal breathing room aand next to zero airflow. This is because everyone wants a super thin bezel and a display that is silent. Once you fix whatever the problem is you could always do a case mod(dremel is your friend) and mount a fan or something to blow cool air over the pcb. It is a good idea to also fit bga ramsinks to components that are known to get hot. Like i said earlier, if it's broke already, the worst that could happen is that it's still broke, and best case scenario you'll have a working product and the know how to fix many more that you can get for free at the local dump