Macbook screen bottom half black The display shows up fine if I connect to an external display.

Is this a hardware problem that can only be fixed by replacing the entire screen? It's no longer on warranty (1.5 years, no AppleCare), and the customer support told me it'd cost $128 for a diagnose and $600-800 for replacement of screen, which I thought it'd be more worth just buying a new one.
Just to put this in as an answer...

You can see the broken bit, bottom right on the picture; the scratch might be a red herring, but the dark blob is a broken LCD.