Hitachi 42HDT79 42" Plasma TV

My wife and I went to look at new TVs a few weeks ago, since this store (Audio-One) sends me a yearly "invite" to check out their latest products when they have manufacturer sales reps on hand. We did not NEED a new TV, but Mrs PennyStretcher was in awe at the crisp picture displayed by this set in the video demonstration room. So, we decided this would be the family Christmas present.

It has both ATSC (HD) and NTSC (SD) tuners, not merely "HD Ready" which requires an external satellite or cable box. Although we have satellite we are not ready to invest in upgrading the hardware and programming packages just yet.

One week later, the set was delivered and set up ready to go. I had already done some research on off-the-air HD local signals in my area, and was pleased to see we could receive half-a-dozen HD signals from the Buffalo area. $300 later, to replace our antenna rotor, we could get several more local channels.

I don't watch much TV anymore, but the picture clarity on HD broadcasts is absolutely incredible. Hitachi advertises this set as having the highest resolution of any flat-panel, and I believe them. We watched "Shrek 2" broadcast by a local station and you could see every blade of grass move in the wind, on this richly-animated movie.

It comes with a remote-controlled power swivel stand, so true couch potatoes can aim the screen without getting up.

The sound is rich and full, and has two "surround" modes which do a decent job of giving theater-like sound although not as good as true 5.1.

There are more inputs/outputs than most people can use. There is even a USB port where you can plug in a camera, card reader or jump drive and present a slide show of your digital pictures.

The channel numbering takes a bit of getting used to, but since most people use cable instead of O.T.A. I won't elaborate here. It suffices to say that in my area we get at least a dozen HD channels and sub-channels.

The universal remote control is very versatile, but can be complicated to use all the obscure features. It is designed more for tech heads. For example, changing the input mode requires pressing the input "scroll wheel" then navigating through "air, video 1, video 2,..." etc, unless you have followed the procedure to "marry" the selected device (DVD for example) to the proper input. Also, there are many adjustments for color temperature, screens, custom color, audio, and more than most people would touch. These are adjusted for each specific input. I did turn down the green screen a bit, the same thing I had to do with the 20-year-old Hitachi we once had. Also, like most TVs, the color intensity as delivered is WAY too high but the reds, although very bright, do not bleed as on most CRT TVs.

There are several modes to zoom or stretch the picture to fill the screen, handy for SD programs that are "letterboxed" in 4x3. However, old VHS tapes look really grainy when zoomed. This is no fault of the TV, it just shows how poor the resolution is on VHS.

One fault which bugs me, is the TV audio out (analog RCA jacks) is disabled when using component or HDMI input, but the optical out apparently is intact. Oh great, now I must buy a new surround stereo to hear DVDs on my new TV? I solved this by splitting the DVD audio outs with Y-adapters and using another input on the stereo.

The salesman assured us that "burn-in" is no longer a problem with the latest generation plasma displays. However, the set comes with warnings about watching static displays, or too much letterboxed video. 4x3 video is displayed with gray bars along the sides which should mitigate this somewhat. Only time will tell if this will be a problem.

Overall, though this Hitachi represents television viewing at its finest. Next step - Blu-ray or HD-DVD? You will even see the flaws more clearly with standard DVDs.