According to the Chinese calendar, 2007 is the Year of the Pig. But it's also looking to be the year of the 1080p plasma TV, what with new 50-inch models arriving from Samsung, Panasonic, and Pioneer. Another plasma maker, Hitachi, has taken a slightly different approach for its newest 50-incher. While the others' models have a screen resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels (and a price tag to match), the Hitachi P50T501 50-inch plasma HDTV maxes out at 1,280 x 1,080 pixels. That puts it somewhere between a 1080p and a 720p display in the HDTV universe, with the main benefit being a complete set of 1,080 lines to display 1080i HDTV programs with full vertical resolution. And though the P50T501 doesn't have the detail-rendering capability of true 1080p sets, its affordable $2,400 street price helps to make up the difference.
With a rounded black frame and slim, bottom-mounted speakers, the P50T501 has a look that's at once eye-catching and understated. A flip-up panel located beneath the screen at the TV's center hides a set of control buttons, along with a nicely decked-out A/V convenience input. In addition to standard composite-video and stereo audio jacks, you get both an HDMI connection for a high-def camcorder and an SD card slot for viewing digital photos. The included black stand appears fairly sturdy, but the TV tended to wobble a bit on it. On the plus side, you can swivel the stand around 45° in either direction.
The Hitachi has a fair share of other inputs on its back panel, including two HDMI and two component-video inputs. About the only thing that's missing is a dedicated RGB computer jack. The TV's remote lacks backlighting, but its layout is clean, with important controls such as Volume, Channel, and Menu getting a silver-toned coating to set them off. To switch sources on the Hitachi, you hit the Inputs button and scroll through an onscreen list. And the Aspect button toggles through the set's display modes, which include various options to stretch and zoom in on standard 4:3 and 16:9 HDTV programs. A mode called 16:9 Standard 2 displays HD pictures with 0% overscan, without cropping the image.
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The Short Form |
| Price $2,400 / hitachi.us/tv / 800-448-2244 |
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Snapshot
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| Solid features and a better-than-average picture make Hitachi's 50-inch plasma a deal worth looking into. |
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Plus
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| •Rich, natural colors •Good shadow detail •Useful picture customization modes •Good value |
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Minus
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| •Blacks lack depth in dark images •Occasional picture noise |
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Key Features
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| •1,280 x 1,080-pixel screen •Built-in HDTV tuner •Swiveling stand •Front convenience input with HDMI and SD card slot •Inputs: 3 HDMI (1 front), 2 component-/composite-video, 2 composite-video, S-video; RF antenna/cable; 4 analog stereo audio; SD Card; RS-232C •48.8 x 34.8 x 16.6 in; 117 lb (w/stand) |
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Test Bench
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| With the Hitachi's Low color-temperature preset selected, its grayscale tracked within around ±600 K of the 6,500-K standard from 30 to 100 IRE. Adjustments made to the set's service menu helped level grayscale tracking out to a more average ±300-K range. The red and blue color points were slightly oversaturated compared with the SMPTE HD spec, while green showed a more pronounced oversaturation. Color-decoder tests revealed a very mild +2.5% green error on the HDMI inputs. Overscan measured 0% in 16:9 Standard 2 mode when showing high-definition signals. The set displayed 720p test patterns with full resolution via both the HDMI and component-video connections, but 1080i patterns looked comparatively soft — no surprise, given its 1,280 x 1,080-pixel native resolution. Full Lab Results |
Of the Hitachi's three color-temperature modes, Standard delivered the most natural-looking colors. Unlike some other TVs, there aren't a whole lot of fancy features here for tweaking the picture. A Black Enhancement setting helps bring out the apparent depth of images by darkening the low end of the gamma curve, but it also crushes some shadow detail in the process. And the Contrast Mode setting delivered the opposite effect by punching up the image highlights when its Dynamic option was selected. Dynamic also tended to make highlights look somewhat burned-out, so I preferred to leave that setting in the Standard position.
PICTURE QUALITY The Hitachi's strongest point was its color reproduction, and nothing that I watched demonstrated this better than the Blu-ray Disc of Pedro Almodóvar's Volver — a movie that relies heavily on color for symbolic effect. In a scene that takes place in the home of a nurturing woman named Agustina, for example, the set clearly displayed a range of green hues, from her sweater and a balustrade in the background to her collection of large, potted cannabis plants. In some different programs — high-def soccer and baseball games, in particular — greens looked a bit oversaturated. But other bright colors, such as the omnipresent reds scattered throughout Volver, came across as balanced. Skin tones also looked uniformly natural and nuanced in all of the movies and TV programs I watched.
I've lived with full 1080p-rez TVs for a few months now, and it was clear that the Hitachi didn't deliver as crisp a picture as I'm used to seeing. Still, this set's high-def detail was very good (and if you sit more than 7 or 8 feet away from the set — a not impractical distance for a TV this size — the benefits of a 1080p screen start to diminish). For example, in a Volver scene where Sole (Lola Dueñas) enters a deceased aunt's home for the funeral, I could clearly make out the cracked texture of old paint on the door behind her. The set also did a good job of displaying shadow detail: When Sole sits among the black-clad mourners at the post-funeral gathering, I could see variations in tone and the fine folds and creases in their dresses. In especially dark scenes, however, such as one where Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) buries a freezer containing her husband's corpse, the TV's somewhat limited black depth gave the picture a two-dimensional appearance.
For a plasma model, the Hitachi held up surprisingly well for daytime viewing, with the screen both retaining its contrast and reflecting back only a limited amount of room light. It also did a good job upconverting standard-definition DVDs and TV programs, which looked relatively clean and detailed. But when watching scenes with fog or mist, I did note a fair degree of false contouring — an artifact that shows up as coarse bands of color in shadowy images. And diagonal lines in high-def pictures sometimes had a jagged look, although instances of this artifact were few and far between.
BOTTOM LINE The Hitachi P50T501 50-inch plasma HDTV is a good option for anyone seeking a big screen that won't break the bank. This TV's many convenience features — including a swiveling stand and front-panel HDMI and memory-card inputs, not to mention an ability to retain picture contrast in well-lit rooms — give it broad appeal. And its picture, while lacking both the sharpness of true 1080p sets and the deep blacks of the best plasmas I've tested, is fairly impressive overall for a $2,400 set. You could spend more on a 50-inch flat TV. But after checking out the P50T501, you may not have to.
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