Until quite recently, 50 inches was pretty much the hot screen size for plasma TVs. But with LCDs now growing past that (and with big rear projectors now disappearing), plasma makers are stepping up their offerings at the 60-inch mark. Sure, there's a handful of even larger sets — all the way up to Panasonic's 150-inch monster — but for most people, 60 inches is currently as big as it's likely to get without using a projector.

The Short Form
Price $6,000 ($7,000 list) / hitachi.us/tv / 800-448-2244
Snapshot
In this big-screen TV with an equally big price, Hitachi's engineers deliver a fine picture by doing it their way.
Plus
•Reel60 film-mode processing really works
•Very flexible picture controls
•Wide range of aspect-ratio options
Minus
•Disappointing black-level performance
•No pixel-by-pixel display mode
•Expensive
Key Features
•1080p resolution
•Built-in HDTV tuner
•SimplayHD-certified HDMI
•Inputs: 3 HDMI (ver. 1.1); 2 component-, 4 composite-, and 1 S-video; RF antenna/cable; CableCARD; SD card; RS-232
•59.5 x 37.5 x 6.25 in; 162 lb

At around $7,000, Hitachi's flagship plasma TV, the Director's Series P60X901, is clearly up at the top end of the market. It's said to offer 1,920 x 1,080 resolution (despite some ambiguity about this in the set's documentation), and to further justify the premium price, Hitachi has incorporated some proprietary features. Most notable is something called Reel60 technology. Recently, increasing a TV's screen refresh rate (to reduce judder) has become popular in premium flat-panel TVs, but Hitachi has gone one better. Rather than simply repeating a frame, as is done with a standard 3:2 pulldown arrangement, Reel60 interpolates a new frame based on the adjacent frame information. This is supposed to result in much smoother motion, especially during slow camera pans.

For a set this big, the P60X901 has a remarkably thin-looking black bezel framing the screen. But when you look more carefully, you'll see that this is because the actual image area doesn't start until you get a couple of inches inside the edge of the glass panel. Despite the set's 162-pound bulk, wall mounting remains an option, although you'd better make sure you've got a couple of hefty wall studs to screw into.

The back panel offers two HDMI 1.1 and two component-video inputs in addition to the usual ones. While this at first glance seems skimpy, there's another HDMI input behind a flip-down panel on the front of the set. It should be noted that the P60X901 doesn't handle xvYCC or Deep Color, though this is inconsequential with most currently available video sources.

One nice touch is that the Hitachi comes with two remotes — the usual full-function one and a more basic one that's a bit easier to navigate for everyday use. The main remote has many of its important buttons arranged in a pair of concentric rings, making them tough to differentiate, and this is compounded by the lack of button illumination. Once you do get into the onscreen menu system, however, you'll find that it's well laid out and extremely comprehensive. Delving deep into the exhaustive picture-control options, a knowledgeable user with test gear can fully calibrate the set, even without access to the service menu.

I was happy to see a prominent Aspect button on the main remote that lets you cycle through the P60X901's many aspect-ratio options. The choices available depend somewhat on the input and signal format in use, but the 16:9 modes do include a zero-overscan setting — though this isn't actually a dot-for-dot mode, as all incoming signals are fed through Hitachi's PictureMaster HD V video processor for scaling.

Setup
The Day Dynamic picture preset is the out-of-the-box default setting, but I found that Night gave the most accurate gradations from light to dark in our darkened test lab. The black-enhancement control seemed to do little except crush black-level detail by adjusting the gamma, so I left it off. Each of the three different types of noise reduction available did reduce noise, but only at the expense of fine picture detail. I found that lowering the sharpness control enough to eliminate edge enhancement was far more effective at cleaning up the image.

Performance
Picture detail and color gradation are typical plasma strong points, and in these areas the Hitachi didn't disappoint. On the Blu-ray Disc of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, in the scene where our hero is being chased by the dragon, the fine detail in both the shapes and the colors of roof tiles was particularly impressive. The picture was especially smooth from corner to corner, with no visible uniformity issues.

In our dark viewing environment, the deepest black that the set could manage was really more of a medium gray — a bit disappointing, since this is normally an area where plasmas do well. Shadow detail was good, however, allowing me to catch subtleties in the faces and clothing of the audience on the Blu-ray Disc of Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds' Live at Radio City.

For checking out the Reel60 processing, Hitachi had suggested a certain slow panning shot in the hospital-room scene from the Will Ferrell vehicle Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. And indeed, the improvement over the regular 3:2 pulldown mode was quite dramatic, with an almost complete elimination of image judder. I did notice that the processing could get caught out momentarily from time to time, but overall it was a major benefit.

Watching an episode of Dr. Danger in 1080i from our HD cable box, I was again impressed by the naturalness of the colors, both in Dr. Arnot's skin tones and in the misty Yemeni mountainside where he was hiking (and getting injured). From my admittedly rather close viewing distance of about 7 feet, the Hitachi's picture looked just a touch soft compared with the needle-sharp images I've experienced on a few other sets, although from a more normal distance this would pass unnoticed.

Standard-def sources displayed on the P60X901 looked quite a bit better than average. When the set showed the dinner-party scene from Seabiscuit at 480i from DVD, the image was good enough to have fooled most people into thinking it was high-def. Standard-def cable, too, looked significantly better than on most other flat-panel TVs — depending, of course, on the quality of the source.

Bottom Line
With sales of big rear-projection TVs falling off faster than contestants on American Idol, big flat-panel sets are rapidly taking their place. Hitachi's P60X901 gives you 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, and its overall image quality is excellent, with a bright, punchy picture that should work well in a room with a lot of ambient light. And while the set's black-level performance wasn't quite up to that of the best plasmas we've seen lately, Hitachi's Reel60 processing is a unique feature that shows just how much improvement a good judder-reduction technology can deliver.

Color temperature (before/after calibration):
20 IRE:   7,110 / 6,186 K
30 IRE:   6,958 / 6,536 K
40 IRE:   6,989 / 6,647 K
50 IRE:   6,875 / 6,551 K
60 IRE:   6,897 / 6,550 K
70 IRE:   6,793 / 6,553 K
80 IRE:   6,699 / 6,527 K
90 IRE:   6,616 / 6,516 K
100 IRE: 6,748 / 6,507 K
Brightness (100-IRE window): 30.3 / 29.1 ftL

With the Night picture and Standard color-temperature presets selected, the Hitachi displayed a slight blue bias, tracking +250 to +400 K off the 6,500-K standard. Adjusting the grayscale in the user menu brought that to within +150 K from 30 to 100 IRE — an excellent result. The set's green and blue primary color points were slightly undersaturated, compared with the SMPTE HD color spec. Also, color-decoder tests revealed a moderate red pull.

Two unstretched and non-zoom 16:9 aspect ratios were available: Standard 1 with 5% overscan, and Standard 2 with 0% overscan. Resolution via both HDMI and component video was excellent with 720p and 1080i/p signals, in general giving slightly better results for the HDMI over component video and for 1080i over 1080p. The video processor did have some problems with our standard-def motion torture tests, although none were noted with regular program material. Screen uniformity was excellent, and the picture remained bright and clear at up to 45º off-axis. Black-level performance was a bit disappointing, with a fair amount of residual light remaining at 0 IRE.

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