Hitachi Hitachi 42PD9700

Author's product rating:   

How is the Picture Quality?	Excellent
How is the Sound Quality?	Good
Range of Features	Above Average
Durability	Good
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	Great screen, attractive
Disadvantages:	Seems complicated

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

This is my parents' telly. It has proved great for having friends over to watch dvds. We don't actually have a dvd player so we connect up our laptops to the computer using the ports provided & our own leads for connecting a monitor to a computer & sound speakers. Theres a way around anything these days. It works great. Its like being in a cinema in fact.

It is our new main home t.v. - mostly because our old one had just packed in & my dad believes you should always spend as much as possible on new stuff (hmm.. yeh, ok dad). This is our first plasma.

It was fairly easy to set up & use, although I admit I left the setting up to dad. But he's famous for technical disasters so that must be a good thing. Once you know what you're doing, the connections are also very easy to use. Just one thing.. be careful with laptops, as connecting them wrongly can damage them as well as cause some confusion.

Our old tv was fat & starting to look dated - it was only 37" but took up more room than the new flatscreen. I protested against the size of this new t.v. saying it would make our living room look too small & probably not fit against the wall. Funnily enough, our living room looks about the same with more carpet space & the window isn't blocked, so actually it looks ok. I still think a smaller screen would be just as good.

My other worry is how fragile this thing looks. Its not that easy to turn to get around the back (to plug something in, for instance) & I am a tad overweight & terrified to knock it over. It has wobbled a couple of times. Our tv is balanced on the old tv stand, so perhaps this is not ideal. One more point is that when my mum knocked gently against the telly trying to reach the curtain the screen when funny for a second. Not sure what to make of that to be honest. I presume no damage was done but I have to admit I've not seen that happen before, is it to do with Plasma screens?

Still, we've not had many problems so far & it has otherwise maintained its functioning & physical appearance.

Hitachi have not compromised quality for size. There are three options for the type of view you get - 'natural', 'dynamic' & 'cinema'. You can guess that natural has no enhancements & just looks like your average t.v., probably there for you to compare how great your t.v. is hehe. Dynamic is a tad on the bright side but it strengthens the colour - personally I don't like it. Cinema is not quite as bright but improves the colour & brightness as well as sharpening the view. Basically, whichever you prefer, the screen is easily visible from quite a distance - say if you are in a large room. Light doesn't reflect off it as badly as older t.v.s which is always useful to know if your tv is stored in a sunny room.

I wouldn't say the sound quality was fantastic. I'd probably prefer to invest in some more speakers, or have kept our old ones. We tend to keep the volume as low as possible but its not so easy to do with this one. However, we've not had any problems with the sound so far that cannot be blamed on reception or something else, so it is acceptable, just not as good as it sounded as advertised.

I thought this t.v. came with freeview. We already had a freeview box, so since we couldn't figure out how to tune the t.v. digitally (or it simply isn't working) we just added that. It is fairly compatible. I would appreciate anyone letting me know if the tv does have freeview & how to get it working(?), but to be honest looking at the size of the manual we didn't exactly bother to try. < I will update this bit if there are any changes. >

Which brings me to the great big fat A4 book included that is the user handbook/manual thing. Oh, my God. I am hopeless with these things. I know the basics, I just want something I can refer to easily, to quickly find what I need to know & without too much technical blah. In my opinion this thing could have been written for an engineer. I tried to look a few things up, for instance when we originally connected up the DVD player. Its actually a simple job, but it took us about 2 hours going through this thing trying to figure out just where the right information is. The diagrams are clearly labelled & fairly helpful however. But there is far too much in technical jargon when at least each chapter could introduce to us what it intends to tell us. Oh well, I have to admit we haven't had to consult the book more than a couple of times anyway.

My overall impression of this tv so far is good. Better suited in larger rooms, but does not take up tons of space. It works well, serves its purpose, is fashionable, attracive, has extra quality features & at a fair price is a worthwhile buy. There are probably other features I haven't really commented on because we don't know enough about it, or don't really use all the features, so it might be worth pointing out that there seems to be a lot more to this tv than most people need!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update

I just wanted to add one 'small' thing.. which I felt was relevant. I have not personally experienced this problem, but my mum has told me since writing this review that she's noticed every 20 minutes or so the picture goes for a second. I honestly hadn't noticed & its probably only a minor thing.. but I'll leave that to you to decide!