Hitachi L26H01

Author's product rating:   

How is the Picture Quality?	Excellent
How is the Sound Quality?	Excellent
Ease of Installation	Very Easy
Range of Features	Excellent
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	Screen, Speakers, In - Built Freeview
Disadvantages:	Remote, Freeview Signal

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Great TV.

Looks very sleek and stylish with the dark black/silver trim. Comes on a small stand, or can be screwed into the wall. (The instructions for which are not very good) It simply shows a picture of a wall, one of the tele, and one of some screws, 2 arrows towards the wall and thats it.

With the in-built speakers in the silver trim at the bottom, and also coming from the back, gives off a great sound, especially when watching films and sport or playing the xbox 360 - Just because the sound is good quality, it doesn\'t change the quality of England\'s football team (unfortunately)

Also features in-built freeview, which enhances the picture as it always much better than terrestrial. However, im not sure if it is because of the area i live in or that it is a general problem, but it is sometimes hard to get signal. Especially on ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. Which are the channels i am most likely to watch. Late night sport on 5 in particular.

One of the other good features is the fact that you can do 2 things at once with the touch of a button. It enables you to play console games/watch the tele at the same time. You are able to chose which sound you want aswell. This is a good feature i think, because, if you are like me and play a lot of games, but also enjoy a bit of tele. You can watch your fave programmes whilst still being addicted to your favourite games. Another way its useful is if your waiting for a programme to start, and are playing a game, but dont want to miss anything. Just press the split screen button, put it onto the right channel and keep your eye on it. BRILLIANT!

I payed £399 for mine from Comet about 2 months ago, which is the top end price, and have been extremely satisfied with it. Well worth the money i would say.

It is also HD ready, so therefore it is obviously going to be able to cope with the up and coming technological changes which is good to know. So it will be able to support all the new features being introduced. This works very well with the xbox 360 as the games are mostly HD integrated. The picture quality and graphic quality makes the gaming outstanding and is enhanced majorly by the big screen and purely because i can now view it in high definition.

One of the other good features is that you can plug your computer into it and use it as a monitor. Different people would use it for different things, i haven't used it but my brother has. It looked pointless just to use it for MSN Messenger. It would probably have better usage for things like online learning/studying or watching films and videos.

However, the remote can be slightly unresponsive, you feel like you have to wait a couple of seconds once you have pressed a button. I think it turns itself off after a certain time period to save battery life. This is a good thing, but when it has done this, it does seem like it has to warm up a little bit. Other than that it does work fine, though it seems to be quite long.

Overall, i am completely satisfied with the television, the only downpoints are the remote and the freeview signal.