Hitachi launches 55-inch HD-ready plasma TV
A bit too late for the World Cup, but if you’re still in the market for a big TV, especially if you want to take advantage of some high definition viewing, you might want to take a look at Hitachi’s 55PD9700 55-inch HD Ready plasma TV.
Att 55 inches, it’s one of the biggest HD ready sets you can buy. It uses an ultra-efficient E-ALIS <(Alternate Lighting of Surfaces) plasma panel, which delivers high-brightness and high-intensity images, with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. The TV also uses Hitachi’s Picture Master HD chipset, which now incorporates colour detection, enabling the TV to identify and analyse individual colours, to deliver much more accurate colour adjustment, including pure red, which is, traditionally, the hardest colour for a plasma TV to reproduce accurately. At the TV’s heart is a fast, 1080p processor, which has the power and processing speed to sample every pixel, rather than a random selection. That mainly benefits high definition broadcasts, but standard definition content is also improved through upscaling.
The 55PD9700 also features a built-in digital tuner, along with an analogue tuner, an audio system, with a total power output of 36W, delivered via 10 speakers and a fairly comprehensive array of sockets includes two HDMI inputs, one component input, three Scart sockets, plus S-VHS and composite video inputs. There’s also a 15-pin DSUB input for use with a PC.
There’s a whole host of split-screen and picture and picture options and the TV can also be used to display digital photos and movie files shot on a digital camera, via an SD memory card reader. In addition, the TV has a USB input for the connection of a multi-memory card reader, for other types of memory card.
Available in August, you can pick it up for around £3,500.
Hitachi website
