Hitachi 42HDT51 42" Plasma HDTV Monitor review

Color decoding out of the box was not accurate, displaying some red push and serious problems with green. Fortunately, Hitachi gives you the ability to fix this in the user menu via the Color Management and Color Decoding features--if you know what you are doing. We were able to eliminate the red push entirely and minimize the problems with green. This, combined with the excellent grayscale tracking, yielded superb color saturation and accurate color reproduction. As an example, chapter 12 of Seabiscuit looked very good, with natural skin tones and excellent color saturation.

Black-level performance is where the 42HDT51 falls somewhat short, as have all of the ALiS-based panels we've tested. Blacks were really dark gray, and there was some visible false contouring, or dancing-pixel artifacts, in very dark scenes. A good example occurred during the opening scenes of Alien, which are exceptionally dark. We saw blotches of darker color in space, as opposed to the smooth near-black of the void. Once scenes get even a little brighter than shots in deep space, these artifacts become much less annoying. Of course, bright material looked quite good, with awesome contrast ratio and snap to the picture.

HDTV from our DirecTV HD feed looked mostly excellent. Colors really popped off the screen, and detail was quite impressive, especially with bright material on HDNet and the HDNet Movie Channel.

We also compared the 42HDT51 to a non-ALiS panel, Samsung's HP-P4261, using resolution patterns from our Accupel signal generator and the 1080i version of Digital Video Essentials. The two panels resolved similar amounts of detail in vertical lines (in fact, the Hitachi seemed to have a slight advantage), but we saw flicker and crawl in horizontal lines. We chalk that up to the Hitachi's ALiS display element, and the flicker was much less visible on moving program material than static test patterns.

Overall, this Hitachi 42-inch panel has a lot going for it. For use in high ambient light conditions such as living rooms and family rooms, or as a bedroom set, it would be ideal. If you plan to use it in a dedicated home-theater environment, beware of its issues with black-level performance for dark material.