Hitachi P50H401 review

Performance
The Hitachi P50H401 turned in a disappointing picture quality effort, even for a TV in its price range. Its black-level performance was among the worst we've seen, its color is inaccurate and it appears a bit softer than other 50-inch plasmas with standard 1,366x768 resolution.

We began our evaluation by adjusting the user-menu controls of the P50H401 to achieve the best possible picture in our completely darkened theater. The Hitachi lacks fine color temperature controls, so we weren't able to get a more-accurate grayscale than the "Standard," preset, which measured too blue. For our complete settings, click here or scroll down to the Tips section below.

To formally evaluate the P50H401, we set it up next to a few other HDTVs we had on hand, including the Panasonic TH-50PH9UK, a 50-inch plasma, the Olevia 252T FHD, the Philips 47PFL9732D, and the Westinghouse TX-47F430S, all large-screen LCDs, as well as the Sony KDS-55A3000, our color reference. We watched Hot Fuzz on HD DVD courtesy of the Toshiba HD-XA2 playing at 1080i resolution.

Our biggest complaint with the Hitachi's picture concerns its poor black-level performance. In dark scenes, such as the one in Sergeant Angel's bedroom during Chapter 6, the black areas and shadows looked significantly lighter than any of the other HDTVs in the room. The lighter "blacks" (actually they were more like dark gray) also robbed the picture of impact and muted the colors.

The accuracy of the Hitachi's primary color of green was also an issue. Later in the chapter when Angel goes jogging, for example, the lush fields looked entirely too yellow as opposed to the deep green we saw on the Sony. Even the Panasonic, whose green also warranted a "poor" in our Geek Box tests, looked significantly more natural than the Hitachi. The P50H401's bluish grayscale made the pasty skin tones of the lead British actors appear even pastier--an effect exacerbated by the set's tendency toward undersaturation.

The Hitachi also exhibited more false contouring than any HDTV we've seen in a long time. During the beginning of Hot Fuzz, for example, the light around the logo became disclosed and dropped abruptly into the black background, instead of fading naturally. We noticed similar contours elsewhere in the film, especially in dark areas, such as the shadows on the hero's radiator in his darkened bedroom.

To try to get a handle on the P50H401's wacky native resolution, which the company says is designed specifically for 1080i sources, we compared it directly with the Panasonic, a standard 1,366x768-resolution 50-inch plasma, from a close seating distance of about 7 feet. With most 1080i sources we watched from our DirecTV HR20, including a hockey match and an episode of Nothing but Trailers on HDNet, as well as a recording of Planet Earth from DiscoveryHD, the Panasonic seemed a bit sharper, especially on sharp-edged text and areas of fine detail, like close-ups including hair and a shot of a craggy mountainside. Like most differences in resolution, it was subtle, and some of it can be attributed to the Panasonic's superior black levels (higher contrast ratio adds punch and increases the perception of detail), but our overall impression was that the Hitachi's image appeared softer. On better material, namely Hot Fuzz and the main montage from the Digital Video Essentials HD DVD at 1080i, again the Panasonic looked sharper, for example in the tiny links of chain on the barge behind the dancing couple in New York harbor. We also noticed flicker on the Hitachi, again most prominently in menus like the DVE selection screen, that wasn't visible on the Panasonic. Overall, we couldn't see any benefit in program material to the Hitachi's "HD1080" resolution.

Our impressions of program material were backed-up by test patterns. The Hitachi failed to resolve any detail in the highest-resolution area of the 1080i multiburst pattern from our Sencore VP403 signal generator; the Panasonic, for its part, did resolve a few lines of detail in that area (as much as can be expected from a TV of its resolution). Video processing on the P50H401 also left something to be desired. The TV failed both of the 1080i deinterlacing tests from the HQV Blu-ray Disc, introducing serious flicker into the highest-resolution areas of the patterns. Many TVs we've reviewed fail the film-based portion of the test, but few fail video as well. As a result of these findings, we recommend P50H401 users choose 720p resolution sources when possible.

In its favor, the Hitachi's antireflective screen did a better job of attenuating bright room lighting than the standard plasma glass of the Panasonic. It wasn't as effective as the screens we've seen on Pioneer and some Panasonic models, but it still helped.

With standard-def sources, tested via the component video input at 480i using the HQV DVD, the Hitachi performed below average. There was serious flicker in the color bar pattern, and although the set did resolve every line of the DVD format, details in the stone bridge and the grass from the Detail test appeared softer than on the other HDTVs. With video-based material, including a waving American flag, the set didn't do much to smooth out jaggies from moving diagonal lines. Noise reduction on the other hand was pretty good, and the High mode had a noticeable impact in cleaning up the motes and snowy noise in the scenes of sunsets and skies--although it did soften the image a bit, as usual. We'd recommend avoiding the MPEG NR setting entirely, however, because the softness it introduced was extreme. The Hitachi also successfully engaged 2:3 pulldown detection.

We tested the P50H401 as a PC monitor using the HDMI input from the DVI output of our test PC, and the results were disappointing. We again noticed significant flicker with a 1,920x1,080 source, enough to make the image unwatchable, and we blame it on the "HD1080" resolution. The best resolution we tested was 1,280x720, which still evinced mild flicker that would be acceptable only for short periods of use. With that resolution text still looked blocky and relatively unclear at 12-point sizes, although we did appreciate that there was no overscan. In sum, if you want to get more than the bare minimum of PC monitor use out of your flat-panel display, just about any other model will perform better than the P50H401.