Hitachi 42HDS69 - $970 Anchored by great connectivity, the Hitachi 42HDS69 competes well against other 42-inch plasmas in both price and picture quality.
You may still think of a plasma HDTV as incredibly expensive, but prices are falling every day, and even manufacturers who have traditionally charged a big premium for their panels, such as Hitachi, have had to become more aggressive on pricing. The company's 42HDS69 is a great example, selling for just over $2,000 online at the time of this writing. This 42-inch plasma manages to offer a complete feature set, including CableCard and a third HDMI input, both of which are nowhere to be found among flat-panel displays at this price. In the Labs, it evinced decent performance with commendable color saturation, although black levels weren't quite up to the standards set by the best plasmas out there. Given its price and excellent feature package, the Hitachi 42HDS69 is a fine overall value.
Like the flat panels of Sony and some other manufacturers, Hitachi's 42HDS69 sports a black and silver two-tone look. A black frame surrounds the immediate area around the screen, and there is silver trim around the black. We found the smooth, high-tech exterior attractive enough, although silver-and-black definitely doesn't have the same drop-dead-gorgeous appeal in person as the all-black of Hitachi's step-up 2006 models or last year's 42HDT52.
Stereo speakers flank the left and right sides of the screen rather than being housed below, a design move that adds to the overall width of the set. Including its (nonmotorized) swivel stand--increasingly rare among flat panels--the 42HDS69 measures 43.1 by 31.3 by 4.5 inches and weighs 48 pounds. Before adding this 42-inch plasma into an existing entertainment center, you should take careful measurements to make sure it will fit.
The remote is a basic black rectangular design that's nonetheless logically laid out and relatively easy to use. This simple clicker lacks illumination, but at least Hitachi has done the right thing and given it discrete codes for programming its functions into a universal remote or a touch-panel system. Internally the menu system hasn't changed from last year's plasma models, and we found it intuitive and easy to navigate.
Looking at the spec sheet, you may notice that the Hitachi 42HDS69 doesn't have the same native resolution as most 42-inch plasmas. Its unusual 1,024x1,080 resolution is new for this year and exactly matches the vertical resolution of 1,920x1,080 (1080i) signals. In theory this should produce a sharper picture than standard 1,024x768 plasmas, but in reality it's extremely difficult to tell the difference. As with all other plasmas, the Hitachi scales all incoming signals, whether from HDTV, DVD or standard TV, to fit the available pixels.
