Hitachi UT42-XV700 review

Performance
To test Freeview performance, we hooked the Hitachi UT42 up to a Philips DVDR5520H DVD recorder and PVR and found the quality to be decent if not spectacular. We'd suggest you consider something like freesat or SkyHD: both offer HD programming that's preferable for a TV like this. You'll need some external equipment anyway -- it might as well be a step up from digital terrestrial.

The great news is that upscaled DVDs from the same Philips DVD recorder looked very good. We used X-Men to test the quality: it's a film that has a clean transfer and offers different material to show any potential problems. We felt that the Hitachi did a superb job with it. There was a ridiculous amount of detail, and colour was bright and vivid too.

It's fair to assume that a TV like this might potentially be popular with gamers, so we hooked up our PS3 and loaded up Burnout Paradise, a good measure of how a TV handles motion and detail. Once again, we were really impressed by the Hitachi. Everything looked great, with good colour, fantastic detail levels and smooth motion.

Loading up a Blu-ray movie, Casino Royale, we had high hopes and we were thrilled when the TV didn't let us down. Colours are brilliant and picture detail was nothing short of phenomenal. We even noticed a slight flaw with Daniel Craig: in one of the hospital scenes after he's recovered from his earlier beating, he kisses Vesper Lynd and we were able to tell that he had flaky skin in his ear. It sounds weird, but the definition on this screen is quite remarkable.

Speech was crystal clear and there was no distortion in sound. Such a small TV will have trouble with deep bass, but that didn't really spoil the audio quality too much. The best thing would be to hook it up to an AV receiver, which will add extra HDMI sockets as well as nearly every other type of input. That would solve all the issues, and you'll be left with a remarkable screen.

On the downside, we did notice that the screen had quite a shallow practical viewing angle. Although the picture was visible at angles off dead centre, it looked quite washed out.

Conclusion
It seems redundant to point out that this TV won't suit most people. Hitachi is going to have to be very careful about marketing it; the lack of tuner means that it's likely to get a lot of returns from people who don't understand why they can't watch Big Brother.

We were genuinely impressed by the performance of this TV. Apart from Freeview, everything looked amazing, and even Freeview wasn't beyond hope. A positive aspect of the lack of features is that the TV is incredibly simple to use. All you need to do is set up the picture as you like it, and you're off.

If the price remains at the figure quoted at launch, this TV will probably be out of the reach of most individuals. The smaller models are cheaper, and available in 32 and 37 inches. Cheaper alternatives include Pioneer's brilliant 'Kuro' plasma TV, the PDP-428XD, or a more recent 1080p LCD TV offering from Toshiba, like the Regza 40ZF355D.

Edited by Shannon Doubleday