One Year Review

Author's Rating:

Pros: Clear screen-no glares, soft-mute, HDTV, price, Picture-in-Picture, remote

Cons: Some features are confusing, need the instructions to learn the features

The Bottom Line: 
I recommend this to everyone looking for a big screen tv especially if they love movies because it's been nothing but reliable and a joy in our home.

Author's Review
I bought the Hitachi 50V500 just short of a year ago as an anniversary gift. We had a very large big screen from over 7 years ago, and it was suffering a slow death, not to mention it was ugly and enormous. The salesman talked me out of a plasma TV, and tried to get me to buy the Panasonic 50 inch that looks very similar to the Hitachi. My mother owns a Hitachi that is over ten years old - the choice was easy.
-I also bought the stand, which was $500, and way too expensive. We quickly ran out of room; our X-Box is sitting on the floor.

-The picture is clear, huge, and it's nice to have a rectangle screen as opposed to the old square.

-The Sony surround sound we bought compliments the tv perfectly. Update! I wanted to add that we had to configure a way to hook up the surround sound so that it would stay on for regular TV, not just movies. It may have been the fault of the surround sound box and not the Hitachi, but it was very frustrating. The directions didn't help at all.

-Update! One of the best features of this tv is that when the light hits the screen, there is no glare. On the older big screen, there were certain times of the day where you had to close all the windows, and there would still be a glare, not on this Hitachi.

-I love that I am able to hook up so many different things - Playstation/VCR/Surround Sound/X-box and more.

-Also a good feature is when you push the mute button on the remote, it first goes to soft mute, and then full mute when you push the button again. This comes in handy, but I do wish it had two seperate buttons for the soft and full mutes.

-The remote lights up when the buttons are pushed, which really helps at night.

-The Picture in Picture(PIP on remote) is very easy to use, as opposed to the older TVs. The remote has a section clearly marked for it, so it's not confusing or hard to find.

We haven't tried every feature yet, there are so many.

-We are about to get HDTV with satellite, and at that time I will update.

-The only thing I can say negative about this tv is that it is fatter than what I really wanted - but definetly smaller than the old big screen.

I would recommend this TV to anyone looking for a new big screen. It is HDTV ready, and has caused us to stop going to the movie theaters! We have our own movie theater right at home!