Best picture for normal TV and HDTV

"LIVE" from CNN was permanently burnt into the picture after about 13 months of usage. I watched CNN less than 10 hours a week.

This review is for the Hitachi 61SWX10B. I researched all HDTV's before I purchased this TV. Hitachi had the best pucture and features, but after only about 13 months of usage "LIVE" was burnt into the upper left hand corner of the picture. I contacted Hitachi and the informed me that pattern burning is not covered under any warranty. I contacted Sears and they informed me the same even though I had purchased a 5 Year warranty. I estimate that I watched CNN maybe 10 hours a week at most. That is where the "LIVE" came from. The manufacturer blames CNN and all other bradcasters who have fixed logo or writing.

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Traded the Hitachi set to Sears for 65% of the original purchase price and bought a new 65" Mitsubishi. In one year, I had a net loss of over $1400 on the Hitachi.

Clear picture with Dolby digital surround sound. Two components inputs, coax and Optical inputs. Well-built unit with thick compressed wood enclosure. Tall unit avoids the need for a stand or a base. All front buttons and inputs are enclosed which minimize children's curiousity.

The need for Hitachi techician's callibration is somewhat undesireable. Information for calibration should be available for self-service.

I have been very pleased with this Hitachi projection TV, 61SWX12B, which I have owned for 11 months now. The pictures quality has been superb. All DVD movies are excellent. DIRECTV proraming quality is surprsing clear for a projection TV. I had done extensive research before purchasing this unit. At that time, Hitachi SWX series was the only line of TVs that have built-in Dolby Digital decoder; you need a sub-woofer and two rear speakers to take advantage of the feature. The unit appearance is elegance, yet practical. It's tall, has thick compress wood enclosure for heat absorption and sound retention. Its front RCA inputs allow easy camcorder or second VCR hook-up. It has 2 component inputs and both Coax and Optical inputs for HDTV decoder and DVD. I was surprised to have reached a tech support rep. on the weekend to ask a simple question. My unit needed callibration after 6 months. It appeared that callibration is neccessary for most Hitachi SWX units. The call for calibration was easy. A local tech rep came over and did it in less than an hour. Unfortunately, the SWX12B line is discontinued. My cousin got lucky and bought one of the last few units yesterday. As they say, all good things must come to an end. I definitely recommend the 61SWX12B unit over the new SWX20B which lacks the elegance look, has thinner board enclosure and no Dolby digital feature. The new one is simply a square black plastic box with projection TV features.

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SONY XBR projection TV(friend's) and Mitsubish Diamond series 65 and Platinum 55(uncle's and cousin's).

The picture quality was incredible. I have a Panasonic DVD-RP56, AR speakers, and the Onkyo TXDS797 THX select reciever. I primarily watch movies with this system. The sight and sound were outstanding! My sons were amazed at the tight picture on "Gladiator" and "Star Wars, Episode 1".

Picture color was terribly green at times and some dark scenes were hard to see detail. I had the set calibrated and was greatly pleased with the result. Detail was clearer and greenness was eliminated. I would highly recommend calibrating to truly experience the great Hitachi picture. I would rate the set 4 overall due to the need for this calibration.

Purchased a refurbished model of the 61swx12B after many trips to Circuit City, Best Buy, and Rex to view all of the major brands. Hitachi appeared a cut above the rest in picture quality and ease of adjustability. I was hesitant to purchase a refurb model, however, after doing net-research took the plunge. Retailed for $4200 and I paid $2500.

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I had a 50 inch Hitachi for five years prior and was pleased.

Beautiful, very bright picture. Remote is very flexible, backlit.

Black out during high contrast. Sound not as good as I expected. Cabinet seems really tall compared to others.

I recently won a 43" Hitachi through a promotion and decided to trade up to the 61" for a few $ more. The picture on this set was outstanding but did have some problems as others mentioned with high contrast scenes on DVD. i.e. In "A Knights Tale" near the end where Heath Ledger knocks the bad guy from his horse and he hits the ground, it switches to a dream scene via a bright flash. The TV totally blanked out during that scene and had to reset. In "Tomb Raider" near the end where Laura Croft races the bad guy to the top of the pyramid to grab the triangle thingy there is a bright flash right before it switches to the scene where she sees her father. Again, total black out and reset. Overall the picture has been great on HD/DVD sources. The only other problem I have is that the "smooth wide" mode tends to look as if you''re looking through a fish eye lens when there is motion or text.

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Pioneer 65" HDTV Sony 57" Hi-Scan

GREAT PICTURE ,GREAT SOUND!!

NONE

ONE OF THE BEST BIG SCREEN TVS MODEL #60SX10BA IVE EVER OWNED .IVE OWNED RCA ,TOSHIBA,ALWAYS HAD PROBLEMS.THIS SET HAS ONLY BROUGHT FUN AND A GREAT PICTURE TO OUR LIVES ! THANKS HITACHI!!

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RCA,TOSHIBA

High quality picture, great auto convergence. Many I/O jacks. Wheels.

Price, probably some little things I can't think of right now

Year Manufactured is March 2001 (no option for 2001 above). This is my first purchase for a projection tv and let me tell you this one looks literally like a movie theater if you're close enough to it. I'll start with the speakers. The speakers on this tv are above-average quality for tv speakers. There is a center channel along with the left and right channels and they put out great sound. Of course your amplifier is the best choice but the built-in speakers sound really great for everyday listening. The 4 aspect modes really makes this tv worthwhile. A lot of people would probably worry about watching normal tv and seeing bars on the sides all the time. Well it is true that you have to use that mode to maintain the picture size without distorting it, but there is also a smooth wide mode where is fills the screen and stretches the sides out but you don't lose your ratio. You can only notice the stretching if you see someone standing on the edges of the screen, in the middle they look normal. I personally use normal mode for tv viewing anyways because you don't lose any detail in the picture and the bars are hardly noticeable after awhile. I mean for a 61" screen the bars don't really make the picture small. The magic focus feature is pretty convienent and works great but isn't perfect. I still noticed some discoloration on the sides but there is a manual convergence adjustment in the back I have yet to try. The menu is just plain awesome. There are so many things you can adjust, even the audio menu has tons of options. The remote control takes a little getting used to but after awhile I found I could use it to control my tv and satellite quite easily. This is probably one of the best out there being digital and HDTV ready. Go get this one now. Don't buy another 4:3 tv, widescreen is the wave of the future!

Great addition to home decor

Only been able to watch it about a day before it when blank, Fluke , Lemon?
Only was able t watch is for a day before it went blank

Getting my money back, almost done here. Now that I am getting my money back I am looking at many other Brands and models, besides this brand. I have learned that there is much better technology out there. Look at them right next to each other with the same picture playing, look at the sharpness in the corners of the screen! HDTV should be perfect, don't except anything else, be picky! Another item to look at.... notice, .. when you are looking at the picture.. are you drawn to the center of the screen?, if you are you eyes are telling you that's whenthe best picture is... or do you look all around admiring the detail throughout the whole picture, that is a good picture!, it should be like looking out a window!

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N/A

Friggin Amazing Picture!

Hitachi Customer Support. Watching "regular" t.v. programs.
Watching any "small" t.v. set.

Well,

I have owned this set for one month and I am amazed at it's picture, especially viewing HD broadcasts on HBO and Showtime. Everything works fine on the set, except one of the component video inputs does not work. I have been wrangling with hitachi to try to fix it, to no avail. My local service agent does NOT do in house service, so they will ulitimately have to pick up this 350 pound behemoth and take it to the shop. I assume it will take at least a month and a half to get it fixed. This REALLY sucks! I am seeing about having my local dealer just replace the set, as they also have been slow to help.

Also, I have noticed two slight problems with this set.

#1 very infrequently the set will "pop" and I will lose the picture briefly. This has only happenned a handful of times, so I am hoping it is my dvd player.

#2 I have noticed that in some scenes that have a varying contrast (black to white and vice versa) that the set does not handle it good. I don't know if this is a problem with all projection sets, or just that I am not used to seeing the picture in such detail.

This set was made this year in Jan 2001! Hot off of the presses.

I really like this set and I personally think that it is the best set out there for the price by far. No Toshiba, Sony or Mitsubishi has a better picture than this set.

I own the Toshiba progressive scan DVD player and I am going to "uprgrade" to the x-box as soon as it comes out.

I also own the dish network system 6000 (dual dish) and it's also great.

A couple of hints to the prospective HD set buyer.

BUY A "WIDESCREEN" SET! DO NOT BUY A "REGULAR" 4:3 ASPECT SET! YOU WILL REGRET IT! WIDESCREEN IS THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE AND MOSTLY ALL HD BROADCASTS ARE IN WIDESCREEN.

Buy an X-BOX when it comes out, as it will have progressive scan dvd outputs built in, or buy a toshiba or sony progressive scan dvd player. YOU MUST HAVE A PROGRESSIVE SCAN DVD PLAYER TO TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF THIS SET!

Buy the dish 6000 dual dishnetwork satellite setup. This is the only cost effective way of getting HD broadcasts into your home. I saw Fight Club and The Green Mile in HD and I had tears in my eyes. IT'S WORTH EVERY PENNY!

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None

Beautiful picture when it works

Progressive Scan continually blanks out the screen, Customer Service Center lied about problem until I proved them wrong.

Let's start with the good.

1) "magic focus" autoconvergence works much better than I had expected. In AVIA and convergence Test pattern generator results, the output showed significant improvement, much to my surprise.

2)Great color saturation, very little noise or distortion. This was the first set I have ever owned that I was able to see no visible distortion at any level while adjusting color.

3)Black level and sharpness were right on. Once again, this is only the second set that showed no distortion throughout the sharpness adjustment level. I had to resort to creating a template to put in front of my screen to set properly as I could not do it with my naked eye, nice.

4) Picture detail on s-video input in full time progress mode was spectacular. The built in doubler is as good as most high end independants.


The bad.

1) Ability of television to handle progressive input. I own a Toshiba 9200. While in progressive mode the screen will blank out during high contrast, or high bitrate scenes (which is a lot of scenes for many DVD's). Made the colorstream pro output unusable on this display. After calling customer service, they indicated this was a Toshiba problem not syncing properly. After testing with two other progressive scan DVD players, (including one reference $35,000 machine), the TV was the culprit.

2) Customer service continued to deny any problem with the TV until I spent several hundred dollars with a professional installer proving the television was not able to handle the industry standards for progressive scan input. VERY BAD.

Just called a local resller who will be sending out a technician. Since I really like the product, I am giving it a high rating. A very low rating on the value side since it is not working to spec. I will update this review after the technician arrives.

2)

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Mitsubishi, Runco

This is a follow up to my previous review.

Almost a month later and I finally got my replacement set in. From what I understand, Hitachi had a bad batch of sets that were manufacutured this year in January. My set was one of these sets. The set I got today was made in February of this year (2001) and it appears to have no problems at all, everything works great! I was going to just have the set fixed in home and be nice about it, but neither Hitachi, nor my local dealer could get ANYONE to come fix this monster in home! After a month and a half of phone tag, problem solved! Word to the wise, if you get a projection t.v. new and out of the box something is wrong with the set, play hardball and demand it to be exchanged. Reason being is that even if you can get someone to come fix your set in home, they usually are not truly qualified to work on HD sets AND will always have to order parts, which will take forever to come in. I tried to be the nice guy, when I should have been more angry about it. In the end, I got angry and I got the t.v. replaced.

Hitachi does have pretty bad customer support, but hey who has good customer support these days?! However, they DO make the BEST HDTV projection sets out there. In my opinion this set is the best thing I have ever purchased and I am now a happy, satisfied customer!