Lam Nguyen

Which 51in. HDTV should I get the Hitachi or Sony

I have narrow my widescreen HDTV ready sets to the Hitachi 51F500 and the Sony KP51WS500, they are both 51 inch. I heard Mitshubishi makes really good TV's but they don't make a 50 in. I think 55 is a little too big for our living room. Need your help on choosing which is the better TV, any comment welcome. Thanks

Craig Woodhall

i just bought (and returned) the Hitachi 50". it has a great picture, no doubt about it.. problem was, the 4:3 stretch modes suck bigtime. either everyone was short and fat watching in full mode. or the edges of the screen looked warped and the edges of the image were getting pulled off the screen. we then tried a Toshiba 57" and the picture sucked, not nearly as good as the Hitachi and the internal scaler in the Toshiba was awful. I wish I could have combined the excellent picture and scaler of the Hitachi with the great stretch modes of the Toshiba.

Craig

Jason Charlton

Just yesterday, I got my Sony KP57WV700 and am very pleased. Although the Sony's seem to have a slightly more "grainy" picture than other manufacturers, I was most impressed with the quality of my basic (non-digital) cable picture on the set, as well as the "Full Wide" stretch mode (I think that's what it's called, but can't be certain). The Full Wide mode uses a combination of zooming, cropping, and stretching that produces, IMO, a fantastic compromise for 4:3 material. About the only thing it messes up is the small sports ticker on ESPN which gets cropped almost completely.

I haven't had a chance to really tweak the picture using Avia (that will happen tonight!) but after only reducing the contrast and bumping up the brightness a bit, the image out of the box was stunning.

Hitachi's seem to be pretty popular, but as Craig pointed out, it's often not just the image quality that counts. Things like the stretch modes, connection options (DVI), 720p support are all important, too. Another thing with the Sony's in particular is the top front of the cabinet is only a couple inches deep - which makes placing your center channel speaker there a bit tricky. The Hitachi, I believe, has more room on the top for gear/speaker.

I love my Sony, and couldn't be happier.

-Jason

Lam Nguyen

Thanks for the comments, what about Mitsubishi 48 in. Gold Series and Platinum Series? I wonder if they have good 4:3 stretch mode.

Craig
you said that the edges of the screen looked warped and the edges of the image was pulled of the screen , was this the main reason why you returned it? Did you keep the Toshiba?

Craig Woodhall

Lam,

that was the only reason we returned the Hitachi. the picture was wonderful, with vibrant colors, i was blown away. the up-conversion of satellite and cable tv was great, regular satellite looked like DVD, i kid you not. the problem is I have an 8ft screen and projector for DVDs so the TV would be mostly for watching satellite and cable.

the stretch modes on the Hitachi were awful, we were watching discovery and a cheetah was coming into the screen and you could see his markings all stretched out to the side and then normal towards the middle of the screen. I really wanted to keep it but it was almost unwatchable with 4:3 material. the best way I could describe it was like the screen was totally curved, distorting the image.

The Toshiba came the same day the Hitachi left so everything was very fresh in my mind. the Toshiba up conversion was horrible, there were artifacts everywhere. in some spots peoples faces were indistinguishable due to all of the video artifacts left on the screen. also, the picture was about 50% as good as the Hitachi's and I couldn't have settled for that after seeing the beautiful picture of the Hitachi. the only good thing I can say about the Toshiba is 4:3 material looked perfect on the Toshiba, you couldn't tell it was stretched at all, even tickers along the bottom looked great.

I just don't think i would be happy spending $4000 (after warranty and tax) on something I didn't totally like. I would have been 100% happy if I could combine the picture of the Hitachi and the stretch modes of the Toshiba.

im lucky Future Shop has such a generous return policy.

sorry for the long post.

Craig

joey mr

well have you seen the new s500 hit.it has better stretch mode and i looks quite good check it out

TaylorSmith

I was in the SAME boat you are. I was looking at the exact same two TV's.

I ended up getting the Hitachi. I love it so far. Direct TV is a little blurry, but i'm thinking it might be the Direct TV box or something. I still have a lot of tweaking to do. I think once this thing gets professionally calibrated ( in many months, too expensive for now), it's going to look awesome.

DVD's look super good. and while the stretch modes aren't the best, i didn't get this TV to watch 4:3 material.

Hope it helped. good luck on your purchase!

oh, how much would you be getting the Hitachi 51F500 for?

JohnnyG

I'd put the Toshiba 51H83 up against the Hitachi 51F500 anyday. Why have you eliminated the Toshiba from consideration (just curious)?

Daniel Boerigte

Go for the Hitachi S500. If you shop hard you can get a good price and the strech mode is much improved.

Luke_Lemmings

Check out the Toshiba HX83 Cinema Series.

These are the new ones this year. By far the BEST bang for the buck.

Amazing picture quality. I have no idea which model of Toshiba Craig Woodhall had but from the sounds of it, it definitely was not the HX83 Cinema Series. Possibly the TheatreWide Series.
But there is no way Hitachi is 50% better picture quality then Toshiba. That's just crazy. I also have a feeling that the sets weren't calibrated properly by qualified ISF techs. Buying from Futureshop they just deliver it and don't do any else. You need to get a tech to calibrate it for you (unless of course you're also certified).

Calibration and break in is extremely important for the best picture possible.

I have many friends who are in this business and all agree that for the money the Toshiba HX83 Cinema Series is by far the best buy.