TEST BENCH

Color temperature (Cinema Night Setting/6500° temperature before/ Cinema Night Setting/6500° temperature after calibration): 20-IRE: 5,320 K/6,458 K 30-IRE: 5,863 K/6,414 K 40-IRE: 6,003 K/6,469 K 50-IRE: 6,063 K/6,478 K 60-IRE: 6,218 K/6,476 K 70-IRE: 6,273 K/6,499 K 80-IRE: 6,258 K/6,434 K 90-IRE: 6,296 K/6,423 K 100-IRE: 6,271 K/6,550 K

Brightness (100-IRE full field): 12.3/17.4 ftL Primary Color Point Accuracy vs. SMPTE HD Standard

TEST BENCH

With the Hitachi set to its Night mode, D.Cinema color temperature, and Vibrant color space, its grayscale tracked fairly consistently within 500 K of the 6,500 K standard down to 40 IRE. Below that point, its grayscale turned notably redder. White Balance adjustments made in the user menu brought it to within ±86 K - excellent performance. The set's primary colors matched the HDTV standard almost perfectly in Auto color space mode, and came awfully close in the Vibrant mode I opted for as well, showing just a bit of undersaturation on green. Its color decoder measured only a -10% red error prior to adjustment with the Color Decoding menu, and 0% error afterward.

As expected with a plasma model, the Hitachi's screen uniformity was essentially perfect, with only a slight bit of noise visible in the darkest full-field test patterns, and it exhibited a fairly wide viewing angle and no obvious glare problems on its matte-finish screen. It cleanly resolved 1080i/p- and 720p-resolution test signals via both its HDMI and component-video inputs.

The Hitachi performed well on the upconversion and deinterlacing torture tests on the Silicon Optix Blu-ray and standard-def HQV test discs. But it did only an average job of cleaning up grungy standard-def signals, and its various noise reduction circuits tended to soften the picture noticeably more than some others I've seen.

The P50X902's Reel 60 3:2 pulldown circuitry seemed to work well to reduce judder on film-based material, as observed on the long sweeping pan of some stadium seats in a clip on the Silicon Optix HQV Blu-ray disc. Likewise, the Cinema 48 function - which can be enabled to activate 2:2 pulldown for 24 frame-per-second content delivered from Blu-ray discs via the HDMI input - also seemed to smooth out motion on some scenes. One particularly challenging scene I used to test this occurs in the Blu-ray Disc of Fool's Gold at around 37min:20sec into the movie. The shot starts with a static close up of a globe sitting atop a tall file cabinet, after which the camera pans diagonally down to peer into a long hallway before zooming in on a person entering the room. The combination of the diagonal pan and the sudden zoom creates noticeable judder and jerkiness. Turning on the Cinema 48 function nicely smoothed the motion, but didn't help extract additional detail during the rapid pan the way I've seen some 120-Hz motion circuits do on the better LCD HDTVs.

This set's audio options include two surround modes, with the Wide mode doing a good job of throwing background music well past the sides of the TV. But the small speakers sounded unacceptably thin without the Bass Boost function turned on, and in larger rooms viewers may find the dynamic impact wanting in the absence of an ancillary audio system. A helpful Lip Sync function allows alignment of the out-of-sync audio that occasionally occurs with some cable programs, and it worked as advertised.