I have a couple of questions about the Hitach 57F59. I am asking on these forums because it seems that there is some discrepency between the specs hitachi has on its website and what is true about the TV (most notably the HDTV tuner or not question).

My question is, what scan rates does this TV display? I know it accepts 480i/p, 720p, and 1080i, but what does it actually display? Does it upconvert everything to 1080i? If so, should there be any difference between a 720p and 1080i source?

I ask because, I own this TV, and have noticed some idiosyncracies. First, for some reason 480p has a very different look than 480i, 720p, and 1080i. Namely, it is EXTREMELY red, almost to the point of making it an unusable input resolution. Why is that? Furthermore, while using my Xbox360 over HDMI to watch a particular DVD (Jeff Dunham's DVD -- if you haven't seen it, watch it. It's hillarious), at 480p things were fine save the redness I mentioned earlier, at 720p things were fine all around, but at 1080i, things were kinda messed up. It sort of seemed like it went from a smoth 24 or 30fps to like 15. It was jittery exactly, just not smooth. I hope that explenation makes sense.

Now, oddly, this Jeff Dunham DVD is the only DVD I have really noticed the 1080i's upconversion issue. I have watched a couple of other movies upconverted to 1080i (which my Xbox360 is almost always set to) and didn't notice a problem.

If anyone can help me better understand my TV and why these issues might arise, I would greatly appreciate it.

The F59s ONLY display 1080i or 540p. All SD video from either component, HDMI, S-Video and composite is automatically displayed at whatever resolution Virtual HD is set to. 1080i HD signals go straight to the screen as 1080i. 720p HD gets converted to 1080i. The only time VHD is not active is in the presense of an HD signal.

The only exception is OTA digital signals. The internal ATSC tuner is not actually an HD tuner. It will pick up OTA HD, but it gets downconverted to 480i, then rescaled to 1080i thru VHD. It does treat OTA HD the same as HD from other sources, in as much as it auto-selects the proper 16x9 aspect for them.

As for the red issue, you got me. If possible, you may want to try another upscaling DVD player (peraps someone you know has one?) to see if you get the same results as from the XBOX.

I'd suggest reposting your questions on the main Htiachi 57F59A thread as well. Might get more notice (and maybe more/better info) there.

I'd also try running DVDs @ 480i, letting VHD rescale them to 1080i. That seems to get the best overall results from DVD when not upscaling them from the player.