I'm very happy with my 50V500.
I had the set for almost four weeks. Before that I had
spent about four years researching HDTV sets; I'm glad
now that I waited, the current generation of HD sets seem
to have gotten to the point where the major issues have
been dealt with.
The Hitachi's peformance with analog cable was a real
surprise; I had expected to be disapointed with the PQ
but the Hitachi does a great job of making it watchable,
especially movies.
Some things I learned that have helped:
1. Bypass your Digital Cable box when watching SD material.
An old-fashioned analog cable connection produces a
sharper picture. The exception to this is the premium
channels from the digital cable box, for which you need
to go through the box. Have the cable guy install a "picture
in picture" bypass for you, connected to antenna input A.
That will let you get the cable signal both ways.
2. Use a DVI-output DVD player. I got the Bravo D1, which looks
great connected to the Hitachi.
3. Get a source for HD programming. Only with HD are you using
the full potential of the set. Currently I'm getting five HD channels
from Adelphia, plus I purchased a DVHS deck since this is currently
the only way to play back prerecorded HD content. In the future
there will be Hi-Def DVDs, but the current estimates I have read
indicate that this will not really arrive for at least another year,
possibly two.
4. Adjust the settings. Out of the box, both brightness and contrast
were way off, at least to my taste. Also from this forum I learned
about turning down "black/contrast enhancement" to stop the flicker
problem this feature can sometimes cause.
No set is perfect and the Hitachi does have a couple of limitations that
I have found so far. One is that there are only two component inputs,
and if you are using DVI then only one component input is still usable -
I'm going to have to buy a component switch to hook-up everything
I have. The second limitation I found is that the photo card reader
apparently does not support the new FAT32 format. It seems that
photos need to be recorded on a FAT16 formatted card.
Despite the minor limitations it has, I highly recommend this set.
I think it's the best performing set in it's price range; the only thing
that would be clearly superior would be a true 1080p display device,
but the few 1080p devices currently available are not exactly
affordable.
MikeGT.