Hitachi Ultravision 32HDL52 32-Inch LCD HDTV
By: Hitachi Average Rating: 3.0 Total Reviews: 1
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 On: 2007-05-20
I bought this set in late 2005, and heres a summary of my experiences:
THE GOOD:
- Fine picture. It looked about as good as any of the higher end models in the store.
- Good sound. Again, no disappointments here.
- Large number of connectors and interfaces are available. Maybe some sets have more, and maybe this set doesnt have every type of connector out there, but it has a respectable number.
- Built-in Digital Tuner. This lets me pick up free, over the air digital TV with just an antenna.
THE BAD:
- Flaky CPU and/or memory system. This is a real pain. About every 6 months or so, the internal memory system will forget all of my favorite channels. Also, every couple of weeks, the computer randomly switches me from only flipping between my favorite channels to flipping through all channels. There is no warning when this happens - Ill be scrolling through the channels and suddenly Ill be on a channel that I know is NOT in my list of favorites. I bring the menu, and sure enough, it has changed itself back to All Channels.
- Strange, never ending "Updating Channel Database" messages. This happens all the time. One moment, youre watching TV, then it pops up a message "Updating channel database." I assume it scans the airwaves to do this, but I have no idea why it feels it needs to do this several times during a half-hour TV show, or sometimes several times in one minute. Worse, on a few occasions, its "updates" have caused channels to vanish from my list of available channels. Just last week, it attempted to replace FOX 45 with FOX 46... there is no FOX 46 in this area, so I have no idea what it was trying to do. And theres no way to undo it, which leads me to the next problem...
- Digital TV interface is "plastered on" and is a poorly done mess: The Digital TV menus and instructions are often vague and difficult to figure out, and there is no way to undo the TV random decisions to change the list of available channels, "forget" channels just because the reception is poor, or otherwise mess things up. Supposedly, one can manually scan for channels to add them back into the database, but this never works. The only option is to waste 10 minutes having the TV sweep ALL channels and try to rebuild the corrupted database from scratch. Note that theres a 50% chance that in doing this, it will forget OTHER channels, thus forcing a repeat of the whole process!
- Set is needlessly large and heavy. Come on - 60+ pounds for a 32" LCD?! Does it have lead bricks in it?
- Instructions are clearly poorly translated from another language and often lack useful information, especially with regard to the "pasted on" Digital TV interface.
SUMMARY: A good TV for watching movies and playing video games, but unless there is some way to fix the TVs constant attempts to "update the channel database" and at the same time dropping channels and corrupting the channel database, I CANNOT recommend it for normal TV use.
On: 2007-05-19
I bought this set in late 2005, and heres a summary of my experiences:
THE GOOD:
- Fine picture. It looked about as good as any of the higher end models in the store.
- Good sound. Again, no disappointments here.
- Large number of connectors and interfaces are available. Maybe some sets have more, and maybe this set doesnt have every type of connector out there, but it has a respectable number.
- Built-in Digital Tuner. This lets me pick up free, over the air digital TV with just an antenna.
THE BAD:
- Flaky CPU and/or memory system. This is a real pain. About every 6 months or so, the internal memory system will forget all of my favorite channels. Also, every couple of weeks, the computer randomly switches me from only flipping between my favorite channels to flipping through all channels. There is no warning when this happens - Ill be scrolling through the channels and suddenly Ill be on a channel that I know is NOT in my list of favorites. I bring the menu, and sure enough, it has changed itself back to All Channels.
- Strange, never ending "Updating Channel Database" messages. This happens all the time. One moment, youre watching TV, then it pops up a message "Updating channel database." I assume it scans the airwaves to do this, but I have no idea why it feels it needs to do this several times during a half-hour TV show, or sometimes several times in one minute. Worse, on a few occasions, its "updates" have caused channels to vanish from my list of available channels. Just last week, it attempted to replace FOX 45 with FOX 46... there is no FOX 46 in this area, so I have no idea what it was trying to do. And theres no way to undo it, which leads me to the next problem...
- Digital TV interface is "plastered on" and is a poorly done mess: The Digital TV menus and instructions are often vague and difficult to figure out, and there is no way to undo the TV random decisions to change the list of available channels, "forget" channels just because the reception is poor, or otherwise mess things up. Supposedly, one can manually scan for channels to add them back into the database, but this never works. The only option is to waste 10 minutes having the TV sweep ALL channels and try to rebuild the corrupted database from scratch. Note that theres a 50% chance that in doing this, it will forget OTHER channels, thus forcing a repeat of the whole process!
- Set is needlessly large and heavy. Come on - 60+ pounds for a 32" LCD?! Does it have lead bricks in it?
- Instructions are clearly poorly translated from another language and often lack useful information, especially with regard to the "pasted on" Digital TV interface.
SUMMARY: A good TV for watching movies and playing video games, but unless there is some way to fix the TVs constant attempts to "update the channel database" and at the same time dropping channels and corrupting the channel database, I CANNOT recommend it for normal TV use.
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