Hitachi has announced it will build a new production line at the plant and ramp up production to 200,000 units a month by next fall. It shares a production plant with Fujitsu, and Hitachi recently bought a majority share in that Japanese property. Some manufacturers try to hide the stand, but those designs would not have allowed the ultra-convenient swivel feature Hitachi provides. To my eye, though, the base seems bulky, given the svelte nature of the product it supports. In fact, the swivel is electric you can control it from the remote – an intriguing feature. It's a handsome unit, all black, on a table-top base that swivels. That's still quite a lot for a television, of course, but a fraction of what a comparable product and all the assorted outboard equipment would have cost just three or four years ago. Like many of today's plasmas this 42' (diagonal) model comes loaded with features, providing an analog tuner, a digital tuner with CableCARD connectivity, 2-way, side-mounted speakers and amplification totaling a rated 40-watts. Oh how times have changed, as Hitachi's 42HDT52 makes clear. With no features to speak of, these plasmas had remote controls that offered four or five buttons, and that's all. Plasmas had no speakers or amplification of any kind.

Any sound would have to come from your own sound system. Remember the day when plasma televisions were unadorned monitors? You had to connect it to a VCR to watch conventional television, and of course HDTV required another outboard tuner box.

Television plasma