The predicament was raised predominantly after SmartHouse reported last week that Hitachi had been contacted by a prominent figure at Harvey Norman who did not agree with the Japanese consumer electronics brand selling its range of 1080i plasma panels as ‘full HD'.
SmartHouse received many emails and phone calls supporting Harvey Norman's view, that panels capable of displaying a 1080i signal were inferior to those able to display a 1080p one, but we found the following message from reviewer Steve Dawson particularly interesting – not only because it adds more layers to the ‘war against Hitachi' (the original document can be found here:
http://www.hifi-writer.com/blog/20070614.htm#20071112-1615).
"The issue is complicated by the use of the same term to describe two -- actually, three or even four -- different things," said Dawson, referring to the term ‘full HD'.
Dawson says the second use of the term full HD is to describe the resolution of the display.
"I have for the last few years been using Full HD or True HD to refer to a panel resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels, regardless of whether or not the display is capable of accepting 1080p signals. It appears that these Hitachi TVs do indeed meet my criterion for being Full HD," he said.
According to Dawson, the fact that a TV can't accept a 1080p signal does not necessarily make it an inferior specimen in terms of picture quality.
