No Room for Widescreen HD? Try Hitachi's LCD-H5 Series

Although the idea of HD broadcasting is generally associated with large, widescreen displays, either using LCD or plasma technology, sometimes it's rather useless to purchase such an item, simply because you don't have the necessary space in your house in order to setup and enjoy such a huge screen. This is the reason why the Hitachi company has just launched the 23LCD-H5 and 20LCD-H5 models, which provide 720p resolutions in a much smaller and more versatile form factor.

As the Japanese AkihabaraNews website informs us, these devices, albeit rather small for the true lovers of HD, offer some pretty decent features and specs. Thus, as mentioned earlier, the 23LCD-H5 and 20LCD-H5 sport a 20 and 23 inch diagonal respectively, and are capable of providing an output resolution of 720p (1366 x 768), the actual display size being of 50.8 x 28.5/58.3 (cm) and 44.3 x 24.9/50.9 (cm) respectively.

The two TV sets also offer the most common input options encountered in the case of HD displays. Thus, they come with a terrestrial cable HD connector, as well as a HDMI connector and the Japanese only D4 connector (which will most likely be replaced by something else or removed altogether when these things hit Europe and the US). However, Hitachi's device also provides support for analog video, via their coaxial, RCA, and S-video jacks.

The 23LCD-H5 and 20LCD-H5 also offer some pretty decent audio features. Thus, both models are fitted with 2 speakers each, each speaker measuring around 7.2 x 4.2 cm and having a power output of 2.5 W, for a total audio output of 5W.

As mentioned earlier, the size factor is quite important in the case of Hitachi's new TV sets. Thus, the 20LCD-H5 measures 50.9 x 40.5 x 21.0 cm (with stand), at a weight of around 7.2 kilos, while the 23LCD-H5 measures 58.8 x 44.9 x 21.0 cm (also with stand), while weighing in at around 8.2 kg.

The two models from Hitachi are available solely in Japan for now, for around 600 Euro (800 US dollars), which makes them quite affordable and possible candidates for "emigration" in other parts of the world.

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