While it's tempting to compare Hitachi's well-earned reputation for producing top-draw plasmas to the fearsome reputation of football champions Chelsea, it's the relatively low price of the brand's 42PD7200 that's really attractive - not something we'd ever associate with West London's richest.

The reasonable price doesn't mean that corners have been cut, however. Despite a simple outward appearance, the set boasts both HDMI and DVI inputs capable of taking high-def material - making Sky's HDTV footie plans well within reach.

What's more, these appear alongside component video inputs, for progressive scan images from a DVD player and for hooking up to the Blu-ray or HD DVD players of the near future.

PC, S-video, composite, audio and headphone sockets complete an impressive roster, all appearing on a clip-on 'floating' cluster.

Hitachi has also packed in some advanced picture processing. At the centre is its 'Picture Master' processing system, which gives all-digital image scaling, eschewing the need for the messy analogue-to-digital conversions that can affect pictures. It also adjusts brightness and contrast for individual sections of a picture to produce optimum results, as well as sorting out image noise, colours and motion.

Then there's the Alternate Lighting of Surfaces panel, which has a native resolution of 1,042 x 1,024 pixels. This means it will play both the forms of high-definition that Sky plan to broadcast - 720p 'progressive' (that's 720 lines all in one go compared to the present 540) and 1080i 'interlaced' (two sets of 540 lines flashed onto the screen simultaneously).

Bright as a button

Another boon is this set's user-friendliness. The remote control is laid out in such a way that you don't have to spend ages looking for the right button. It also looks good, with stylish transparent keys and no-nonsense labelling.

As for the on-screen menus, they are clearly laid out and intuitive, so installation is nice and easy. Simple as they might seem, however, they do allow for plenty of fine-tuning, so the fussy user has plenty to play with - a great combination.

As for the picture quality, the 42PD7200 turns out to be a superb performer. When viewing our test football footage, colours looked vibrant and well saturated, while the brightly-lit surroundings of Richard Keys' Sky studio came out sparkling. Detail in close-ups was also awesomely good, with little trace of blocking in any part of the picture, and quick camera pans across the pitch were clean.