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No matter how hard it tries, plasma seems to be losing the flat TV PR battle with LCD. And there can be no more poignant example of this fact in action than Hitachi's L42VP01 - a 42in LCD TV from a brand which, as recently as last year, was proudly proclaiming that plasma was the only technology worth using for large TV screens.

It's not the most attractive TV in town, but it is at least decently specified. Connections include two HDMIs capable of handling the 1080p/24fps format delivered by many hi-def decks; a component video input and a D-Sub PC port.

The screen itself, meanwhile, boasts a full HD pixel count of 1,920 x 1,080, and an eye-catching (by LCD standards) claimed contrast ratio of 10,000:1 - excellent numbers for the money.

Other features are at something of a premium - though the only absentee we're really worried we'll miss is Hitachi's Picture Master HD processing. We've previously witnessed this sharpen images and reduce video noise, so we can't help but be concerned about how pictures will fare without it.

Performance

Actually, they don't fare as badly as we might have expected. Feed in an HD source and you'll be struck by how intensely sharp and detailed images are - especially if you take best advantage of the screen's full HD resolution by using a provided pixel for pixel aspect ratio mode. The density of the 1,920 x 1,080 pixel count proves helpful, too, in reproducing some effortlessly smooth, stripe-free colour blends.

There's surprisingly little motion blur to report either considering how little obvious image processing seems to be going on; brightness levels are pretty extreme; and best of all this brightness is achieved while retaining more than decent black levels.

Stopping the set short of best buy status, though, is its indifferent colour saturation. There just doesn't seem the same richness and vibrancy, even during very colour-rich scenes, that we now commonly expect from LCD screens.

The set is also no great lover of standard definition, with the lower-resolution format causing quite noticeable motion blur, colour tone issues, much more video noise, and a greater loss of sharpness than we'd expect.

Still, an iffy standard-definition performance is hardly a rarity with full HD LCDs. And actually, even with its strangely pallid colours, the L42VP01's overall AV performance really is more than acceptable on a £1,000 LCD screen.