There is a clear trend in Japan, where all the relevant new TVs come from, and that’s building devices to store programs into the hardware itself, i.e. HDDs or Blu-ray recorders. Mitsubishi appears to be especially radical in this respect, announcing a TV with both a built-in Blu-ray recorder and HDD just last week. And today Hitachi followed up by adding a total of two new LCDs and three plasmas [JP] to their Wooo TV series, with all models featuring a built-in 500GB HDD.
The three plasma TVs will be available as 42/46 and 50-inchers (prices: $3,000/$3,500 and $4,000 – the picture above shows the biggest model). The two LCDs will be available in 37-inch and 42-inch versions (prices: $2,500 and $3,000). All of these TVs have the 500GB HDD on board, are full HD, can handle DLNA and have an iVDR slot. The plasma models boast a contrast ratio of 40,000:1.
Hitachi plans to ship the plasma TVs to Japanese stores starting September 10, while the LCDs (see the smaller model above) are scheduled for release in October. International sales plans haven’t been announced yet.