Terrible Reception: Dallas Man Makes a Federal Case Over His TV Set

If you have a Hitachi 50V500A rear-projection LCD TV and think it's nothing more than a $3,500 hunk o' junk, you're not alone. The Interwebs are littered with complaints concerning the set, which went on sale about four years back. Most have to do with mutli-colored "stain-like" spots that look...

By Robert Wilonsky

August 29, 2008

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If you have a Hitachi 50V500A rear-projection LCD TV and think it's nothing more than a $3,500 hunk o' junk, you're not alone. The Interwebs are littered with complaints concerning the set, which went on sale about four years back. Most have to do with mutli-colored "stain-like" spots that look like, oh, crop circles, according to one page devoted to issues with the 50-inch-screen HD-ready set.

And one guy's had enough with the Hitachi runaround: Dallas's own Anthony Partida, who filed in United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas a lawsuit alleging that not only has Hitachi known about the problem for years, but refused to do anything about it while continuing to sell the sets. And his local attorney's looking to turn it into a class-action: "According to the lawsuit, tens of thousands of consumers who bought the high-end TVs may be experiencing the same trouble." See, this is why all my television sets are the Sony Watchman. --Robert Wilonsky

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