Plasma displays are one of those emerging technologies that seem to be forever emerging because theyre prohibitively expensive. Even though plasma screens keep dropping in price by the thousands, youd be hard pressed to locate a model under the ten grand mark. The Hitachi PD32-A2100 comes close though, with a price tag just under $12,000, which according to the press release is just about right for the space and budget-conscious buyer.

The screens standard base features a swivel neck, something lacking from the rest of the plasma screens PC Authority has reviewed. This is a useful inclusion, but may not come into play too much as the screen has a wide 160 degree viewing angle. The screen can also be wall-mounted.

Aimed at the corporate market, and the affluent home shopper, the PD32-A2100 is an all-in-one product that features a generous 32in widescreen, in-built speakers and a separate A/V box for hooking the screen up to a television aerial, VCR, DVD player, game console and PC.

This certainly expands the screens functionality, but in reality the PD32-A2100 is more comfortable displaying TV and DVD than a computer desktop. This is because the wide screen has an extremely unusual resolution 852 x 1,024. An in-built multi-scan converter (MSC) allows you to display up to SXGA resolution, but it can only do this by down-mixing the signal to accommodate the screens 852 x 1,024 physical pixel res. PC displays can be toggled through different modes: full, which expands the input to the full widescreen; normal, at the down-mixed resolution; and real, which tries to display the input as close as possible to the original resolution. Regardless of which resolution we tried, we found even negotiating PC menus was a strain on the eyes, and wouldnt recommend trying to read or display fine text on the screen at all. Gameplay is good however, as the moving images detract from the down-sized graphics and really, theres nothing better than playing GTA3 on a massive screen.