I'm looking to get a reasonable 32" for my daughter's bedroom. I have a Hitachi in my kitchen a 19" and had planned to get a bigger Hitachi as I have no complaints, but the LG 32LD450 is on a super price from Currys.

Question one is it is full HD. She will never have anything HD connected to it, so is it better to buy a HD ready one or still buy the full HD as it is a better TV overall spec wise, or will it be too much for a bedroom ? They also have a HD ready on offer for the exact same price ? Is that one likely to be better ? Can you actually put a full HD telly to stuff that isnt HD ? She will still be connecting a video to it for instance. Can you even do that ?? LOL

Question two - which is better LG or Hitachi ?

Whatever signal you give a HD TV it scales the signal to match the screen pixels. If it's a full HD 1920 x 1080 display a standard 720 x 576 input has the missing pixels invented by the TV scaler circuitry. Similary a HD ready display usually with about 1320 x 768 pixels will get scaled to this size.

You will likely get a better picture by buying a quality HD Ready display (A Sony or a Panasonic) than a poor full HD display especially on a sub 40" display.

You can connect any standard kit to a HD TV but if you mean a vcr the extra size and resolution will likely look the p[ictures very poor. Much better to get a modern digital pvr to record which will have the superior RGB video output.

LG is considered a better TV brand than a Hitachi and I can't argue that the price is a bargain but do you realise how big a 32" screen is and have you considered that it will dominate a bedroom?

Indeed. How times have changed.
15/20 years ago LG and Samsung were seen in a similar vein to the likes of Alba/Bush and Amstrad. I.e. budget makes for those who couldn't afford the likes of Hitachi.

Step forward 20 years and both companies are amongst the World's largest consumer electronics companies and now regarded as just as good, or in the case of some who went backwards (Hitachi) even better.

I'd be willing to bet the smaller screen Hitachi's are probably Vestel re-badged products, so are pretty much the same as current Bush, Alba, Technika etc. You can generally tell by the onscreen menus, and if so, the LG is the better buy I would say.

As for feeding an HD TV with SD signals, yes you can. The TV will probably have a Freeview tuner built in anyway, so that takes care of watching TV. It will have at least one scart socket, so you can also attach a DVD player too. If SD signals are all she is going to watch then you can get away with one that is just HD Ready as opposed to one that is HD Ready 1080p, but even with an HD source you may not notice much of difference anyway on a 32 inch screen, depending on how far from the screen you view it.

LG are better than Hitachi these days, LG at least make their own sets (mostly), the majority of Hitachi sets are just cheap Vestel ones.

Hitachi stopped been a quality manufacturer back in the 70's?, their entire reputation was based on a couple of their early models.