Did it come with anything useful?

could be a setting in the player. I have a samsung that for some reason has a black and white playback feature. Go through the menu's and look to see if you have some kind of playback method that alludes to it.

You can always surf the UK branch of the Hitachi site to find instructions or support.

Thanks for your suggestions guys.  It does not seem to be a cabling problem as it uses just a single scart lead running from the player to the TV.  I tried 2 different leads and both TV scart sockets.  It is the DVD player rather than the disk as the logo appears in black and white before I load any disc and anyway I've tried multiple discs now.  I've gone through every permutation of set up that I can see which made no change.  Then finally I followed up with Hitachi and downloaded the instruction manual but this says nothing about troubleshooting for a B+W picture.

So thanks again for your help but I think I'll just have to put this one down to experience!

Leigh