Review: Pioneer DV444
Mal P
the DV344.
Hi everyone,
I've managed to purchase one of these machines after waiting for over a
month for it to be released in Australia, and I thought you might like to
hear my thoughts on this excellent DVD player.
For years I've been using a Creative Dxr3 (Hollywood Plus clone) to watch
DVDs on my TV... with one small problem. The TV (and reciever) was 40 metres
away in the living room, hooked up to the Dxr3 via 40 metre lengths for
video and digital audio. As you can imagine, setting a movie playing, and
then running to the living room to start watching, isn't exactly a
recreation of the "cinematic" experience. Unless you were off on a toilet
break or something.
Anyway, I decided to finally fork over for a DVD player, and initially, I
was going to go for the Pioneer 344 player, as it had garnered good reviews
and I respected the Pioneer brand for it's reputation with DVD playback.
I've had luck with their DVD-ROM drivers, friends have had luck with their
players, so why not? Besides, Pioneer were the only "top 5" brands around
that offered NTSC to PAL60 conversion, which I needed for my old TV. I was
reluctant to spend money on the cheaper players, mainly due to the hit and
miss ratio associated with them. Some friends I know have had tremendous
experiences with such cheaper players, and they have truly turned out to be
absolute bargains offering brand name features and performance at half the
cost. But some have had... not so good experiences with them, and for
someone who has endured many a crash with his PC DVD player... I wanted as
little trouble as possible.
Anyway, I was about to purchase the Pioneer 344, but I read a post in this
newsgroup about a new player from Pioneer that was coming out... and so my
curiosity was intrigued. I decided to withhold my purchase of the 344 until
I had more information on this new player. After much research and E-mailing
of Pioneer officials, it turns out the new player was the "Pioneer DV533K"
which, above all, had the rather 'neat' feature of Mp3 playback. I had to
wait a month to buy it though.
So, the features of the Pioneer DV533K:
*540-line playback resolution (I'm not sure whether this is visible on
anything but the most high-end TVs, but eh)
*DVD/SVCD/VCD/CD/CD-R/CD-RW playback.
*NTSC to PAL60 format conversion
*Mp3 playback
*192khz/24-bit DAC (the European model has Burr-Brown DACs, but not sure on
the Aussie version)
*MP3 playback
*Karaoke features
*Adjustable Video settings
*Smooth variable fast forward/rewind!
*TruSurround by SRS (bleah)
*Component/S-Video/Composite video output
*Screen Saver
Ok, so I get the player, and plug it in, hooking it up via digital optical
cable to my Sony 50ES DD/DTS reciever. The first thing I notice is that the
player is a slim-line model, gold coloured and looks quite attractive. It's
not the yellowish-gold as the brochures make out, but a rather posh
creamy-gold. Mind you, I would have preferred black, but hey, it's just a
colour. The build quality is a notch above that seen in the 344/535 lines as
it seems very solid, encased in metal and the buttons and drive tray very
firm. In fact, I'd say the build matches that of the old Pioneer 515 series
around a few years ago. The manual is comprehensive and detailed enough for
a reasonable individual to work out what's going on.
So, I pop a disc in the drive (the Matrix - don't like the movie but a good
test disc). The player loads the DVD automatically and very quickly. Menu
navigation is fluid and quick. The player responds instantly to the remote
control commands. Just to note that the remote control is absolutely
superb... the navigation keys are right under your thumb, and very easy to
locate. The other functions keys (fast forward, next, pause etc) are all
located in comfortable positions and after a while, you can remember the
location of each key by simply feeling the remote with your fingers, even in
the dark.
Once the movie is actually playing, the playback quality is breathtaking.
I'm not sure whether it's because I had been running composite video over 40
metres previously, but the picture is a lot sharper and doesn't "colour
bleed" anymore. I'd say it's equivalent to the Pioneer 535/344 etc. I think
pretty much everyone knows what that looks like. I'm not sure I'd notice the
540-line feature, even if
I had a fancy TV, but the quality is no worse than in previous models. About
this chroma-bug... I'm not sure how to detect it, but someone in the states
report that they can't find the bug with their equivalent model (the DV440).
You can adjust the video by going to the setup menu. There are three preset
modes, "standard" which is just taking the source from the DVD untampered
(the most used by me), as well as "cinema" and "animation" which adjusts the
contrast/brightness levels to suit different types of film. There are also
individual options to adjust the sharpness, contrast, brightness, colour etc
and save them in two different memory slots. The "display" key on the remote
lets you view the various data on the CD, such as time left and bitrate etc.
The fast forward and rewind are absolutely wonderful. Anyone who is used to
the 4-second "jerk" that was the prior Pioneer norm will be delighted. There
are three variable speeds to choose from. You press the forward button once,
and it begins a 2x speed fast forward. You press it again, and it moves on
upto a 4x fast forward. Press it again, and you have an 8x fast forward. You
can also press the forward button and keep it pressed, giving you a 2x fast
forward until you release the button. All this works in the opposite
(rewind) direction as well.
The slow motion features are also smooth, allowing you to view at 1/2, 1/4
speed or 1/16 speed in both directions. There is also a frame advance button
that again lets you go back.
Note that if you keep a scene paused for a long time, the screen saver kicks
in, thus stopping your tube from burning in.
Every disc I've thrown at it have played superbly and without flaw. I'll
need to go and nab a copy of the "The Cell" to see if it works, but I don't
doubt it will as Pioneer already have a firmware upgrade available for the
535/344 for the fix, and I'm sure it has been incoporated into the 533K
firmware.
I unfortunately haven't listened to the quality of the on-board DACs, as I
just use the optical out. CDs load quickly, and you can fast forward/rewind
tracks as well.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of this player is the Mp3 playback
option. I burned a CD of around 150 files in 5 different folders to test
this feature. Note that the player will recognise a maximum of 250 folders
and 250 files. It will work with fixed bitrate files from 64kbps to 320kbps,
but it will *not* work with variable bitrates. That's ok, it's rare to find
a variable bitrate mp3. You can use 44.1khz or 48khz files. The player will
show on both it's display panel and the TV navigation screen the ISO
standard 8.3 letter filenames.
When you are playing the MP3 CD, you can see the folders on the left, and
the tracks within the folders on the right. Using the arrow keys, you can
select the folder or track and press Enter to play. You can setup a
playlist, or use a random play function. You can also FF or RW the songs.
The "display" key will show the bitrate for the files as well. An Mp3 CD is
loaded very quickly.
A picture of the Mp3 navigator (note - promo pic from some website):
http://www.avland.co.uk/pioneer/dv545/mp3menulrg.jpg
It also seems that the "crackle" that older Pioneer models and older Sony
recievers have had no longer is a problem... I've not noticed it on any of
the titles that I have played.
The player plays back VCDs and SVCDs just as competently, and also allows
you to smooth fast forward/rewind along with all the other functions
available for the DVD format. One niggle is that it always seems to start a
VCD in "PBC" or "Playback Control" mode... anyone know how to turn that off?
One of the handy playback features is something called "Last Condition
Memory". It stores all your disc settings for up to 15 different titles. I
have a music DVD that always defaults to the DD2.0 track, and you have to
enter the menu to change it back to DD5.1... with Last Condition Memory, the
disc automatically starts playing using the DD5.1 track. Bliss.
Overall, this is a fantastic player for the money, and I'm absolutely
delighted with it. I doubt you could find a better, more feature and
performance complete one at this price. Today, I popped an Mp3 disc in
there, set it on random for the 170 or so songs and sat down to do some
reading for Uni. Bliss :)
Sincerely,
Mal
MillerAkmiller
Andy C
"Mal P" <pandor...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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Nigel Ince
where do you live - Buckingham Palace ?
Knob
"Mal P" <pandor...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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