The Pioneer DVR-450H-S DVD recorder is the choice of audio and video enthusiasts. It easily connects through HDMI® to output up to 1080p for the highest quality output for your HD display. Use the 160 GB hard disk to record up to 340 hours of your favourite shows. The convenience of JPEG photo viewer and music jukebox on HDD/DVD/CD allows you to enjoy hours of your most treasured memories all on your HDTV.
Features:
1080p HDMI® upscaling
Dual-layer DVD-R, DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW compatible
SVCD, VCD, CD, CD-R/CD-RW compatible
LPCM (lossless CD ripping for CD quality audio)
WMA (Windows Media® audio)/MP3/MPEG-4 AAC compressed music playback compatible
DTS® (Digital Theater System) 2-channel decoding
Dolby® digital output
Lossless LPCM ripping of CD’s to HDD for the highest quality audio
JPEG photo viewer
Music jukebox
Disc navigator
Resume function
Screen saver
Autopower off
AV connections:
1 x component (Y, Pb, Pr)
1 x HDMI®
1 x S-Video
1 x audio/1 video output
1 x coaxial digital output
Front inputs (1 composite AV, 1 S-Video)
Rear inputs (2 composite AV, 2 S-Video)
Included Accessories:
Remote control
Batteries
Specifications:
Dimensions (L x W x H):
28.8 cm x 42 cm x 72 cm
(11.3 in. x 16.5 in. x 3 in.)
Weight: 4.1 kg (9 lb.)
Warranty:
1 year
Features:
1080p HDMI® upscaling
Dual-layer DVD-R, DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW compatible
SVCD, VCD, CD, CD-R/CD-RW compatible
LPCM (lossless CD ripping for CD quality audio)
WMA (Windows Media® audio)/MP3/MPEG-4 AAC compressed music playback compatible
DTS® (Digital Theater System) 2-channel decoding
Dolby® digital output
Lossless LPCM ripping of CD’s to HDD for the highest quality audio
JPEG photo viewer
Music jukebox
Disc navigator
Resume function
Screen saver
Autopower off
AV connections:
1 x component (Y, Pb, Pr)
1 x HDMI®
1 x S-Video
1 x audio/1 video output
1 x coaxial digital output
Front inputs (1 composite AV, 1 S-Video)
Rear inputs (2 composite AV, 2 S-Video)
Included Accessories:
Remote control
Batteries
Specifications:
Dimensions (L x W x H):
28.8 cm x 42 cm x 72 cm
(11.3 in. x 16.5 in. x 3 in.)
Weight: 4.1 kg (9 lb.)
Warranty:
1 year
My main reason for purchasing this unit is I heard it was user friendly, which is imporant to me an my wife. The 160G HD should hold enough shows and the DVD recording will allow us to backup certain programing as well as transfer some older VHS recordings that we have. There are some old tapes of performances that I would like to keep and so far I wasn't very keen on copying to my computer so I thought this would be a great option. At the moment I have not gotten to copying to HDD or to DVD yet.
First off, I was very surprised at the light weight nature of this unit. Sure I saw the specs, but sometimes 9lbs can be a light 9lbs or a heavier 9lbs, if that makes any sense. The setup was straight forward. I had to purchase a HDMI cable as the unit only comes with a standard combo video/L/R cable.
Now to the actual funcionality. I am pretty new to the whole HDD recording arena. First off the recoding quality makes a difference to the number of hours you can store. I have it setup in SP quality, which gives me around 69 hours of recording. I find this the best comprimise for picture quality and space. I only have basic cable so setting the recoring mode to a higher level is pretty much a waste. On LP, I beleive, this will double the recording lenght to close to 140 hours. There is a visable loss of quality and by the onboard display it is basically recording at around 2-3 Mbps vs the SP of 5-6 Mbps. I did try a sample at the highest quality setting and that was pretty close to 10 Mbps and did not notice any picture quality improvement. Again this is probably due to my basic cable signal, you can only do so much to a crappy signal, in the end it is still a crappy signal.
This unit has 32 seperate timers and you can set the timers specifically, adjusting the start and end times by the minute or you can use an 'easy' timer set, which displays a nice date and bar chart for start and end times. But this only initially sets the timer at 30 min increments. I don't know about anybody else, but I like to add a minute or two at either the begginning or end of a timer to ensure I catch the whole program.
There are 10 genre's that can be user defined to make it easier to find recorded material. At the moment I have just set them to the days of the week. We tend to know which days we want to watch, so if we can find all previous taped shows from Wed, then it should be an easy search. At present, we don't have much saved on the disc, so I can't tell if my thinking is going to work or not.
Once you have recorded a couple of shows, it is pretty simple to go to the disc menu and select your program. Somehow some channels will display the actual name of the program so it is also recorded and displayed so you don't have to enter the show name manually. I like the ability to play any recorded show while the unit is recording something. In addition, if I wanted to watch a DVD, I just had to push a button and it would allow me to watch a DVD. Just like a VCR, if you are recording a show, you can't switch channels. That's no big deal. But unlike a VCR, you can start watching the show that is actually recording. I think that is pretty much a standard feature these days, but seeing this is my first experience, I think it is pretty cool.
On play back, there is a commercial skip feature. This advances 30seconds with every push of the button. If you over shoot, you can go back 5 seconds, or 15 seconds or the full 30 seconds. Again very handy compared to the VCR. A nice feature that I really like, is the ability to speed up the replay, which essentially speeds up the dialoge by a factor of 2x. This allows me to quickly watch something and abosorb what is going on. Some people might think I'm nuts, but ever since I started listening to tapes and other material at 2x normal speed, I find it very useful.
So far I haven't found a downside. It will take a few more weeks for me to do some transfering and burning. I'll try to update when I use those functions.
For a nice VCR/DVD replacement, I think this is well worth my money. Minor things that may be important for others, but not that big a deal for me, there is no USB or firewire port. So if you have a video camera and need to transfer and archive, this would be a major setback. Since I don't have a video camera, I can live with out the additional inputs. Secondaly, my plan is to use this device, learn it and decide what I need to have for my next unit. Currently this is my bedroom unit and intend to keep it a such.
I know there are other bigger HDD units out there that might be cheaper, but you can't beat the Costco warranty. If it doesn't work out, it goes back. No worries about mail order, etc.
I should mention that I am connecting this to my 32" Samsung LCD display. As a side note, closed captions are not enabled through the HDMI connection. So I have used the basic video connection to enable closed captioning.
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