Pioneer DVR-650H: A few questions

[therealjoeblow]

Hi,

I had a Daytek DVR-950s that was a dismal disaster in both user interface and recording quality, and it went back for a LG DRH-890, which is also going back due to programming errors in the firmware of *all* models currently available that affects recording quality, and LG's insistence that a brand new unit out of the store has to go to the service center for 2 weeks to have the firmware upgraded, rather than letting the customer download it and do so themselves.

Could someone who actually has the Pioneer DVR-650H please answer a few questions, mainly related to the secondary function of playback? I've read all of the available information regarding it's recording quality and editing features, and don't need anymore convincing on that end...

1) On **************, someone posted a comment that it will *not* play MPEG2 as a data file, only as DVD in proper .VOB format. Could someone please confirm? I have many discs of home video captured to dvd-compliant mpeg2 (720x480@30fps), but they are all burned as regular data files on standard dvd+r (ie. file.01.mpg). It would be nice if these were playable. LG recorders and players handle these just fine. Daytek recorder would not recognize the file on the disc (read it as an empty disc, I guess it was hard coded to just look for *.avi on a data disc).

2) Will it play PAL material? I found no mention of it on the web site. The manuals for the current Panasonic recorders all say that PAL discs *cannot* be played, but I've never tested one. I had a Daytek unit, it played PAL DVD's and PAL XviD/DivX just fine. Same with LG recorders and players, no issues. Realizing of course the difference between REGION CODING - if it's R2 coded I know it won't play in any R1 player - I'm talking about *non* region coded PAL discs or 25fps xvid/divx.

3) Regarding the user interface and playback: when you turn on the 'display' during playback, is there a progress bar that indicates where you are in the program, either visually or current time against total time, or both preferably? The Daytek unit gave you no info at all about total program length, which was a real inconvenience. The LG recorder gives a very nice progress bar with an indicator of where you are with the actual time against total, along with title# and chapter#. See picture here:

http://www.mts.net/~bmpeter/lg_drh_890_progressbar.jpg

4) Copy to Disc of recorded material: I've heard some older models cannot 'fast-copy' material to a disc once it's been edited on the harddrive, they re-encode it on the fly at 1x speed while recording it to dvd. The new LG doesn't have this problem, you can edit to your heart's content, and it will burn at the rated disc speed. What about this Pioneer please?

5) Last one: is there a PDF manual available on the net anywhere? I've searched and am unable to find one.

Many thanks,
The REAL Joe

[therealjoeblow]

Forget it, I couldn't wait and exchanged my LG unit for the Pioneer tonight, so I'll answer my own questions:

1) does *NOT* recognize *.mpg - it shows the disc as having no files, so no, it won't play MPEG2 that's not in a .VOB container. That's a big oversight as far as I'm concerned - all DVD players have MPEG2 decoders, and not enabling the interface to recognize the files and play them is just dumb.

2) does *NOT* play PAL material - DVD's or XviD/DivX. Well, it attempts to play them, but plays audio only with no picture. Another big oversight - most other lower priced brands do this without an issue, so it should have been something easy for Pioneer to implement in this 'flagship' model.

3) rather than a visual progress indicator, pressing display 2x during playback shows a 'strength meter' for the bitrate instead, although it also does show you current playback time and total time, so it's at least somewhat functional. Pioneer must have truly designed this for technogeeks if they though watching a display bar bounce around showing you the bitrate was more important than playback position... No big deal, it's functional enough, just not as pretty.

4) manual says fast copy is available if you record and do your editing in 'Video' mode. In this case the frame accurate editing has to be given up in favor of the fast copy, and edits are accurate only to about 0.5 seconds, but at least the editing interface gives you clear instructions and a choice - when you cut the file it asks if you prefer frame accurate and real time recording, or less accurate cuts and fast copy. That's a good implementation - all manufacturers should explain it to the users and let them make the choice (for the technical reasoning, I've read that edits *have to* occur at I frames, which only occur every so often, about every 15 frames. So if you want to be able to fast copy (ie. bit for bit data dump from hdd to disc) the edits *have* to occur at existing I frames, therefore the 0.5 second accuracy is all that's available. If you want frame accurate, the editor inserts a flag at the chosen edit frame, but when copying to disc, it *has to* reencode the file at realtime speed so it can encode the new I frames at the edit points. Makes sense...)

5) PDF manual is not online at Pioneer's web site yet, but a paper copy is available in the box ;-)

As far as first impressions go:

THINGS I LIKE:

A) Picture quality is outstanding - I thought the LG was great, and the Pioneer is even better - a little sharper, no flickering or other anomalies, plus the user interface lets you adjust nearly a dozen visual quality settings so you can set black levels, comb filter strength, color settings and noise reduction settings to your liking for every input and every playback mode. That's a great feature.

B) Record quality - excellent - you can't tell the difference from the recorded material and the source (motorola digital cable box) at SP mode. Also, like it's predecessor, rather than just the 6 preset record settings (XP, SP, SLP, LP, etc) it has 32 levels of user selectable settings in 10 minute increments that can be used to tailor the bitrate just to what's required. So if you are recording a movie that's scheduled for 2h15m that you'd eventually like to copy to a 4.3gb disc, you don't have to record at 2 hour mode and split it over 2 discs, nor revert to 4 hour recording mode and lose a ton of quality - you can just set it for 2:20 and the recorder modifies the bitrate as required, and you really can't tell the difference from the 2:00 mode with that subtle of a change in bitrate.

C) The user interface, navigation and amount of customization is really nice. No issues here as far as I'm concerned, although it is a bit more 'computer like' than the LG unit was, and some may feel it's not as consumer oriented - again, it looks more geared to techo's than to granny and grampa. That is personal opinion though, and as I said, it is well thought out and professionally implemented.

D) Auto chapter point insertion at commercials and major scene changes - the Pioneer sets these I guess based on built in scene detection technology. *VERY* nice! I haven't seen this in any other unit myself, so this was a very welcome surprise!

THINGS I DON"T LIKE:

1) The remote is *spartan*. It would have been nice if they had included basic TV controls like on the LG unit (input selector and volume) so you don't need to clutch 2 remotes while watching the recorder.

2) No bookmark functions - again, the LG unit allowed 6 bookmarks to be set per title, and stored those with thumbnails as part of the original files, so if you quit watching something for the night and came back a few days later you could resume from one of them - Pioneer doesn't seem to have this.

3) *OBVIOUSLY* the limitations on playback of MPEG2 in a .mpg container and 25fps material - this isn't a deal breaker since I have another $49 LG player sitting here that does, but, come on Pioneer - REVISE THIS IN FIRMWARE ASAP PLEASE!!! Given today's climate, as long as it's not region coded or DRM'd you should be able to play it in one machine.

That's it for now - I'll update again when have more than 3 hours experience, but as far as first impressions go, it does what it's designed to do (ie record sdtv material) exceptionally well, so I guess the playback issues I'll live with, but it would be nice if Pioneer took these kind of comments to heart and made it a great player too, rather than just a mediocre one.

Cheers,
The REAL Joe

[springle]

Your questions were interesting.

I still have a working SuperBeta VCR, a Hi8 VCR, a laser disk player, a worldwide VHS VCR, etc. All because I still have material in these different formats.

DVDs added more complexity to this problem.

I discovered by accident that my LG DVD recorders would play PAL. Actually, "play" is the wrong word. They convert PAL to NTSC. (I also have some obscure Chinese player that is supposed to be region free.)

I have seen computer files converted from MPEG to VOB and vice versa simply by changing the Filetype. I've never tried to play a VOB file as data on a player though. Normally, DVDs require several other files that define the DVD. Without these files, I don't know if they would play a simple VOB file.

Why would you bother to save MPEG2 files when AVI files are much better technically? Same quality in less space, or better quality taking the same amount of storage. Lots of AVI HD files are showing up on the internet, taking up about 750 Megs for a commercial-free hour program.

I only save AVI files as Data. I use Nero to convert MPEG files to DVD formatted disks.

I didn't know that LG recorders/players would read MPEG files. I suspect that in order to save money LG uses parts from their computer DVD drives in their standalone products. That's why they play non-standard files. These features will likely go away. So I recommend that you convert the files or keep a pristine player for the long term.

I don't think that DVD players that play DivX care about PAL or NTSC, or Regions. It's just data to them. I think that as long as the frame rate is greater than a threshold value, the players output the video as NTSC.

One thing you didn't mention was the recording/playability of Dual Layer disks. I know that my Panasonic recorders don't play these disks, although my LG and Samsung recorders do.

I have found an older Toshiba DVD recorder to be the most sophisticated in its setup and recording options. Probably too complicated for most consumers.

I had an older Pioneer (80 Gig HDD) which also recorded with outstanding quality and its editing menus were well designed. However, it started to have problems finalizing disks (I only use "-" disks, except for DL.) and I got rid of it. I have thought of buying the model you purchased, to replace an LG model which is acting up.

I wouldn't hold out any hope of future DVD players/recorders playing MPEG2 files. I do hope future models offer the option of not only playing, but recording in an MPEG4 format (AVI, WMV, MP4, etc.).

I am guessing the Microsoft jealously guards the rights to its MPEG4-derived WMV format and that no DVD player/recorders play these Data files???

I also haven't tried playing an HD AVI file on a DVD player. I assume that no current players will handle these 720P files. I wonder if any HD-DVD players will play such Data files?

[therealjoeblow]

Responding to springle's commentary,

It's not just LG's that will play both PAL and NTSC - I had a Daytek unit that would too, as will just about any of the cheap generic/noname dvd players you can get an most big-box stores.

Pioneer makes the same 650H for the european market which plays both PAL and NTSC - google it, you'll find dozens of hits showing the specs for the euro model (the only difference is that unit has SCART outputs whereas the north american have HDMI, but the euro model can play both formats and N/A can't). So why they would have removed this basic functionality from the N/A units baffles me, when it's probably a built in feature of the chipset. Maybe they think N/A customers don't have european relatives that send them home videos to watch...

Re: the .VOB format - I didn't mean it would play a MPEG2 file simply renamed to FILE.VOB, I meant it plays only proper DVD's authored with correct .ifo/.vob structure.

Re: the MPEG2 vs AVI question - arguing what's better technically is irrelevant. Before I got a stand-alone DVD recorder, I used an ATI All-in-Wonder to capture hundreds of hours of home video. The cards in those days could not capture to MPEG4 in real time, but did an excellent job of capture to MPEG2, fully compliant with DVD specs. The whole capturing process was *very* time consuming, and rather than spend more time converting either to AVI after that, or even authoring DVD's, I was perfectly happy with the 720x482@30fps MPEG2 native files. Since a DVD player *has* to be able to play this technical spec encoded as MPEG2, it's just plain dumb for manufacturers to not enable playing from a .MPG container and requiring it to be in a DVD format. That would be like a car manufacturer saying, well, the car runs on gas, but only Shell gas, not other brands.

Since various models of the LG units clearly can do this, I would also be interested to hear what other units can play native MPEG2 files. It can't just be an accident on LG's part.

Re: HR.HDTV.XviD formats - no this won't play those - max resolution is 720x480, anything larger fails to play. This is a basic limitation of all current SD recorders, I agree, we'll have to wait for the future.

To be honest, playback on this Pioneer unit is quite disappointing with the missing features as described, plus, I've also noticed lately that it has problems reliably reading my Maxell discs.

About half the time when I insert Maxell 4x and Maxell 8x DVD+R discs with content recorded on them, the machine tries to load it and then says "No Disc". If I power the machine down and restart it, then it usually loads these discs just fine and plays the content without issue. The firmware in the Pioneer drive probably needs to be adjusted to increase reading sensitivity for this type of disc. The media descriptor code on these discs are either RICOHJPNR01, RICOHJPNR02, RITEK...R02, or RITEK...R03. I don't seem to have this problem using Verbatim 16x discs (MCC.....004), just the Maxells, of which I have several hundred.

I have a Pioneer DVD recorder in my computer that recorded all of these discs, and it has *never* had a problem recognizing or reading back one of them. So why the drive in the standalone box would have a problem baffles me. Another example of the premium product being less capable than the cheaper one.

As a recorder, the 650H *very* good but as a PLAYER, seriously I'd rank it in the bottom half of what I've tried so far. Sure, factory pressed DVD playback looks as good as any competitor, but with all of the other issues and incompatibilities, I've given up trying to use it as a player at all, and am just using the LG unit for that purpose, which weighs in at exactly 1/10th the cost.

Really, manufacturers should give these units to *capable* beta testers who can beat the crap out of every feature and report back these kind of basic limitations. To have fixed these and enabled these features would have been virtually free for Pioneer - just a simple firmware tweak prior to mass production. But now they've just ticked me off, and possibly a bunch of potential customers who read these reviews and decide to go with another brand because they too need this functionality.

Cheers
The REAL Joe.

[meecha]

don't want to change the subject of your thread, but I just bought my 650h from bb. when i brought it home there was no manual in the box so im hoping you might be able to help me. when i record hd source i get bars at the top and bottom thru the dvr, but the source fills the whole screen. did this happen to you too? what settings do you have yours set to. thanks

[therealjoeblow]

I don't think any of these standard definition units are compatible with high definition signals. As far as I am aware, most HD boxes have 2 or 3 outputs - component and/or HDMI for the 720p/1080i/1080p high definition signal; and composite/s-video which is a doen-converted standard definition signal. The proper way to connect these is component/hdmi direct to the tv, and composite/svideo to your recorder. That should allow you to record a down-converted standard definition version of the HD program.

As far as a manual goes, it's not available on-line yet, but Pioneer did send me a PDF version of it upon my request thru their web interface. You should be able to get one too. If you can't, send me a PM, and I'll send you a link to download it from my own webspace.

/The REAL Joe

[CSaanich]

Originally Posted by therealjoeblow

Responding to springle's commentary,

It's not just LG's that will play both PAL and NTSC - I had a Daytek unit that would too, as will just about any of the cheap generic/noname dvd players you can get an most big-box stores.

Pioneer makes the same 650H for the european market which plays both PAL and NTSC - google it, you'll find dozens of hits showing the specs for the euro model (the only difference is that unit has SCART outputs whereas the north american have HDMI, but the euro model can play both formats and N/A can't). So why they would have removed this basic functionality from the N/A units baffles me, when it's probably a built in feature of the chipset. Maybe they think N/A customers don't have european relatives that send them home videos to watch...

Re: the .VOB format - I didn't mean it would play a MPEG2 file simply renamed to FILE.VOB, I meant it plays only proper DVD's authored with correct .ifo/.vob structure.

Re: the MPEG2 vs AVI question - arguing what's better technically is irrelevant. Before I got a stand-alone DVD recorder, I used an ATI All-in-Wonder to capture hundreds of hours of home video. The cards in those days could not capture to MPEG4 in real time, but did an excellent job of capture to MPEG2, fully compliant with DVD specs. The whole capturing process was *very* time consuming, and rather than spend more time converting either to AVI after that, or even authoring DVD's, I was perfectly happy with the 720x482@30fps MPEG2 native files. Since a DVD player *has* to be able to play this technical spec encoded as MPEG2, it's just plain dumb for manufacturers to not enable playing from a .MPG container and requiring it to be in a DVD format. That would be like a car manufacturer saying, well, the car runs on gas, but only Shell gas, not other brands.

Since various models of the LG units clearly can do this, I would also be interested to hear what other units can play native MPEG2 files. It can't just be an accident on LG's part.

Re: HR.HDTV.XviD formats - no this won't play those - max resolution is 720x480, anything larger fails to play. This is a basic limitation of all current SD recorders, I agree, we'll have to wait for the future.

To be honest, playback on this Pioneer unit is quite disappointing with the missing features as described, plus, I've also noticed lately that it has problems reliably reading my Maxell discs.

About half the time when I insert Maxell 4x and Maxell 8x DVD+R discs with content recorded on them, the machine tries to load it and then says "No Disc". If I power the machine down and restart it, then it usually loads these discs just fine and plays the content without issue. The firmware in the Pioneer drive probably needs to be adjusted to increase reading sensitivity for this type of disc. The media descriptor code on these discs are either RICOHJPNR01, RICOHJPNR02, RITEK...R02, or RITEK...R03. I don't seem to have this problem using Verbatim 16x discs (MCC.....004), just the Maxells, of which I have several hundred.

I have a Pioneer DVD recorder in my computer that recorded all of these discs, and it has *never* had a problem recognizing or reading back one of them. So why the drive in the standalone box would have a problem baffles me. Another example of the premium product being less capable than the cheaper one.

As a recorder, the 650H *very* good but as a PLAYER, seriously I'd rank it in the bottom half of what I've tried so far. Sure, factory pressed DVD playback looks as good as any competitor, but with all of the other issues and incompatibilities, I've given up trying to use it as a player at all, and am just using the LG unit for that purpose, which weighs in at exactly 1/10th the cost.

Really, manufacturers should give these units to *capable* beta testers who can beat the crap out of every feature and report back these kind of basic limitations. To have fixed these and enabled these features would have been virtually free for Pioneer - just a simple firmware tweak prior to mass production. But now they've just ticked me off, and possibly a bunch of potential customers who read these reviews and decide to go with another brand because they too need this functionality.

Cheers
The REAL Joe.

Thanks for a very interesting read, although somewhat over my head.
But one thing I did manage to grab is your dissatisfaction with the playback mode of this Pioneer unit. Your post was last October, and it's December now. How are you now getting on with your new unit?

Having done a little bit of reading on DVD players and all the things that are desired in them, one device stood out for their video and audio qualities. That was the Oppo DV-980/981 DVD player.

Would the Pioneer DVR-650H come anywhere near those qualities of the Oppo during both playback of video (either commercial discs or homemade) and music handling?

Thanks.

[therealjoeblow]

I've read the specs on the OPPO unit, and it appears to use the industry's cutting-edge (and most expensive) scaler/deinterlacing chip. I don't believe the Pioneer does, I'd bet they use the same standard chip as everyone else does, which is evidenced by my observation that the Pioneer's playback quality of existing recorded material is *average* - that is it is no better nor any worse than any other DVD player or recorder that I've tried. It's basically on par with Sony, LG, Daytek, or other 'generally available' retail units, which, on average sized TV's are all about the same, and look just fine.

I've never seen the output from the OPPO unit, but from what I've read and the screenshots I've see, it's noticeably better on a screen of 36" or more, and not really so on a smaller screen.

As far my past 3 months with the Pioneer, I've come to live with its playback limitations by purchasing a cheap LG DVD player-only, and using the Pioneer to record only.

The LG will play back all material - PAL/NTSC DVD's and DivX; native MPEG and MPEG2 files, etc, and looks just as good as the Pioneer does. Infact, the on-screen display on the LG unit is *much* better (it gives you a nice graphical progress-indicator type of display for where you are in a title with respect to time and chapters), and the navigation interface for moving to a particular timecode or chapter is also much better - it's easily accessed with a single button click, and has an easy to use navigator to change the selections, showing you that you are at chapter 6 of 32, or at 0:12:34 of 1:58:10, etc. It's quite intuitive and simple.

The Pioneer fell *very* short on these playback features - information regarding time and chapter numbers for the currently playing title is difficult to access to start with (the 'display' button is hidden under a sliding cover on the remote, and you have to click the button several times to page thru multiple displays to get the information, and even then, it's really formatted poorly on the screen in a 'linux' looking text box that doesn't have anything aligned in columns, it's very difficult to read and glean what you are looking for). Navigating within a title is also painful. To get to a specific timecode or chapter number, you have to go to the main menu, then to a sub menu, then again, open the sliding cover on the remote to type in the specific timecode numbers or chapter numbers. And in all of this, it never tells you total time or total # of chapters, so you have to guess where you want to navigate to - you have no idea if the title has 10 or 60 chapters from the navigator, nor can you tell if it's 30 mins or 2 hours long in this interface - the only place you can get that info is from the cumbersome 'linux' looking textbox that I described earlier. This area was clearly designed by someone who never uses these features and had no idea how to implement them for usability.

As previously noted, the Pioneer won't play a lot of the material that the LG will (PAL + MPEG), but then I rationalized, it's *NOT* a player, it's a recorder, and in that end, it's *really* excellent and I couldn't part company with it for it's features there. The picture quality of recorded material off digital cable channels is honestly near-dvd quality, and the editing features (ability to cut out commercials, split titles, set menu thumbnails, add titles and descriptions, and ultimately dub to DVDR discs) is as good as it gets in these units (based on 4 manufacturer's units that I've personally used - Daytek, LG, Sony and Pioneer), I have very little to complain about on that end.

I know it's a +$50 tradeoff to use a seperate player, but as a recorder I couldn't see going back to any of the other mfgr's alternatives, and the way I see it, using a cheaper (but much more functional) player will just extend the life of the recorder, so it's probably a good tradeoff to make.

Cheers,
The REAL Joe

[CSaanich]

A thoughtful reply ..thanks. The Oppo runs near the $200+ mark incl s/h. So, adding that into the overall cost of a DVR HDD seems rather redundant to me if the Pioneer is only mediocre in its playback features, and the Oppo may be excellent for both video and music playback. Too bad someone hasn't married the two into one nice neat package ..or maybe they have but I haven't discovered it yet

So let me ask you: if you were to do it again (for a DVR) would you stick with the Pioneer or spring for some other brand like Philips or Panny?

[therealjoeblow]

I bought it for the recorder. I went into it with the attitude that any playback features would be a bonus, and, yes I was a little miffed that those 'bonus' features were lacking, but, as a recorder and editor for its own recorded material, I truly have little to complain about, so I would definitely buy it again.

In the end, I believe I have a great recorder with the Pioneer HDD, and a great player in the LG unit.

Cheers,
The REAL Joe

[CSaanich]

Thanks for all the tips, Joe. I'll keep those spinning in my noggin when I'm off to the hunt ..once the Xmas rush has passed

[ZeroGravity]

I recently picked up a DVR-550 which I assume is approximately the same as the 650 other than the HDD size.

I was trying to play a few DivX files on the player, and the sound came out perfect, but the image scrolls and flickers. If I remember correctly, when I was watching these clips on my computer, they're in widescreen format. Whereas my "tube" TV is 4:3. I did set the display on the player to be 4:3.

Would this problem be that the DivX files being encoded in versions not supported by the player?

Thanks in advance.

[therealjoeblow]

If the image is 'rolling' vertically across the screen, it's because the source file is PAL @ 25fps - this unit does not have a PAL->NTSC converter built into it (a huge oversight on Pioneer's part, and my biggest disappointment with the playback features of it). Pioneer's official tech support reply to my message to them is that this is a technical limitation of the unit that can't be changed via future firmware update. It will only play NTSC material at either 30.000, 29.970 or 23.976 fps.

Cheers,
The REAL Joe

[ZeroGravity]

DUH... thx for the info.

I guess my next step is to get a cheap player that plays DivX files which are in PAL.

[therealjoeblow]

The LG LDA-831 up-converting unit will, as will the LDA-830 non-up converting version at about 1/2 the 831's price. If purchased on sale, the 830 is just marginally more than what you'd pay for a true cheap no-name unit, but it's really quite good quality with a very nice user interface.

Cheers,
The REAL Joe