Pioneer 510HS

[lewie49]

I took a chance and bought a Pioneer 510HS today. I've copied some DV footage via both the S-video and DV ports. First impressions:

- Setup and controls are straightforward. Menus are very easy to read.

- Playback of commercial DVDs is very good. I haven't tweaked the video settings yet.

- The remote control has the typical soft key mushy feel.

- Simulated surround sound is OK but drops the volume a bit.

- An initialized DVD-R played in my Toshiba DVD/VCR combo but not on my PC's DVD drive which is almost 4 years old. I suspect that the age of the deck is the culprit, not the Pioner.

- The S-video transfer is pretty much equal and in some subtle ways slightly better than the DV transfer. I'll have to test this one more since the firewire port was a major factor in the purchase.

- There is a definite, visible drop in picture quality between the Fine (XP) and SP speeds. Fine is almost perfect but SP shows some edge fuzzing and haloing. This is a disappointment since most of my DV masters are almost 2 hours in length and I'd rather get them onto 1 disk. I'll have to play around a bit more but if the quality drop is consistent regardless of the source, this puppy may go back possibly in favor of a Panasonic. We'll see.

[donpedro]

To add to you DV-IN experience. I have tested Philips 75/17 and results were same. What I ended up doing is splitting all me MiniDV recordings (1.5h LP mode) to different DVD's based on dates or content.

Only other recorder that I testet was Panasonyc E30 that didn't have FireWire.

In home video capturing, there will be always an issue (standalone recorder or pc conversion). Source is unstable (shaky hands), a lot of fast moving, zooming...

[thoots]

- There is a definite, visible drop in picture quality between the Fine (XP) and SP speeds. Fine is almost perfect but SP shows some edge fuzzing and haloing. This is a disappointment since most of my DV masters are almost 2 hours in length and I'd rather get them onto 1 disk. I'll have to play around a bit more but if the quality drop is consistent regardless of the source, this puppy may go back possibly in favor of a Panasonic. We'll see.

That would be consistent with how I would describe the difference between the Panasonic XP and SP quality. XP is incredibly good, while SP is really just fine if you're not ultra-super-critical. But, if you're ultra-super-critical, you can definitely notice a very slight degradation in quality -- like you say, some edge fuzzing, and I'm not sure what you mean by "haloing," but I'd describe it as "very minor pixellation," mainly when there's movement on the screen.

My "normal" method is to bite the bullet and record in XP, as I'm "normally" ultra-super-critical. Only if I really really really have to keep something more than an hour on one DVD do I drop back to SP.

Hope that helps!

thoots

[SurfinBird]

My friend has the 510S for two weeks and he has just returned it. He encountered all the issues you have mentioned. On top of that, he also researched a lot more on the subject and seemed to discovered that the video processor chip being used in the Pioneer is the LSI 8650 -

http://www.lsilogic.com/news/product_news/pr20030106.html

Obviously, one would not expect Faroudja quality from a chip that is sold for $29?

Not to sound like Pioneer bashing, I guess if you want flexibility & features. Get the Pioneer. If PQ is the main objective. Look elsewhere.

[SurfinBird]

My friend has the 510S for two weeks and he has just returned it. He encountered all the issues you have mentioned. On top of that, he also researched a lot more on the subject and seemed to discovered that the video processor chip being used in the Pioneer is the LSI 8650 -

http://www.lsilogic.com/news/product_news/pr20030106.html

Obviously, one would not expect Faroudja quality from a chip that is sold for $29?

Not to sound like Pioneer bashing, I guess if you want flexibility & features. Get the Pioneer. If PQ is the main objective. Look elsewhere.

[PhilipL]

Withdrawn

[donpedro]

The problems others were talking about are not about the quality of encoding on a particular machine but the limitation of trying to get 2 hours of video on a DVD of half the capacitity of commercial DVD Videos, and doing that in real-time on equipment that costs hundreds of dollars rather than hundreds of thousands of dollars that commercial DVD Videos are produced on.

I have to agree with this. We are expecting same quality as commercial DVD for fraction of the cost. I guess it is not realy possible.

[lewie49]

To add to you DV-IN experience. I have tested Philips 75/17 and results were same. What I ended up doing is splitting all me MiniDV recordings (1.5h LP mode) to different DVD's based on dates or content.

Donpedro (or anyone else), did you A-B recordings of the same material from the DV and S-video ports? I found that the S-Video footage seemed to have a bit better contrast and more vibrant colors (the orignal DV footage is outstanding in both areas).

The Panys seem to get such high marks from users that I wonder how much difference there is between them and the Pioneers. Could it be that the Pany 80H is as good over its S-video port as the Pioneer is over its DV port?

[lewie49]

To add to you DV-IN experience. I have tested Philips 75/17 and results were same. What I ended up doing is splitting all me MiniDV recordings (1.5h LP mode) to different DVD's based on dates or content.

Donpedro (or anyone else), did you A-B recordings of the same material from the DV and S-video ports? I found that the S-Video footage seemed to have a bit better contrast and more vibrant colors (the orignal DV footage is outstanding in both areas).

The Panys seem to get such high marks from users that I wonder how much difference there is between them and the Pioneers. Could it be that the Pany 80H is as good over its S-video port as the Pioneer is over its DV port?

[donpedro]

I never tried recording from MiniDV through S-Video. Mainly becouse there is additional conversion (in camcorder from DV to analog). Also resolution is I believe lower.

More on resolution of different formats here:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~leopold/Ld/VideoFormats.html

[PhilipL]

Withdrawn

[kzod]

Ok, now I'm confused. I was all set to buy a pioneer largely due to the firewire and Dvd-r to hdd advantages. But if it's better to transfer my MiniDV's via S-video then it's a smaller difference. For me the DVD-Ram could be better as my computer has a DVD-Ram drive (so I assume that would work). And some members of this board have claimed that the panny's offer better PQ. Can anyone verify the PQ differences?

Quick question: What format are shows saved to on DVD-Ram drives or DVD-r? Is it easy to transfer these shows onto a cd-rw for playback on my laptop?

Dillemas galore!

[donpedro]

kzod, you missed important parts of this post.....

...Some detail is stripped away, the sharp lines of digital is replaced by the blurry-ness of analogue.

...produces a better recording for some.

Quality is very subjective. It might feel like it looks better, but you loose detail.

[deepdown]

Don't forget; https://www.videohelp.com/comparison

DV has upto 25Mbit/s
while DVD has 3000-9000Kbit/s..

So expecting DV quality is not what I want..

I want to save DV cassettes to DVD's.
And I'm hoping the Pioneer DVR-510HS or (Euro DVR-5100HS) will do just that!

[donpedro]

Don't forget; https://www.videohelp.com/comparison

DV has upto 25Mbit/s
while DVD has 3000-9000Kbit/s..

So expecting DV quality is not what I want..

I want to save DV cassettes to DVD's.
And I'm hoping the Pioneer DVR-510HS or (Euro DVR-5100HS) will do just that!

What do you mean ? I don't understand ......

25Mbit/s is more than 9000Kbit/s

Saving DV cassette to DVD ? You mean DV AVI file ? Or converted MPEG2 file ?

[deepdown]

DV --> DVD means converting to mpeg2.

The Pioneer 5100HS will do this for me, right!

If i'm able to put the DV on HDD and edit it, and then later on recording it onto DVD - that would be great.

[PhilipL]

Withdrawn

[lewie49]

I've played with the 510H a bit more. I recorded some DV footage of our high school pecussion unit, in a well lit gym wearing their red uniforms, at XP and SP over the DV and S-Video ports. At XP/DV the copied segment was very sharp but a bit on the bright side with less contrast. At XP\S-video, the same footage was not as detailed, darker and a bit more "contrasty". Color was more saturated and there was a slight blooming of the red on the uniform jacket. Both segments could probably be tailored to one's taste using the TV's picture controls or the DVDR deck's output settings (or both), At SP, the same basic brightness/color/contrast traits were seen. The drop in resolution quality, however, seemed to be less obvious than it had been in my first test run. That footage was of the band doing a field show on a football field in sunlight. The band was wearing white pants, white shirts and a back vest and was on the move. That may have contributed to the edge problems that I saw in SP speed. The 510 is played on a Sony Wega TV via its component jacks so the viewing is pretty much optimal. I want to burn these segments to a disk and play them on my other DVD unit. That is connected via RCA a/v jacks to its TV so it's less than optimal viewing. I'll be curious to see what the picture looks like. I'll do more tests over the next few days.

I also taped a show at XP off of a digital cable box, using the RF antenna lead. Leaving aside Comcast's "less than great picture for what it's charging me", at a quick glance, it looked pretty good.

The Pioneer's disk navigator is very good, allowing you to watch a preview of already taped titles while still taping something else. Highlighting a title in the navigator starts playing it in thumbnail mode. It's pretty nice.

The deck's feature set is nice. If the PQ turns out to be what I expected (and not over anticipated), it will have a home. If not, it will get returned in 2 weeks or less.

[donpedro]

DV --> DVD means converting to mpeg2.

The Pioneer 5100HS will do this for me, right!

If i'm able to put the DV on HDD and edit it, and then later on recording it onto DVD - that would be great.

If Pioneer 5100HS have DV IN (FireWire, iLink) than yes.

It will convert DV signal to mpeg2 to HDD. Not sure about editing functions on this recorder, but for example Panasonic will let you edit. So if Pioneer 5100HS will let you do editing (cut,divide...), after that you can burn result to DVD. All that on recorder, we are not talking about PC now, right ?

[deepdown]

lewie49, very nice reading!
Please post more of your testings.. I'm already waiting for my ex. to be delievered, so keep the test-posting coming !

donpedro, of course i'm talking about the standalone recorder.
Never mention any PC... 8)

[donpedro]

It is just cofusing when you say "I want to save DV cassettes to DVD's". Anything that you are puting on DVD is mpeg2. When you use "save" word it seems more like you want just to copy DV AVI file that is on tape to DVD without conversion.

[deepdown]

I will try be more accurate when writing.
Does Panasonic come with "Faroudja chip" ?