Pioneer 520 / 720 / 920 chipset

[khaverblad]

Are the Pioneer 520 / 720 / 920 using the same chipset, ie could one expect the same recording quality from each of the system and just only more or less features and disk size?

[lordsmurf]

I do not believe so. I have not had the time to analyze every model, but I have seen photos of the boards and some tech documents.

Renesas and NEC both have chipsets in Pioneer models. From an educated guess, I think the HDD models are NEC, while the non-HDD are Renesas.

At one point, Zoran was supposed to be in there too, but that verification hit a brick wall some 6 months back.

[Synergy]

From an educated guess, I think the HDD models are NEC, while the non-HDD are Renesas.

The NEC chip in the Pioneer models is the µPD72893, a DV-AVI/MPEG2 transcoding chipset, not an MPEG2 encoding/decoding chipset. You can even recognize 072893 on the chip surface from the enlarged photo link:

Inside Photo of the Pioneer DVR-5100H(510H)

the NEC µPD72893 spec sheet

[lordsmurf]

There was something I read recently about NEC MPEG encoder chips, I'll see if I can find the article. I was just looking at some new stuff last week. Pioneer was one of the few recorders on the list, and were said to be currently using them in some new "premium" recorders. It was not decoder or DV transcode, but MPEG-2 encoder/decoder single-chip structure.

But like a lot of other articles I find (online and in print), it could be bad word usage, misunderstanding on their part (the writer) or some other BS reporting. Sigh.

I believe the uPD61181 is one such MPEG-2 chipset NEC creates.

[swallowtail]

Are the Pioneer 520 / 720 / 920 using the same chipset, ie could one expect the same recording quality from each of the system and just only more or less features and disk size?

According to Pioneer's Japanese website, they all use the same MPEG-2 encoding chip co-developed with Renesas Technology, but the Japanese 720H/920H as their high-end models use a higher quality MPEG-2 decoding chip, the Pioneer VQE9 with a 14 bit/108MHz video DAC instead of the 10 bit/54 MHz one used by other models, to improve playback quality. You may want to use a language translation website to check out the following two links:

http://www.pioneer.co.jp/dvdld/dvr/function/function5.html#0

http://www.pioneer.co.jp/dvdld/dvr/high/great/index.html

[khaverblad]

yepp, get the impression as well that the 720 and 920 using but itsn't the easiest to figure out from the translation that Babelfish does from japanese to english

Well, reason for asking regarding if there was any differense betwen te units was to hope that any of the high end system might overcome blurness of the recorded images that I strongly dislike when I took a look of the streams for the Pioneer. The first two recording modes was great, but steping down to the 3rd level was a disaster.

[swallowtail]

reason for asking regarding if there was any differense betwen te units was to hope that any of the high end system might overcome blurness of the recorded images that I strongly dislike when I took a look of the streams for the Pioneer. The first two recording modes was great, but steping down to the 3rd level was a disaster.

One possibility overlooked with your comparison of only the MPEG files is that both DAC and playback DNR may improve video quality, and can only be observed during playback on a TV/monitor. Also Pioneer included both 3/4 D1(540x480/576) and 2/3 D1 (480x480/576) resolution only in VR mode, both were not considered in the review files. In short, you may still need to watch recorded video on TV to make a final comparison.

[khaverblad]

Well, even if the recorder could improve the final view on a TV och monitor the recording would still, as from my view - weak and passed on another person wouldn't maybe say that that person would be able to get the best out of the image that I could do then.

And is it just me that kind of likes the 920 and 720 looks that can be found at impress.co.jp ?