Couple of problems with Pioneer 540H

[Brent G.]

I just got a Pioneer 540H about a week ago and have run into a couple of minor problems.

1) I noticed after a DVD-R has been finalized, the CM Back and CM Skip no longer works. But they do work if the disk is not finalized.

2) If I record 90 minutes of something to the hard drive, and then later play it, the Next >| and Previous |< buttons don't work. When I press them the picture just freezes. They work fine if I'm viewing a DVD, but doesn't work when viewing the recording from the hard drive.

What gives?

TIA
Brent

[Brent G.]

Anyone have a clue what the problem is? Is it the recorder or the nut using it??

TIA
Brent

[RabidDog]

I,M going to take a wild guess. CM back and CM skip are forward and back by chapter. When recorded TO the hard drive you are not getting any chapter stops. What are your general impressions of the recorder? especially the high speed dubbing to DVD?

[Brent G.]

I,M going to take a wild guess. CM back and CM skip are forward and back by chapter. When recorded TO the hard drive you are not getting any chapter stops.

Correct, and it's a real PIA. (I was wrong before, its the |< and >| buttons that aren't working when written to a DVD, works fine if video is still on the HD.)

What are your general impressions of the recorder? especially the high speed dubbing to DVD?

Overall I'd give it very good marks, except for the missing chapter marks (even though they are defined in the setup screen as every 10 minutes)

Copying from HD to DVD is straight forward. The menuing is excellent and the remote wheel is hard palstic so you can really step through the menu items quite quickly. You can of course split. merge, erase sections of video from a title quite easily. I use that to get rid of the commercials at the beginning or end of a movie. You can also select a snapshot by moving through the movie and hitting the Enter button. Nice feature. (My Pioneer 233 menus, controls, remote looks quite pathetic next to the 540H. I often wonder if the same company made both models.).

Over all my experience wiht the 540H is quite good. But my experience in repairing my old Pioneer DVD makes me skeptical. I'd rather have a machine that I can easily replace the HD or burner myself.

Pioneer charges ridiculously high repair costs ($260 for my old Pioneer DVR-220-S just to replace the $50 burner). I've come to the conclusion they don't want people to repair them and want them to go out and buy a new one. When buying a DVR remember they are only built to last a year and act accordingly.

Brent

[RabidDog]

Hmm sort of confirms what I have been reading about DVR's in general.. not that long lasting. Also the pioneer in particular seems to be a Pakistani Inernational Airlines to upgrade. My idea was to get one with a small drive, 80gb, and then upgrade it to something like 320 or maybe 500 or 750gb if I was feeling juicy. The liteons seem to be the easiest to upgrade but comes without the user interface niceties of the pioneer. Upscaling with HDMI would also be nice. Still, they want somebody like me to go out and buy the 940 @ £750 of your earth Pounds

[Brent G.]

My idea was to get one with a small drive, 80gb, and then upgrade it to something like 320 or maybe 500 or 750gb if I was feeling juicy.

You certainly don't look old enough to be replacing hard drives. Maybe you should get your dad or your mom to do it? You could accidentally shock yourself and set your ears on fire. :P

You should investigate the LiteOn if you want something upgradeable. The Pioneer 540H is a nice machine but eventually the hard drive will go and Pioneer will want my left kidney to replace it. They deliberately make it virtually impossbile to replace the drive yourself. Not even my authorized repair center in town could replace the burner on my old DVR-220-s because they weren't allowed to have the tools to set up the new burner.

If you don't get a recorder that you can repair yourself like the Pioneer, then I'd definitely recommend getting an extended warranty on it from a reputable firm like Best Buy or Future shop so you don't have any worries for the next 4 years. I had one on my Panasonic VCR and when it died and couldn't be repaired, Future Shop gave me the pick from any new model in the store. The extended warranty covered the Sony VCR that I selected and when that died, they repaired it for free. So that extended warranty could get you one or two more recorders over the next 4 years!

Brent