Pioneer DVR-433 Test Captures

Well, as promised, here are some test captures from the Pioneer DVR-433 so that you can judge image quality/resolution for yourself. The source image is the standard BBC widescreen testcard (played out from a miniDV source) - this gives you a good idea of resolution for any given capture size, as well as colour rendition and geometry. It was captured 16:9 anamorphic and I have re-sized each image back to 720x405 - the typical PAL widescreen image res. No other image enhancement has been used and the pics have been saved as JPEGs in Paintshop Pro using 10% compression (each file is about 61k). I have also included encodes from TMPG as direct comparisons for the Pioneer.

Right, let's get started, firstly with the raw image ...



and now the Pioneer recording in XP (1hr) mode ...



Pioneer DVR-433 in SP (2hr) mode ...



Pioneer DVR-433 in LP (4hr) mode ...



Pioneer DVR-433 in EP (6hr) mode ...



Pioneer DVR-433 in MN15 mode (544x576) ...



And finally the Pioneer in MN8 (352x576) mode ...

In comparison, here are two captures of the same master file as encoded by TMPG, the first is a full D1 res file (equivalent to XP/SP mode), and the second is a letterboxed D2 res file (equivalent to MN8 mode).

TMPG encode at 720x576 ...



And TMPG encode at 352x576 ...

Finally, here is the same image as captured off both SVHS and standard VHS tapes - this will let you see just how much (or how little) resolution is actually in VHS images. Both formats were used in SP mode.

Firstly SVHS ...



And now Standard VHS ...



I look forward to any comments.

Well to me the 1 and 2 hour Pioneer do not look to bad and the SVHS doesn't look to bad either. But the rest especially the 8 hour and the 1/2 D1 TMPGenc look pretty bad.

The two hour mode, yes you can see some degradation but not bad. I could live with it easily, In fact on a 531h I do live with it or more usually a 1hr. 45 Minute setting which still doesn't fill a disk after commercial removal. Having run SVHS myself I can now see as a A-B comparison just how much better what my eyes just said was better.

Cheers

I was wondering, is it possible to later change the HD in these DVD recorders? And if so, is it easy to swap the HD?

Thanks, I am new here so I don't know if this has been asked...

Evidently it can be done but takes both special hardware and software.

There is a thread about it for Pioneer 520, I think that was the model anyway.