Pioneer should be ashamed
Written: Dec 14 '03
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Pros: TiVo Software & Service, DVD Recording, wireless capability, 2-Year Warranty
Cons: Inferior picture quality, noisy fan & hard drive, very slow booting, recording capacity
The Bottom Line: Avoid the 57H unless you want frustration and are willing to waste your money. Buy a TiVo Series 2 (excellent!) and a stand alone DVD recorder to archive your recordings.
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| balleger's Full Review: Pioneer Elite DVR-57H (120 GB) DVD Recorder |
I have owned the DVR-57H for several weeks now. To say I am disappointed would be an understatement. I bought the 57H as a replacement for my old TiVo series 1. My old series 1 was fairly quiet (in spite of my adding a 2nd drive for a total of 95GB storage) and I used 'High' recording quality for a total of 48 hours and 48 minutes of recording capacity. The quality was well above S-VHS standards and I was quite satisfied. My only complain was that it was beginning to stutter and I did not have access to newer TiVo features. But enough about the blissful past and on to the horrors of the Pioneer.
Keep in mind that the 57H is in Pioneer's 'Elite' line of consumer products. That distinction and the high cost of the product (MSRP $1,800 though I paid $1,059) normally indicates a great product. I won't concentrate on the positives (there's other reviews here that provide enough of that), but rather the negatives.
Noise - Not only does the 57H have a large, always-on fan on the rear and the hard drive makes a lot of noise when it is very busy. One of the things that supposedly distinguishes the 57H from it's cheaper cousin is that it has a 'double chassis' to help minimize vibration & noise. Maybe they should have used some sound dampening foam to line the cabinet.
Recording Capacity - When I purchased this unit I was quite excited, I was getting a larger hard drive which meant I would have more capacity than I did with my old Series 1 (95GB vs. 120GB) and I would not have to replace the hard drive first before plugging it in. I was quite wrong concerning capacity! At the same 'High' quality mode the new drive only yielded 42 hours of recording (what is all that extra capacity being used for?) I have a larger drive, yet less capacity. It certainly is not being used to provide better picture quality- read on.
Picture Quality - The 'High' quality mode yields a heavily pixelated picture, even when recording digital cable channels! I was used to a little pixelation with the older Series 1 unit because I used VBR mode to save disk space. The 57H, on the other hand, does not even have VBR mode, but the pixelation problem sometimes obliterates most of the picture, and this happens quite often. If you record analog cable channels with a little snowiness, forget it - you feel like tearing your hair out because of the mess your are forced to view. If I change the recording to 'Fine' then the recording capacity plumets to around 20+ hours. This is unacceptable since we use our TiVo mainly for delayed viewing.
Booting - The only thing I can say is that it takes about three times longer to boot this beast compared to my old Series 1.
I could go on and nit-pick it further, but the above is enough to make one's blood boil when you know how good the Series 1 was and the high price of the new kid on the block. I think Pioneer should have waited to perfect this unit rather than risk losing customers. I for one will not be buying Pioneer in the future. This is not a knock on TiVo, their software and the TiVo service you subscribe to is excellent, it's Pioneer's implementation and rush to get the product out that is shameful.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 1059
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Epinions.com ID:
balleger
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Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 2 members
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