An Excellent Home Theater TV the Pioneer SD-643HD5 64 inch HDTV!
Written: Jul 03 '02 (Updated Feb 02 '03)
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Pros: Excellent Picture quality and easy to use!
Cons: Not enough hookups for your add-on components!
The Bottom Line: Overall this is a very nice TV, I would definitely add a receiver and a 5.1 speaker system to make it an awesome TV!
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| surferdude7's Full Review: Pioneer SD-643HD5 64 in. TV |
The Pioneer SD-643HD5 gives you a picture that is out of this world! The colors are bright crisp and clean with the people looking like they are standing in your living room. This is an excellent HDTV for a good Home Theater System with a built-in HDTV tuner. (High Definition TV)
This large screen projection TV is like all large screen TVs made for the best possible picture when sitting down. It does have a nice side to side range of about 180 degrees from the center of the TV, what I mean by this is you can move 90 degrees to the left or right of the TV without any picture quality lost.
This is a wide TV that gives you 64 inches of viewing pleasure in the 16 by 9 inch format. The 16 by 9 inch format means for every 16 inches that it is in width it is 9 inches in height. This TV is made for viewing movies the size that the movies came out in so you don’t have to miss anything that was cut off to make it fit in the original TV format of 4 by 3 inches.
Total height of the TV is 55 1/8 inches tall by 59 ¾ inches in width and 27 5/8 inches deep.
Price
Pioneer has been working hard to produce a large screen TV with excellent quality built-in so they do use better components than some other manufactures bringing the cost of the Pioneer SD-643HD5 in the $5000 range. Don’t be discouraged by the price range, shop around is can be found in the low $3000 range.
Shopping the Pioneer SD-643HD5 by the Internet can save you money but beware of the shipping cost which can be in the range of about $300 because of its large size.
Audio
The 6-¼ inch speakers produce 10 watts of power, which sounds fairly good.
Features
The Pioneer SD-643HD5 lets you display five different modes of Natural Wide, Cinema Wide, Zoom, Normal (4:3) and Full WideScreen. (16:9)
The TV has two tuners built-in so you can have picture in picture without having to use an outside source like a VCR for the second tuner. With the two tuners you can also display two pictures, each one taking up half of the screen. Then there is Multi-Scan that lets you scan three or Nine pictures at a time while scanning.
You can use a Progressive Scan DVD player with it in five screen modes.
A sleep time is built-in and the menu for all the TV adjustments are on screen.
Other Features
A Dual 181 Channel NTSC Tuners with Automatic Preset
Dual Dynamic Focus Circuit
High Contrast Optical Lens Couplers
Automatic Format Converter
3 Dimensional Y/C Separations
72 Point Digital Convergences
0.72mm Fine Pitch Lenticular Screen
Dislikes
There are two dislikes about the Pioneer SD-643HD5 first is they didn’t include a digital tuner, HDTV tuner Yes, Digital tuner No.
Second thing I didn’t like is there are not enough hookups, if you have a lot of components to hookup like a DVD player, VCR, Satellite Dish and other components you may run out of hookups for everything you have. The only solution is to buy a receiver with plenty of hookups.
Likes
The Remote has a nice layout of its entire buttons and it glows in the dark for easy seeing.
The on screen menu is nice with a lot of features.
The picture quality is great and it is a good looking TV.
My Last Thoughts
This is a very nice TV that produces a picture that will make you happy. It is easy to use and the first time you use it the TV will set itself up automatically, after that you can make all kinds of manual adjustments.
For a Home Theater System
Even though they don’t have very many hookups compared to other brands you can still come out OK if you get an Home Theater Receiver with plenty of hookup for your add on components.
Why spend the money for a Home Theater Receiver? To get the feel of a movie like being at the movies you will have to invest in a receiver and speakers. The TV produces a good sound but remember it is only in stereo and for a Home Theater system you need a 5.1 sound. The 5.1 sounds will consist of 5 satellite speakers and one subwoofer. A receiver and speakers can cost as little as $300 or as much as several thousands of dollars.
I don’t need the receiver and speakers. If you are not going to be watching movies you probably don’t need the receiver and speakers but if you are going to be watching movies especially from a DVD player, I highly recommend one, it will make your TV even look bigger with the high quality sound like the movie people expected you to listen to.
You spent $3500 for a TV so why not spend something to get the true sound out. My recommendation on price is to spend as much as you can for the added receiver and speakers, as a thumb rule I usually tell people to spend about half of what the TV costs.
Your Big screen TV doesn’t come alive unless you add the sound!
Here are some of my other TV reviews!
Mitsubishi 73 inch HD-Upgradeable Television
Samsung LTM 1775W 17 in. TV
Samsung TSL 3095WHF Tantus 30 in. TV
Panasonic CT 27SX31 TAU 27 in. TV
HDTV, SDTV & DTV!
Here are some of my DVD Player reviews!
Audiovox DVD 1500
GoVideo DVR5000 w/ Built-In Dolby Digital/DTS Decoder
The Mitsubishi DD-6030 DVD Player
Panasonic DMR E20 DVD recorder
Pioneer DVR 7000 DVD recorder
RCA RC5240P DVD Player
RCA RC5255P DVD Player
Sony DVP S530D DVD player
Sony DVP CX850D DVD changer
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 3499
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