Pioneer DVR-533H-S Slim Design DVD Recorder with 80 GB Hard Disk Drive

by Pioneer

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 13 x 15.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000AHSTMY
• Item model number: DVR533HS
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #91,187 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 18, 2005

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Record your library of home movies and your favorite television programs to disc quickly and easily with the Pioneer DVR-533H-S DVD recorder. The built-in 80 GB hard drive lets you record lots of home movies and TV shows for temporary storage, and it can hold up to 170 hours of content (recorded at lowest video quality--SEP Mode). Once recorded, you can watch them whenever you want, edit them, delete them, or burn them to DVD. The DVR-533H-S burns to DVD-R/RW discs, and is compatible with playback of CD-R/RW, VCD, and SVCD disc formats as well as JPEG, WMA, and MP3 digital file formats.

The DVR-533H-S includes a built-in TV tuner and the free and easy-to-use 8-day TV Guide On Screen interactive program guide--just find your favorite programs and select them for recording. The Chase Play function lets you watch, stop, or pause a show being recorded to the hard drive--even while you're recording it. It also includes a commercial skip feature that lets you jump ahead 30 seconds at a time.

The i.LINK (also known as Firewire or IEEE 1394) interface allows you to transfer your DV (Digital Video) home movies from your digital video camcorder smoothly to the hard drive. If your movies were shot in analog format, inputs for composite video/S-video and Left-Right audio are provided for dubbing them directly to DVD. With Disc Backup, you can make a direct file transfer of your home-movie DVD back to the hard drive, and from that make as many copies of your home movie as you want, all at blazing speed.

The Smart VBR (Variable Bit Recording) recording functionality lets you choose the quality level/recording time that best suits you. Choose from Fine, SP, LP, EP, and Auto; Auto automatically sets the optimal recording quality for the time remaining on the hard drive.

This DVD player's PureCinema 2:3 Progressive Scan gives you a more film-like presentation when watching movies. The 54MHz/10-bit video DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) delivers beautiful video quality. Other features include Dolby Digital and DTS Digital surround sound outputs and a high-end 24-bit/192kHz audio DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) for superb musical performance. It offers the following connection options:

• Composite AV In: 2
• Composite AV Out: 2
• S-Video In: 2
• S-Video Out: 2
• Component video Out: 1
• RF In: 1
• RF Out: 1
• Digital optical audio: 1

What's in the Box
DVD recorder, remote control, DVD-RW disc, printed operating instructions

Product Description

Pioneer DVR-533-S Progressive Scan DVD Recorder It’s a one-stop shop for watching DVD movies, recording TV shows and home movies onto a Hard Disk Drive, then watching or recording them to DVD. The built-in 80GB Hard Disk Drive lets you record lots of home movies and TV shows for temporary storage. Once they’re recorded you can watch them whenever you want, edit them, delete them, or burn them to DVD. The DVR-533H-S can hold up to 170 hours of content (recorded at lowest video quality - SEP Mode). When burning your recorded content to DVD from the Hard Disk Drive, an hour-long program recorded in SEP (lowest video quality) mode can take less than 30 seconds to burn — that’s approximately 120x (max) speed. With Disc Backup, a Pioneer exclusive, you can make a direct file transfer of your home-movie DVD back to the Hard Disk Drive, and from that make as many copies of your home movie as you want, all at blazing speed. With the recording mode set to SEP mode (lowest video quality), you can get up to 10 hours on one disc Included is an easy 8-day Electronic Program Guide (EPG) from TV Guide®. Just find your favorite programs and select them for recording. And here’s the best part: there’s no fee for this valuable service. It’s free! The i-LINK (a.k.a. “DV” and “IEEE 1394”) interface allows you to transfer your DV (Digital Video) home movies smoothly to the Hard Disk Drive.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

91 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quality machine, October 17, 2005

By 

Garth Zabower (AZ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pioneer DVR-533H-S Slim Design DVD Recorder with 80 GB Hard Disk Drive (Electronics)

If you have satellite like I do (DirecTV), then forget about the TV Guide function...that only works with cable or antena. But I didn't care about the TV Guide.....what I wanted was a user-friendly recorder with a hard drive plus compatibility with dual-layer DVD media. The Pioneer 533H-S is perfect for what I wanted to do. I record football games onto the hard drive at the highest quality bit setting (HQ+), then edit the commercials, create chapters (all very easy to do), and then burn it onto a dual layer DVD at the same HQ bit rate. The burned copies are outstanding. As for editing, this machine tells you exactly how much time you have left after each commercial edit, so you always know exactly how much to trim off your hard drive recording to make sure it fits onto your DVD. Furthermore, creating chapters is simple. All editing and modifications you make to the original hard drive recording is successfully burned onto your DVD.

If you have satellite, then setup is easy. Select "cable" and let the built-in tuner go through the channels, just like a VCR. When the screen appears asking you if you want to configure TV Guide, select the option "never remind me again"....after that it will never be an issue. This unit acts just like a VCR.

All recordings, including timer recording, are straight forward. Once this unit is setup with satellite, you will manually record whatever channel your receiver is currently on....just hit the "record" button on the remote and that's it, or set the timer.

Quality recordings, easy and straight-forward to use. It does exactly what I want it to do, this is a sweet machine. I'm happy. I also called Pioneer tech support with questions about the TV Guide function, and they answered promptly, actually spoke perfect english and were helpful. I think they said the tech support is in California.

Also, this machine apparently lets you plug in your VCR so you can transfer your old tapes to the hard drive. Then you can edit the video and burn it to a DVD. I haven't tried this yet, but I have dozens of old VHS tapes of football games going all the way back to Super Bowl 23. Now I'll be able to archive my NFL library onto digital media that will last a century. How great is that?

I'm impressed with Pioneer.

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hard drive recording will spoil you, October 13, 2005

By 

Lucas Davenport - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pioneer DVR-533H-S Slim Design DVD Recorder with 80 GB Hard Disk Drive (Electronics)

Pros: Hard drive recording is quick and painless.

Built-in TV Guide is handy.

Intuitive menus.

Has a clock!

Cons: Relies too heavily on the TV Guide

Slow tuner

No previous channel button!!

I originally purchased the Panasonic EH50S, but returned it for two reasons:

1. It did not have a clock. Seems trivial, but the VCR it replaced had a clock and I found that I had grown very reliant on it.

2. No previous channel button. The Pioneer doesn't have one either... This is a HUGE omission. ANY device with a TV tuner needs to have this feature.

After replacing the Panasonic EH50S with the Pioneer, I realized that I should have purchased a DVD recorder with a hard drive right off the bat.

If you're upgrading from, or replacing a VCR, you'll be amazed at how enjoyable recording television can be with a hard drive. No tapes, and no worries about running out of space (unless you fail to do some occasional house cleaning of the shows your record).

Editing out the commercials from the shows/movies you want to save to DVDs is a simple process.

I mentioned that the TV Guide is a pro and a con. The downside with the Pioneer is that it uses the TV Guide system to set up it's tuner. In other words, if you want to delete a channel from the Pioneer, you have to delete it using the TV Guide. Very inconvenient and often flawed. I have two local stations that I don't want, but I cannot delete them because they don't show up in the TV Guide listing correctly.

The machine will also display the TV Guide screen when you turn it on. I don't need to see this every time I turn the machine on, so I find it annoying.

The TV Guide has been wrong twice so far. I noticed that it listed one movie, while the station was actually playing another. (Not Pioneers fault)

The tuner on the Pioneer is slow. My television and old VCR jump from channel to channel very quickly. With the 533H, there is a short delay. Apparently this is because it uses and analog tuner rather than digital. If so, they should have raised the price a bit and included the digital tuner.

The machine has begun to display the word "wait" on the screen when I turn it on. I am forced to wait about thirty seconds before it settles in and allows me to change channels. I'll have to do some research into this problem.

After a month of use, the positives outweigh the negatives, and hopefully Pioneer will fix some of the more trivial negatives with a firmware upgrade in the future.

If you're looking to replace a VCR, or just jump into the world of DVD recorders, the Pioneer 533H would be a great choice.

86 of 97 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great DVR, much better and easier than TIVO!, September 27, 2005

By 

S. A. ROBBINS "shirley_rw" (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pioneer DVR-533H-S Slim Design DVD Recorder with 80 GB Hard Disk Drive (Electronics)

We gave up on TIVO and bought a Pioneer DVR-533. It is SO much easier to use than TIVO. Setup took only a short time and it was up and working. We've waited a full day to get TIVO back up and running after changing the setup! If you were considering TIVO or a stand-alone DVR (Digital Video Recorder) then definitely go with a stand-alone DVR like this Pioneer 533. It works just like a vcr and you DO NOT need the TV Guide to record programs. All you have to do is go to manual recording, set the date/time/frequency/etc and it is ready. And it works just like a vcr. I really like the preview aspect when looking at the recorded programs list, it shows the recorded program running in a small window. This lets you quickly see what was recorded. And it also will tell you how much record time each program took and how much time is left. That is something TIVO never did. There are so many more plusses to the Pioneer DVR-533 vs TIVO. The picture quality is better with the Pioneer and that will allow us to record probably double the time vs TIVO, both with 80gb hd's. The only negative is that the remote functions are not 100% intuitive but relatively easy to learn.

Overall we are very satisfied with this Pioneer DVR-533H and would recommend it to anyone.