Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Of the DVRs that I have owned (2 so far) this DVR is not only the easiest to use but it is also fairly inexpensive compared to others. The menus and commands are straight forward and if you need help, the owner's manual is well laid out.

There is only one thing I didn't like about it - the TV Guide function. If you have a satellite system, such as Dishnetwork, this function is useless. The timer recording is based on the TV Guide function, so I had to do a little digging into the owner's manual. It was fairly complicated but eventually I ended up using the satellite system to timer record, so it wasn't much of an issue.

Another small perk is when I record a program or movie the title of the program/movie is automatically shown on the thumbnail. I don't know how this works without the TV Guide feature but I never got a title on the recordings using my more expensive DVR.

I have owned a more expensive make and model of DVR and in comparison, this one is like a breath of fresh air. If I had to do it over again, I would definately save a lot of time and frustration and buy this one.

This is the first DVR I've ever bought and I'm definitely glad I got a DVR unit with a hard drive instead of just a DVR. Although this unit has some impressive features, I do have some mixed feelings about it.

The main drawback is that it downloads TV Guide data very slowly and therefore the hard drive clatters away 20 hours a day, every day. I was so irritated with the incessant noise that I almost returned it. What's frustrating is that there's no way to deactivate the TV Guide feature so that you can eliminate the constant hard drive chatter (albeit requiring you to record all shows manually) - a baffling omission. As I learned on the web, though, there's a workaround for this problem: input a fictitious Canadian Zip Code during setup and then always have the recording timer set. This eliminates the TV Guide feature so there's no more disk chatter -- problem solved.

I do a lot of video editing and my main concern isn't features but picture quality. This DVR allows you to vary the video quality, and thus, recording capacity, over a very wide range. The highest quality setting is known as "XP+" which I use exclusively. With its 80GB capacity, the hard drive's capacity is about 11 hours at the XP+ setting. On a scale of 1 to 10, with VHS (SP) = 4, SVHS/Hi8 = 6, and the source video = 10, I'd give the XP+ quality an 8. There's little noise but a fair bit of digital noise reduction, even at the lowest NR setting. I wish this unit offered a higher video quality setting, even at the expense of a shorter recording capacity. Video copied from the HD to a DVD is a bit degraded from the original HD video, even at the highest quality setting. But not to be an alarmist, and to put it in perspective, if you think VHS, SVHS or Hi8 video quality is very good, then you'll think that the video quality of this unit is outstanding - it's not perfect, but it's very close.

Two other minor quibbles: There's no apparent way to stop a timed recording that's in progress. Second, while I'm glad this unit has a firewire jack, allowing you to copy digital camcorder video to the HD, I wish the jack offered output as well as input. This would allow you to capture TV video through the unit to a computer hard drive, if desired, allowing a higher quality of video capture than what this unit offers.

It's a good unit and I'm glad I got it, but I'm looking forward to the next version with the suggested fixes above. With these caveats in mind, I'd recommend it.

This is a story that starts out happy, but that has a sad ending. I bought this DVR for my technophobe wife, so she wouldn't have to keep swapping VHS tapes to record her two favorite daily shows. She loved the unit, and was able to learn to use its controls in a single afternoon. She navigates through the menus, and through her shows, like a pro. The unit lives upstairs, but if she wants, this unit makes it simple to dub her shows off to DVD so they can be watched in the living room. Using a 4X DVD-RW, it takes only 15 minutes to copy two one-hour shows, in high-quality mode, to the DVD. If you've already done the math, you may have noticed that the copy speed is actually 8X; I don't know why, but that's how it works, and it looks great.

But now for the sad part -- the TV Guide feature. Although it works very well in my area, is intuitive to use, and even labels your recordings, it is ANNOYING! I plugged the unit in the day after Christmas; since that time until now, (almost a month later), the unit has downloaded TV Guide data a minimum of 12 hours a day, and often goes as many as 18. And while it downloads, the hard drives chatters away, much like your PC doing a thorough virus scan. Pioneer's site dismisses this with a statement that says the unit has a lot of data to download, and that is why it takes so long. However, I have an ancient PC with a tuner card that uses the very same Gemstar guide as this DVR; somehow, this slow old PC is able to download all the data it needs, delete the old listings, add the new listings, and do all the data sorting in UNDER 3 MINUTES! So just WHAT is the Pioneer doing in the minimum 84 HOURS it spends downloading a week's listings? Even if the DVR were downloading the data at a fraction of normal dial-up speed, there is no way it should have to run 84+ hours a week.

So the sad ending is this: This otherwise well-designed DVR is killed by a horrendous design flaw in its TV Guide "feature". Whoever perpetrated its design should hang their head in shame, then immediately head back to the lab to start over. As it is now, I would label this unit a "don't buy".

This is not a product review, as my unit is on order. However, I want to caution people to be aware of the reseller's ability to offer warranty support. This is especially important for electronics.

Be sure to check that the vendor you select is an authorized Pioneer retailer. Check out: http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pna/article/top/0,,2076_86556318,00.html for the list of authorized internet resellers. If they are not on the list, you have no warrany. Period.

One of the above resellers is not on the list (as of 13-Nov-05).

Do a Google search on noise from these models and you will find endless complaints. After a week, mine, like MANY, MANY others the hard disk thrashes incessantly which also cause the fan to be on constantly -- EVEN WHEN THE UNIT IS OFF. Also, the constant thrashing means your drive will come to an early death. If you don't mind having this DVR in the closet so you don't have to hear it all day, then buy this one. Like many others, I'm sending mine back. I can't even enjoy reading the newpaper in my living room. The bottom line: this machine works great, but the noise from bad engineering or software or TV Guide is horrible. Do not buy. Consider yourself warned.

When Pioneer added the TV Guide feature, they managed to cripple this recorder. If everything worked according to plan, it would be great, but...

First, when downloading TV Guide data, the hard drive is working almost continually, making the typical HDD clunking noise, which if this is in a bedroom, is simply too noisy. Actully, my dear wife finds it irritating in the media room too.

Second, if you have digital cable (we have Comcast Digital Cable) you need to use your cable box, and have the 533H control it. You stand a fair chance the 533 won't properly switch channels on the cable box, like in our case. By the way, if the 533H is turned "off" and is downloading TV Guide, and you want to watch your cable box, forget it! The 533H has control and won't let you change channels!!!

Third, TV Guide doesn't seem to ever get the channel line up right in our area. So, when you look through the guide on the 533H, and pick a show to record, you might get a different show. The times and show title are right, but it selects the wrong channel. Nice, huh?

Fourth, and this is the biggie...if you don't like the TV Guide feature, you CANT turn it off!!! I tried telling it the 533H was connected to an antenna (it isn't) so it couldn't get TV Guide data. That's true, but without any TV Guide data, you can't use the timer recording feature at all! Even if the data is wrong, you still have to let it download, it or the timer won't work, and you can't even set the clock manually.

If Pioneer wanted to add a "feature", they should make it optional, and if you choose not to use it, the recorder should still work at least as well as a dumb VCR. Sorry, the 533H isn't that machine. It's a frustration at best, and sometimes completely useless.

I used to own at 510H, which worked fine. The user interface was similary to the 533H, but no TV Guide. It did everything you'd expect, and did it well. It worked for about 18 months, then the DVD drive failed, and the Pioneer service center wanted $350 just for the replacement drive. I said no, and took it home, thinking I'd use it as just a HDD recorder. But then the HDD failed too, so I replaced the machine with the 533H, and now I wish I could buy a 510H again. In fact, I might! My 533H will probably find its way to eBay.

Thumbs down on the 533H for trying to take control when it doesn't know how. This machine is like a control-freak boss who doesn't have a clue of the job he's in charge of. Bummer.

I was very excited when I bought this DVD-Recorder. It's a beautiful machine; the quality of recordings is great, and I could even get used to the multitude of various menus and buttons.

However, I can't get the TV Guide functionality to work. I live in Southern Ontario, I get cable, it should work. I've tried for 3+ weeks, with various postal codes, etc. The straw that broke the camel's back was the fact that even though I kept setting the time (and what a painful process that is - you have to go through setting all the channels too), every time the unit powered off, the time jumped ahead by 5 hours. Tech support just told me that this is because the TV Guide is not working properly. Their solution: (1) keep trying different postal codes in my area. (2) keep resetting the clock every time I turn it on. I pointed out that (2) wouldn't work because you can't make a manual timer recording without powering off the machine. So suggestion (3) was the best: offset my timer recordings by 5 hours so that they would record properly. I'm not making this up - this is the Pioneer tech support.

There is absolutely no way of turning off the TV Guide functionality. I thought maybe if I told it that I don't have cable or antenna that it would leave me alone - nope, it still does the EPG (trying to get the TV Guide informaiton) thing all the time.

I'm so disappointed, especially based on the amount of money this baby cost me, and the fact that I always thought Pioneer was a great brand name. I'm getting ready to take it back to the store.