Pioneer's DVR-520H-S DVD recorder houses an 80 GB hard drive, making the component a one-stop choice for both time-shifted TV viewing and video archiving. The hard drive holds up to 102 hours of programming. Once you record TV shows or home movies to the DVR-520H-S's hard drive, you'll have terrific editing and playback options: store programs and keep them indefinitely; delete them after viewing to free up disc space; or edit your favorite programs and home movies and set them up with brilliant menus, wallpaper, and playlists.
When you find yourself with a recording you want to watch again, you can keep it on the hard drive or simply burn it to a DVD-R (permanent: can't be erased) or DVD-RW (can be erased or written over many times). The DVR-520H-S features high-speed dubbing in both directions (disc to HDD, HDD to disc). You can burn content to recordable DVD-R and DVD-RW at high speed: a 1-hour program recorded in the Extended Play mode can be transferred to an 8x DVD-R in less than 2 minutes.
A feature called Disc Backup lets you make a direct file transfer of a home movie DVD to the unit's hard drive, and from that make perfect copies of your original DVD for all of your family and friends--at blazing 8x speed. The Chase Play feature lets you watch your favorite TV show from the beginning, even while it's still being recorded. The DVR-520-S also features the ability to create full-motion thumbnails with sound and a built-in TV tuner. You can also play a DVD while recording a TV show to the hard drive, or play programs from the hard drive while archiving something to DVD.
Additionally, DVD-RW permits non-destructive on-disc editing. The newly created DVD-R can be played back on most other home and portable DVD players, as well as DVD-ROM computer drives. A great feature for home-movie directors is the ability to create a professional-looking menu for home movies, similar to the menu found on DVD movies. Users can choose from nine graphical navigation menus to personalize their disc.
The DVR-520H-S also features PureCinema 3:2 Progressive Scan for a film-like presentation when watching movies. DVD mastering introduces a common distortion when adjusting 24 frames-per-second movies to 30 fps video; 3:2 pulldown digitally corrects this distortion, removing the redundant information to display a film-frame-accurate picture. Progressive scanning, referred to as 480p for the number of horizontal lines that compose the video image, creates a picture using twice the scan lines of a conventional DVD picture, giving you higher resolution and sharper images while eliminating nearly all motion artifacts. (You'll need an HD-ready TV to appreciate this feature.)
Heading up the connections are DV (digital video) inputs and outputs (1 each, IEEE 1394) for seamless integration with your camcorder and/or your computer. You get a trio of audio/video inputs (composite- and S-video with stereo analog audio) and 2 sets of composite-/S-video outputs with left/right analog-audio outputs.
Both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1-channel surround-sound signals can be routed through the player's digital-audio output (Toslink optical) for direct connection to a full-featured audio/video receiver. An RF coaxial AV input and output help you interface with older TVs, VCRs, and cable boxes.
What's in the Box
DVD recorder, remote control, 2 AA/R6P batteries, an audio/video cable (red/white/yellow), an RF antenna cable, an AC power cable, a user's manual, and a warranty card.
built-in 80GB hard drive for recording/playback * records to DVD-R & DVD-RW * plays DVD-Video, DVD-R & DVD-RW, and Video CD * plays CD, CD-R & CD-RW, and MP3 and WMA CD-R & CD-RW * plays digital picture CDs (JPEG) *
1 Not perfect -- but lots to be happy about
I've had the unit for about two weeks now, so am still exploring, but am happy with it so far, especially after the saga of purchase. Originally bought a Hitachi, discovered it wouldn't work without activating TIVO, then went through TWO Panasonic EH-85s without either one ever working right (tech support finally hypothesized that the factory got a bad batch of chips, installed them in consecutive units, and shipped a bad batch to the retailer).
I bought this primarily to archive home movies -- some going back 25 years to when my Navy son was taking his first toddling steps. The VHS tapes are deteriorating, so I wanted to get the footage digitized, and it's now cost-effective to do so. And though the editing functions are tedious, I've been happy with the results so far. The machine also really shines at time-shifting broadcast TV for later viewing and if that were the only purpose for the purchase it would have still probably been worthwhile.
Good points: very easy to use for timed recordings and it will record over 100 hours at the lowest quality (which is fine for us for time-shifting; it's about the same as 6-hour mode VHS recording on a good machine). The "fine" and SP modes (1 hour and 2 hours per DVD, respectively) offer less recording time but much higher resolution and less graininess -- the SP mode is virtually indistinguishable from a commercial DVD. Editing of video is straightforward, moderately intuitive, and easy to learn as it's menu-driven. The machine has a couple of neat features I didn't expect -- if the TV channel provides the info, the 520 will automatically title what it records off the air with the name of the show, making it very easy to find the shows we want to watch a day or two or ten after broadcast. It also plays back JPEG CDs made on a home computer, so we can show friends our digital photos on the TV instead of on the computer.
Less-than-good points: I haven't yet been successful in getting the VCR+ to work despite help from tech support, but we've got another couple of things to try and the lack of VCR+ is trivial, since it's so easy to set the manual timer. The editing functions are EXTREMELY tedious -- it uses hierarchical menus which require the user to go to all the up to the top level and back down several other levels to change functions. Editing out a commercial, choosing a frame to use as a title thumbnail, and then titling the segment require about 15 thumb presses instead of 3 or 4, due to the multiple trips up and down the menu hierarchy (plus many more thumb presses to actually input a name using the "arrow key cursor" with the on-screen virtual keyboard). It made me long for keyboard and mouse inputs on the recorder! Lastly -- the disks it makes in SP (2-hour) mode have played on all the machines with which I've tried them. The disks made in slower modes only play on about half of the other players, so I guess I'll just buy a few extra blank disks and use SP mode when I make copies of home movies to share with family.
Overall -- I'm glad I bought it and like it so far. For heavy-duty editing, I'd probably be happier doing it on computer. For light-duty editing, such as archiving old broadcast tapes or digitizing home movies, it's tedious but works just fine. For time-shifting broadcast TV to view later, it's a HUGE leap forward from a VCR with 6 hours of capacity requiring linear searching to find the desired program. I'm pleased with unit, feel I got my money's worth, and recommend it.
2 I really like this product.
For many years, I have VCR taped all of our favorite television programs for later viewing. As juggling the different tapes is cumbersome and viewing quality ranges from acceptable to poor, I have been closely watching the DVD/HD recorders for some time as a replacement for VCR taping and to put all our family VHS tapes onto long-lasting DVD.
I liked the features and generally good reviews of the Panasonic models, but was hesitant to buy into the DVD-RAM technology as it seems very limited and likely to become more so as the DVD standards continue to evolve.
I chose the Pioneer DVR-520 because I liked the unit's features and have had great success with Pioneer products in the past.
While only using it for about two weeks... I really like it. Very easy to set up and simple to tape from TV to either the HD or DVD-R/DVD-RW. I have done all my recording on SP which allows approximately 40 hrs of HD programming and 2 hrs per DVD.
Picture quality has been terrific and the "easy record" feature makes it a snap to record television programs.
The manual is a bit tedious, so I generally just review the section headings in the table of contents and then dive into the onscreen menus. These are easy to navigate and each feature that is highlighted includes a thorough descrition of what it does.
Overall, I find the Pioneer DVR 520-H, quiet, simple to operate, produces excellent recorded picture quality, and so far, does everything it claims to - and quite well at that!
