Great Entertainment! Pioneer DVR-220S Progressive Scan DVD Recorder The stylish, high-performance Pioneer DVD-220S DVD recorder offers a multitude of playback and recording options for spectacular digital video entertainment. You can play your favorite movies, burn customized DVDs, and listen to MP3s and CDs. And the quality is simply fantastic, as you’ve come to expect with Pioneer products. The DVD-220S also supports WMA and JPEG playback. And it’s multi-regional, giving you the option of taking it with you if you travel overseas. This slim, compact machine features Progressive Scan technology, Chase Play, simultaneous recording and playback. For legendary Pioneer quality at our incomparably low price, choose the DVD-220S DVD recorder for superb entertainment.
1 I still feel like an early adopter
I finally bit the bullet and bought a DVD recorder. Everyone is a DVD recorder expert and with competing formats, +R and -R, everyone has an opinion. My opinion is that if it's -R, it works on every DVD player in the house and the new portable in the car (the old audiovox portable barely played regular DVD so it naturally choked on DVD-R (which is the pioneer uses to burn.) So the first task has been to copy our ancient VCR collection to DVD. Easy enough, but certain titles (Sixteen Candles and Field of Dreams for example) are copy protected and unable to burn. As far as good news, it's got several rca (red/white/yellow) inputs, so I have my Directv DVR in one and my old panasonic VCR in the other. Copying from DVR is a breeze as well. Complaints are it took me a while to figure out how to wire it up and the remote seems overly complicated.
2 Very Good but...
This review is actually of the DVR-225s, which I believe is identical to the 220. I recently purchased the new Panasonic DMR-ES10S & returned it because of the flimsy jack panel. I replaced it with the Pioneer DVR-225s.
Every dvd I've seen made on a standalone player has had problems with motion jitter (motion occasionally slowing down & speeding up). I've never run into this with pc authored dvd's; to this day I don't know what causes it on set top players. I was told that Panasonic & Pioneer have less problems with this issue then any other brand. That's 1 of the 2 criticisms I have of this machine; it does have the motion issue. I have ordered a Sima stabilizer from Amazon; I'm curious to see if that helps when it arrives.
The other issue I've experienced with the 225s is that it isn't real happy with cheap media (Specifically ESA/CMC). Media that plays back fine after burning on my PC tends to occasionally freeze during play back on my Philips 727 when burned on the Pioneer. It seems fine with Taiyo Yuden though.
Now for the good - really excellent picture other then the motion jitter. Easy to use; much easier then the Panasonic DMR-ES10S. Also feels more solidly built. I paid $195, I'm reasonably happy although I'd love to find a standalone without motion problems. I might have been happier with a capture card, but that seems like a lot of work!
