Pioneer currently offers two types of DVD recorders: one with a hard disk and one without. The DVR-310S is AU$600 cheaper than the DVR-510H (its hard disked brother), but from the outside they pretty much look like identical twins.
Design
A silver case lends the DVR-310S some degree of sophistication. It's not as thin as some of the slimline DVD players on the market but then again, most of the thinner players aren't able to record.
The buttons on the front of the player are laid out intuitively and are well spaced out, with the large record button featuring prominently on the right-hand side of the device in red. There is a jog dial function which can be used to change channels from the unit itself. A remote control is provided from which you can access all of the functions of the DVR-310S through its large array of buttons. There is a simple display panel that generally shows the time, channel and the recoding quality indicator.
On the right side of the front panel is a DV input/output to connect to a camcorder. There is also a flip down cover on the left side that reveals an A/V input, consisting of an S-video, standard (composite) video, and stereo analog audio jacks.
The rear of the unit hosts another two A/V inputs of the same type to connect extra devices such as a cable TV set top box or a VCR so you can copy all your old home movies (non-Macrovision encoded) to DVD. There's also a component video out and a digital optical audio out for higher quality connections to your home theatre equipment.
Features
The most demanding part of setting up the DVR-310S is getting all the cables connected correctly. When you switch the recorder on for the first time you are prompted for a some initial setup information, such as your country, the date and time and your home theatre setup (if applicable) and you're up and running.
You can use the DVR-310S to play TV, DVD videos, VCDs, audio CDs, JPEG CDs, and MP3/WMA CDs. Pioneer is an advocate of DVD- media, so the DVR-310S records onto DVD-R/RW discs, but not onto DVD+R/RW or DVD-RAM.
Performance
All the features of the DVR-310S can take a while to learn but the instruction manual is very thorough and a good reference to have on hand when you're first starting out. Progressive scan video output is possible, but only if you connect through the component video outputs and when the video source is NTSC (unfortunately most Australian DVDs use the PAL video standard). For users without cable or a digital receiver, the DVDR-310S has a great built-in analogue tuner that produces pictures of excellent quality.
Through the main menu most functions can be accessed, such as timer recording, disc navigation, A/V adjust, and the photo viewer. There are also dedicated buttons on the remote control for some functions but functions such as the disc navigator don't appear as quickly as we'd like.
The disc navigator is a fantastic way of seeing everything you've recorded at a glance. It lays out a maximum of six thumbnail images (the starting frame) per page of each recorded TV program and plays these as you scroll through them.
You can record at one of four preset compression levels: fine, standard, long- or extended-play. Fine is the highest quality setting and allows you to record about one hour per disc. The quality is top notch, akin to DVD. As you move down in quality towards extended play, you can notice some picture degradation, but for the most part, we'd still prefer to watch these recordings over VCR cassettes.
One of the best features of this DVD recorder is chase play, a feature only normally found on hard drive enabled players. Chase play allows you to playback stored video while you continue to record. So, say you get home half an hour into a movie you're recording, you can hit play and watch it from the start as the DVR-310S continues to record through to the end. The DVR-310S's Easy Timer function performs very well in conjunction with the regular timer mode. An on-screen graphical representation of the week allows you to select start and end points on a sliding timeline. It's simple to use compared to the fiddly timer programming found on some VCRs of the past.
At $899, Pioneer's hard disk-less DVR-310S has a lot of competition in the DVD recording market, including the similarly priced DR4812W DVD recorder from LG. However, chase play is a handy function that gives the DVR-310S a definite edge.
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