Photo gallery: Pioneer DVR-530HHot on the heels of the DVR-330 comes Pioneer's new line of hard drive digital video recorders, the DVR-530H and DVR-630H. Both models are built on the fine traits of the DVR-330 and come with additional value-added functions, thanks to the onboard 80GB/160GB hard drive. These features include a digital music jukebox, digital photo library and more. The Japanese manufacturer also claims a couple of world's first in DVD recording technology, such as a speedy 100 times hard drive-to-DVD copy speed, a new high-quality 15Mbps recording mode, and up to 227/455 hours of recording on a 80GB/160GB hard drive, respectively.
Design
The DVR-530H shares the same chassis as the DVR-330 and has a similar appearance, layout and remote control. But instead of inheriting the its two-tone front panel, Pioneer has decided to give the 530H a simpler silver finish and add two LEDs to complement the styling. The panel emits a pleasant blue or amber glow depending on the selected mode of operation, with blue for hard drive and amber for DVD/CD.
The front panel has the same layout as its 330 sibling with the exception that the disc navigator button has been replaced by the HDD/DVD toggle button. The front A/V input also includes an additional USB terminal for the photo library function. It is noted that the position of the terminal may post a problem for wide USB devices as illustrated below.
There is little room available on the left side of the USB terminal.
The remote control inherits all the features of its 330 counterpart on top of three additional buttons. Two are used to select the hard drive or DVD mode, while the third is deployed to activate the one-touch copy function.
On the graphic user interface menu front, the DVR retains the same user-friendly, customisable and graphic-intensive design as seen in Pioneer's entire line of recorders. The menu is intuitive and easy to navigate. In the unlikely event that a user needs assistance, Pioneer has included an onscreen help function which displays textual descriptions of the various options/functions for the menu.
Features
To leverage on the 80GB storage capacity of the hard drive, Pioneer has introduced a new XP+ high-quality recording mode which records at an astonishing 15Mbps data rate compared with the 5Mbps of the SP mode. This is on top of the 32 levels of recording quality giving users full control over the desired recording quality and duration. Recording time has also been boosted to a generous 227 hours for the hard drive and 24 hours for Dual-Layer discs. However, we would like to remind readers that these figures are taken based on the lowest recording quality.
Good picture quality is incomplete without a fast hard drive-to-DVD copy function. For this purpose, Pioneer has equipped the DVR with a built-in 12x DVD writer and claims a blazing 100 times transfer speed. To capitalise on this feature, a high-speed 16x recordable is a must. Fortunately the price of a 16x DVD-R is becoming more affordable.
Photo viewer menu.
The digital photo library function allows JPEG images to be copied into the hard drive through the built-in USB terminals from a variety of devices such as digital cameras, flash memory media via card readers and thumb drives. It is disappointing to note that file transfer from the hard drive to USB devices is not supported. The USB terminals also support keyboards and PictBridge-compatible printers. The former is useful for editing/recording file names while the latter allows photos to be printed directly from the DVR.
Jukebox menu.
Swapping CDs will be a thing of the past, thanks to the digital jukebox function. It allows one-touch recording of your music compilation into the hard drive for easy retrieval and playback. The recording is stored in Dolby Digital format and Pioneer suggests as many as 100 songs per GB of hard drive space can be achieved without compromising audio quality. We are unable to verify the recording size but can confirm that there is no audible difference comparing the same recording encoded in 128-bit MP3 format.
The DVR comes with a similar set of A/V connectivity as the 330, with the exception of two additional USB terminals (one in the back and one upfront). For the asking price of AU$899, we would expect Pioneer to provide a more comprehensive set of A/V terminals such as a component-video input and coaxial digital audio output.
PerformanceAs with the DVR-330, the recording quality is excellent with XP mode as our favourite choice for DVD/DV-quality material. The new XP+ mode has very minimal improvement over the near identical copy performance of the XP mode. We do notice a slight drop in noise level in a small number of scenes but that may not justify the higher 1/3 recording space required. SP mode, with its softer image recording, should be suitable for materials like TV broadcast since the images are not as sharp and detailed to begin with.
We tested the hard drive-to-DVD high-speed copy feature on different modes of recording and managed to transfer one hour of low-quality recording (NM1) at 0.3GB onto a 16x DVD-R within 40 seconds. One-hour EP recording at 0.7GB took around one minute, while its SP counterpart at 2.1GB took about 3.5 minutes. We also copied 50MB of JPEG photo files onto a 16x DVD-R and managed to clock a modest eight minutes. The timing might have been affected by a slideshow which is automatically generated and burned together with the images.
We also checked out the USB terminal speed by copying 50MB worth of photo files stored in a high-speed SD card connected to the recorder via a card reader and managed to complete the transfer in less than two minutes.
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