After releasing their first 'LX' product earlier this year -- the Pioneer BDP-LX70, Pioneer has now unveiled a deluge of high end products -- including the new DVR-LX60D DVD recorder.
Upside
The DVR-LX60D has a built-in SD digital tuner and contains a 250GB drive which, with the highest compression rates, can hold up to 711 hours of recordings.
For users with Foxtel and European electronics, the recorder features a SCART port for straightforward connectivity -- and it can then upscale these signals to 1080p. As the device is also a DVD player, it can also upscale disks to 1080p via the HDMI connection.
Multimedia is also well served by the DVR-LX60D -- users can rip CDs or copy MP3s from a USB source straight to the HDD if they wish. It also features JPEG compatibility, which means you can also watch slideshows or even print photographs from the hard disk with a PictBridge compatible USB printer.
Downside
From our experiences with the Pioneer BDP-LX70 Blu-ray player, if you are at all obsessive, a piano-black finish is not for you. Load a DVD and your pristine player will be festooned with prints.
We would have liked to see an HD tuner onboard this player, as the ability to save and replay HD content on the hard disk would be a killer feature. Of course, you can't save HD onto DVD, but surely it would be easy to implement a downscaler for archiving purposes.
Outlook
The DVR-LX60D looks pretty classy in its piano-black coat and has several useful AV features. Upscaling capability is fantastic, but it's something that most DVD players can now do. Nevertheless, the DVR-LX60D could form an integral part of an all-Pioneer system.
